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20240721-Revolution and Dictatorship
MAIN IDEA:
This book seeks to explain the phenomenon of the long-term survival of authoritarian regimes created by revolutions. The idea is that the initial challenge of counter-revolutionary forces forges a strong and mutually dependent group of leaders capable of controlling the machinery of violence and maintaining the regime despite all odds. The authors contrast this with less durable regimes and clearly present their logic, with massive factual support from the history of Russian, Chinese, and Mexican regimes. Here is the graphic representation, with the three pillars of the authors’ argument presented at the top:
MY TAKE ON IT:
This is a pretty good model, but authors underappreciate the role of ideology, information manipulation, and people’s attitudes toward the regime. The revolutionaries have to convince a sufficient number of the population that it is in their best interests to support the new regime. The process has to be graduated when revolutionaries mislead people about their real objectives to obtain the support of some and the neutrality of others so they can eliminate an active opposition.
A good example is the history of the Russian Revolution. After a lifetime of theorizing about public property on a means of production and the need for the revolutionary war to establish worldwide dictatorship, Lenin and the Bolsheviks took power under the slogan: “Land to peasants, factories to workers, and peace to people.” For people at the time, it meant private property on land transferred to peasants who worked on it, cooperative ownership of factories, and rejection of wars as a means to society’s ends.
After initially acting according to this slogan, communists were able to eliminate the opposition from pillars of the old regime, then remove any trace of independence for workers’ unions, and eventually force peasants into slavery of collective farms. The key was maintaining an agenda-setting initiative so those a bit further on the elimination list would not feel threatened until their time came.
Another important part that is missing is an underestimate of the parasitic character of these regimes, which are usually unable to maintain effective economic and technological development without external support from developed countries with effective capitalist economies. Both the Soviet military power of the past and the Chinese economic power of the present came from the flow of money, technology, and informational support from Western intellectuals ideologically aligned with communism and big business seeking super profits by shifting production and technology to authoritarian countries where workforce could be violently suppressed as needed, outside of regulatory control of Western societies.
My final disagreement is with the very definition of durability. These regimes did not necessarily survive that long: 70 years of the Soviet Union or 75 years of Chinese communist power is not that long, and inevitable succession problems combined with the disillusionment of the next generations normally cut down these monstrosities long before Western intellectuals understood their levels of internal instability.
20240217 – Conflict
MAIN IDEA:
This book is based on the history of warfare after WWII. It reviews and drives lessons from multiple limited conflicts and, based on these lessons, presents recommendations for leaders of countries involved in such conflicts:” Leaders, some of whom are politicians in this book while others are soldiers, must be able to master four major tasks.2 Firstly, they need comprehensively to grasp the overall strategic situation in a conflict and craft the appropriate strategic approach – in essence, to get the big ideas right. Secondly, they must communicate those big ideas, the strategy, effectively throughout the breadth and depth of their organization and to all other stakeholders. Thirdly, they need to oversee the implementation of the big ideas, driving the execution of the campaign plan relentlessly and determinedly. Lastly, they have to determine how the big ideas need to be refined, adapted and augmented, so that they can perform the first three tasks again and again and again. The statesmen and soldiers who perform these four tasks properly are the exemplars who stand out from these pages. The witness of history demonstrates that exceptional strategic leadership is the one absolute prerequisite for success, but also that it is as rare as the black swan.”
MY TAKE ON IT:
I did not see much new information in this book, but looking at these conflicts from the point of view of one of the top-level participants and decision-makers was somewhat interesting. From my point of view, the most significant characteristic of these conflicts is a lack of will to win on the part of the more powerful side, which in all these conflicts was Western democracies. The basis of this deficiency comes from the inability of top leadership to define what will constitute victory and pursue this victory despite the losses inevitable in such conflict. In addition to high vulnerability to one’s own losses, contemporary Western democracies are oversensitive to the enemy’s losses, creating opportunities for the enemy to use methods of war that would be not only unheard of before but would be inconceivable even for Western leaders in WWII. Such methods are massive use of Western media by the enemies for propaganda purposes and use their own civilians as human shields. This resulted in a sad situation when millions of people lost their lives due to the humanitarian paralysis of Western powers. However, I believe that despite this problem persisting for the last 70+ years, it is coming to the end of its run. It is mainly because the surviving enemy becomes ever stronger and, at some point, develops an ability to cause unacceptable damage. A good example is the events on October 7, 2023, in Israel, when decades of Israeli society’s division with a significant part of the population looking to accommodate the enemy finally understood the impossibility of such accommodation. Consequently, I expect that we are entering a qualitatively new type of war when the technological superiority of the West will be used quickly and decisively to achieve clearly defined objectives while removing all considerations except for operational effectiveness in the use of weapons and methods of war.
Equal Rights Libertarian 