Reading articles like this, and remembering the fate of Iraq and Libya after regime change, are great reminders that some countries need secular strongmen if they hope to ensure the safety of...
Reading articles like this, and remembering the fate of Iraq and Libya after regime change, are great reminders that some countries need secular strongmen if they hope to ensure the safety of ethnic and religious minorities.
I'm glad that Syria didn't turn into the same slavery-ridden hellscape that Libya became after Gaddafi was deposed.
Maybe the decades of rule by dictatorship has something to do with the country going insane after it was removed. Your post comes off as kind of implicitly racist. Also Saddam had been turning to...
Maybe the decades of rule by dictatorship has something to do with the country going insane after it was removed. Your post comes off as kind of implicitly racist.
Also Saddam had been turning to religious populism to shore up support after his failures in the First Gulf War. He may have once been a secular dictator but not so much by 2003. IIRC the Fedayeen Saddam had actually 'pioneered' some of the public spectacle style executions later performed by IS(e.g. throwing gay men off buildings).
probably the opposite, actually, in line with what the person you're replying to said. libya's borders are basically arbitrary like most african countries, and they compact in a lot of competing...
Maybe the decades of rule by dictatorship has something to do with the country going insane after it was removed. Your post comes off as kind of implicitly racist.
probably the opposite, actually, in line with what the person you're replying to said. libya's borders are basically arbitrary like most african countries, and they compact in a lot of competing factions that probably do not have business sharing a country in the way they do. the first leader of independent libya was also a strongman, by the way--he was a king, who gadaffi incidentally couped out of power to take control of libya.
gadaffi's authoritarianism was not particularly palpable, of course, but when your colonial-established borders completely upend how things have worked for literally hundreds of years (the ottomans ruled a very, very devolved libya) and everybody underneath you is killing each other pretty regularly in sectarian or racial conflict, there's not really much you can do but lead like an authoritarian, because if you don't you tend to also get murdered (ask many an african leader). this is basically how authoritarianism established itself in large swathes of africa, and it's pretty much how it established itself in libya. whoever ends up winning the civil war will also probably be an authoritarian.
This implicitly assumes an ethnonationalist attitude that multiple cultural groups cannot peacefully coexist under one government. I agree that there are game theoretic reasons why people turn to...
libya's borders are basically arbitrary like most african countries, and they compact in a lot of competing factions that probably do not have business sharing a country in the way they do
This implicitly assumes an ethnonationalist attitude that multiple cultural groups cannot peacefully coexist under one government.
gadaffi's authoritarianism was not particularly palpable, of course, but when your colonial-established borders completely upend how things have worked for literally hundreds of years (the ottomans ruled a very, very devolved libya) and everybody underneath you is killing each other pretty regularly in sectarian or racial conflict, there's not really much you can do but lead like an authoritarian, because if you don't you tend to also get murdered (ask many an african leader). this is basically how authoritarianism established itself in large swathes of africa, and it's pretty much how it established itself in libya. whoever ends up winning the civil war will also probably be an authoritarian.
I agree that there are game theoretic reasons why people turn to authoritarianism, and I appreciate your use of the grim calculus of realpolitik. But you're trying to eat your cake, by decrying brutal dictators associated with the US to assert moral superiority of your desired system of political economy, and still have it too, by writing apologia for even worse dictators (for example Assad, who's significantly worse than someone like Pinochet -- that I assume you rightfully loathe -- by far) who adopt the label of "anti-imperialist".
it really doesn't. you can't just toss a bunch of cultural groups with long sectarian histories into literally arbitrary borders with no respect the local differences in culture and whatnot and...
This implicitly assumes an ethnonationalist attitude that multiple cultural groups cannot peacefully coexist under one government.
it really doesn't. you can't just toss a bunch of cultural groups with long sectarian histories into literally arbitrary borders with no respect the local differences in culture and whatnot and expect it to go well. it went poorly for yugoslavia, it went poorly in the middle east, and unsurprisingly, it went poorly in africa and libya. do you think if we suddenly tossed, say, every third native american group into one single state without respect to everything that divides them, it'd go well? because that's basically what colonial italy did in libya.
But you're trying to eat your cake, by decrying brutal dictators associated with the US to assert moral superiority of your desired system of political economy, and still have it too, by writing apologia for even worse dictators (for example Assad, who's significantly worse than someone like Pinochet -- that I assume you rightfully loathe -- by far) who adopt the label of "anti-imperialist".
literally nobody in this conversation is apologizing for assad or gaddafi or whatever. in an optimal world there would be no need for them. but we don't live in an optimal world, and so until we do, there are going to be dictators like gaddafi and assad who are better than the alternatives of violent, ruinous, endless civil wars brought on in part by a misguided need to liberate people without respect to whether or not toppling such people would actually do that for the citizens under them (which has not happened in our example of libya and likely will not regardless of who wins).
Reading articles like this, and remembering the fate of Iraq and Libya after regime change, are great reminders that some countries need secular strongmen if they hope to ensure the safety of ethnic and religious minorities.
I'm glad that Syria didn't turn into the same slavery-ridden hellscape that Libya became after Gaddafi was deposed.
Maybe the decades of rule by dictatorship has something to do with the country going insane after it was removed. Your post comes off as kind of implicitly racist.
Also Saddam had been turning to religious populism to shore up support after his failures in the First Gulf War. He may have once been a secular dictator but not so much by 2003. IIRC the Fedayeen Saddam had actually 'pioneered' some of the public spectacle style executions later performed by IS(e.g. throwing gay men off buildings).
probably the opposite, actually, in line with what the person you're replying to said. libya's borders are basically arbitrary like most african countries, and they compact in a lot of competing factions that probably do not have business sharing a country in the way they do. the first leader of independent libya was also a strongman, by the way--he was a king, who gadaffi incidentally couped out of power to take control of libya.
gadaffi's authoritarianism was not particularly palpable, of course, but when your colonial-established borders completely upend how things have worked for literally hundreds of years (the ottomans ruled a very, very devolved libya) and everybody underneath you is killing each other pretty regularly in sectarian or racial conflict, there's not really much you can do but lead like an authoritarian, because if you don't you tend to also get murdered (ask many an african leader). this is basically how authoritarianism established itself in large swathes of africa, and it's pretty much how it established itself in libya. whoever ends up winning the civil war will also probably be an authoritarian.
This implicitly assumes an ethnonationalist attitude that multiple cultural groups cannot peacefully coexist under one government.
I agree that there are game theoretic reasons why people turn to authoritarianism, and I appreciate your use of the grim calculus of realpolitik. But you're trying to eat your cake, by decrying brutal dictators associated with the US to assert moral superiority of your desired system of political economy, and still have it too, by writing apologia for even worse dictators (for example Assad, who's significantly worse than someone like Pinochet -- that I assume you rightfully loathe -- by far) who adopt the label of "anti-imperialist".
it really doesn't. you can't just toss a bunch of cultural groups with long sectarian histories into literally arbitrary borders with no respect the local differences in culture and whatnot and expect it to go well. it went poorly for yugoslavia, it went poorly in the middle east, and unsurprisingly, it went poorly in africa and libya. do you think if we suddenly tossed, say, every third native american group into one single state without respect to everything that divides them, it'd go well? because that's basically what colonial italy did in libya.
literally nobody in this conversation is apologizing for assad or gaddafi or whatever. in an optimal world there would be no need for them. but we don't live in an optimal world, and so until we do, there are going to be dictators like gaddafi and assad who are better than the alternatives of violent, ruinous, endless civil wars brought on in part by a misguided need to liberate people without respect to whether or not toppling such people would actually do that for the citizens under them (which has not happened in our example of libya and likely will not regardless of who wins).