Dictators’ Disordering Quest for Internal Security
And inaugurating a series of videos about undecided NJ South Asian voters
Why do autocrats disorder their countries and the world? (pssstt, do listen to the episode but if you wanna cheat and know the answer first, it is for Internal Security)
On Today’s episode we drill down focusing on the link between autocracy and global disorder. This is a topic we will return to, next week as well, with Jordan Harbinger who will tell us about working in North Korea and what he learned about the psychology of dictatorships. In between these two episodes we will have a VERY SPECIAL bonus episode this Thursday the 19th to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the disorder pod. Yeah that is right, we launched with 3 conceptual episodes about the world system exactly 12 months ago this Thursday and 300 hours of recorded audio later we are where we are today: recording great content with great guests, like Marcel Dirsus.
Dictators’ Disordering Quest for Internal Security
From Putin to Qadhafi, from Mohammed bin Salman to Trump… our current era of Enduring Disorder is filled with many Tyrants and Tyrant-wannabes. But why do Tyrants tend to seek Disorder rather than Order? The answer appears to lie in Tyrants’ Endless Quest for Regime Security. Dictators have a marked predilection to put their own desire to cling to power in the short-and medium-term above all other considerations – even if that means deliberately making their countries’ economies and militaries inefficient or willfully spreading Disorder around the globe.
To discuss the deep connections between Tyranny and Disorder, I was joined by Marcel Dirsus, my old Oxford chum, former Libya-Analysis LLC contractor, and author of ‘How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive’. Marcel is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University and a member of the Standing Expert Committee on Terrorism and Interior Security at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
In this episode, we dig into the psychology of tyrannical leaders and the structural factors that push tyrants to behave as they do. We explore the concept of the ‘selectorate’ — i.e. who really matters in a given society to keep the ruler in power. We explain how tyrannies have a much smaller and more elite ‘selectorate’ than democracies… this partially explains why pleasing these very few elites in the immediate term is the key variable required to keep dictators in power… and since those few pillars of regime support might flip at any moment, tyranny is actually an incredibly brittle form of government… and can actually collapse at any moment if its support pillars are removed.
Marcel’s work is a key corrective to popular misconceptions about tyranny… popular wisdom is that Putin or the kings of Saudi or given African strongmen hold absolute power… but of course they don’t… they can’t govern without those in their inner circle helping them and key members of society like doctors, military officers, scientists, engineers participating…. This popular misunderstanding actually hamstrings suffering citizens of dictatorships in trying to overthrow their tyrants.
One of the things Marcel illustrates brilliantly to my eyes is how the cult of personality of the dictator needs very much to operate on those closest to him not primarily on some peasants in the periphery… and historical episodes like Catherine the Great overthrowing her husband because the Imperial Guards liked her better than him illustrate a key aspect of dictatorship… cults of personality must per force operate on those in the real selectorate, those close to the dictator in charge with guarding her or him and who can actually replace him or her if they act in a coordinated fashion.
Lastly, just in case some of this content is seeming quite far away from our own concerns, Marcel quotes Dr Jerrold Post of the CIA analyzing Saddam Hussein to Congressional House Armed Services Committee only thirty years ago as a malignant narcissist who was oversensitive to criticism and lacking empathy… but also highly paranoid… this begs a key question, why is being so sensitive to criticism so common for dictators? And why is Trump so deeply sensitive to any criticism, even though it would seem to be the trait of a ‘weakman’ rather than a ‘strongman’? Marcel explains in the episode that being incredibly thin-skinned may help autocrats and would be autocrats police henchmen who might criticism them and fired them. So this argument is that thin-skinned ness on the part of tyrants guarantees that they surround themselves with loyal sycophants rather than more effective free thinkers.
In the Ordering the Disorder section, we urge democratic nations to realize the true extent of weakness prevalent in most dictatorships and target tyrants’ henchmen to help create a more Ordered globe.
More Background on Marcel’s work (and a touch of my own)
What is the Selectorate and what are the implications of ‘Selectorate Theory’ on how we understand international politics? oxfordre.com/politics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-293
Get Marcel’s book at https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/marcel-dirsus/how-tyrants-fall/9781399809481/
But if you want to actually learn about Libya rather than simply reading some kooky stories that Marcel includes about Qadhafi, get my book:
https://globalenduringdisorder.com/
Read more about Marcel at https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/07/17/taking-on-the-global-brotherhood-of-despots
Visit his substack
And for the reference to Nadav Safran’s ‘Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security’: https://www.amazon.com/Saudi-Arabia-Ceaseless-Quest-Security/dp/0674789857