The problem is, that only holds true if the international community agrees about what principles are worth defending with force–and fortunately for the world’s autocrats, it can’t seem to. Disarray among allies has allowed Bosnia to bum and threatens to undo a unified front in Somalia. Meanwhile, a dozen civil wars rage in other places, raising little more than a tsk-tsk from the West. All of which is good news for anyone with big guns, strong ambitions and a powerful disrespect for human life, For the aspiring dictator, here is a guide to prospering in the new world order.
Turning a simple act of aggression into a personal challenge to the U.S. commander in chief is a poor strategy. Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein once had a friend in George Bush. But those ties didn’t count for much after each of them added insult to injury. Noriega hardly helped his own cause when, more than a year before the Panamanian invasion, he gloated, “I’ve got Bush by the balls.” Far better to praise a president’s acumen for not getting involved in local squabbles–as Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic did when Bill Clinton abandoned the military option.
More precisely, don’t snatch something of obvious value to Western strategic interests. That includes a key resource, like oil, or a cherished regional ally, like Saudi Arabia. Syrian President Hafez Assad avoided Saddam’s blunders by moving in on Lebanon, a region that no one, save Israel, seems to care about. Iran’s seizure of an island from the United Arab Emirates last year caused few ripples outside the Persian Gulf. The reason? No great petroleum supply was at stake; Teheran was simply flexing a bit of muscle,
There is only so much gore a Western audience can stomach-whether it’s civilians being blown to bits by mortar shells while standing in bread lines or human skeletons in detention centers-before pressuring their governments to take action. Warlords in Somalia are paying a heavy price for having allowed camera crews to tape thousands of starving people who didn’t have the strength to shoo away the flies. The Burmese regime finally got it right after the 1988 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators: don’t let any journalists in. The news blackout has allowed Yangon (Rangoon) to commit ethnic cleansing on a scale that makes Serbian efforts look like an old-fashioned IBM relocation.
Few despots have gotten very far with straight talk. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has successfully disguised his real-estate grab in Bosnia as the inevitable out-break of ethnic feuds too ancient and complicated for the West to appreciate, much less do anything about. Provoking no international out-cry, Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko has violently expelled more than 100,000 Kasaiens from Zaire’s mineral-rich Shaba region in the name of nationalism; never mind that the Kasaiens have had roots in the area since before the colonial period.
By appearing reasonable, a tyrant can sometimes stave off Western retaliation. Milosevic defused the threat of military intervention in Bosnia by playing off his even-more-hard-line proteges and adopting the improbable role of peacemaker. Saddam recently bought himself some time by agreeing to meet with chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus. Kim 11 Sung, Pyongyang’s aged leader, has picked up on the trick, too: by the weekend, a U.S. delegation was hinting at progress-if not a possible breakthrough–over nuclear-weapons inspections, apparently unaware of Clinton’s earlier threats to annihilate North Korea. Nigerian strongman Gen. Ibrahim Babangida has perfected the art of extended negotiation. He has promised and reneged on civilian rule with the regularity of traffic jams in Lagos–and nimbly managed to keep his opponents off guard.
Everybody hates a loser; the most durable dictators proclaim little victories in times of adversity. Facing a possible cutoff of Soviet oil shipments to Cuba in 1991, which would have thrown the island’s already ailing economy into a coma, Fidel heroically declared a new era of “Option Zero”–a phrase that some local wags have taken to mean Cuba’s future under Castro. After his pummeling in the gulf war, Saddam won some measure of respect at home by brutally crushing the Kurds-leaving little doubt among opponents that he was still a force to be reckoned with.
Outmatched by American firepower, Mohammed Farah Aidid has gone into hiding. But from there, the Somali clan leader has masterminded fatal attacks on U.N. forces and Western journalists-and consolidated his power and a swelling reputation as the underdog who stood up to the West. Jonas Savimbi has taken a slightly different approach. Once Washington’s creature, the Angolan rebel leader has kissed off U.N.sponsored elections as well as U.S. imprecations and threats to settle the 18-year civil war. As long as he’s alive, Savimbi, like all great dictators, is his own man.
