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Arab autumn?

At last, good news from the Middle East. Democracy has been overthrown in Egypt. The generals taking over promise new elections

in a few months, but with any luck they are lying.

Nothing lasts in this world, & I mustnt get carried away. In Cairo, the show is far from over. It would be too much to hope for a

similar coup in Turkey, where I fear the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdo an, has had too much time to re-arrange the higher ranks.

And in Iran, the Islamists are fully militarized: after thirty-four years, external force is still required. The tide is turning against the

Islamists in Libya: the government there seems finally to be killing them off. There is still some hope for Tunisia; maybe even Iraq.

But let me be cautious, if first in the field, to declare the arrival of the Arab Autumn.

When the Ayatollahs finally fall, supposing they do not fall directly on Israel, the peoples of their realm will be inoculated against

Islamism for a generation to come. (Gentle reader may recall that the Persian Spring, or more precisely winter, arrived in January

1979; & all the democratic euphoria that came with the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty.) For truth, the people of Iran have probably been

inoculated these last thirty years, but again: Mao Tse-Tung was right about power. Those with the guns have it. Those without do not.

The trick is to manoeuvre into possession of the guns, & then a peaceful transition follows. Those who think the world is governed by

ideas cannot know much about it. Nor is it ruled by guns, to be clear: but by the people who hold & are willing to use them & for

as long as the rest of us think theyre still awake.

Im sure that sounds cynical. But power itself is a cynical thing, & we must look to the psychotic dimension of human behaviour for

the appeal of holding it. Democracy does not eliminate this dimension. It offers to channel violence into peaceful competition for

the monopoly on force. It provides a plausible & upholstered alternative fighting with boffers instead of spiked clubs. It can evenwork, for as long as the electorate is confined to gentlemen with a strict code of honour, a comprehensive sense of personal

responsibility, an apprehension of God, & sufficient wealth to resist the temptation to appropriate. As the franchise is enlarged, all this

collapses into what we have now: government by cynical manipulation of the ignorant masses.

You do not win elections today by telling the whole truth so far as you are capable of understanding it even about the obstacles to

fulfilling an agenda; let alone the most likely unintended consequences, which if not you, your advisers know perfectly well. You do

not win by giving an honest account of the stakes in play. Nor do you win by polite self-deprecation, leaving the argument for your

merits to your colleagues & oldest friends.

You win by bamboozling the public; by shamelessly vulgar boasting & display; by making promises that can never be fulfilled; by

colouring low motives with high-sounding phrases; by offering pay-offs in not-too-subtle ways. You win by mastering the methods of

Hollywood & the entertainment media; by employing the tricks of mass advertising to create demand & shape the marketplace.

Later, after you have made a hash of everything, your old loyal supporters will cuss you into retirement. That, almost alone, remains

as a palpable attraction of democracy, or unique selling point as the marketing people say: the routine humiliation of once-

successful politicians, & with it, the visceral satisfaction of turning them out of office. (But even this is lost in systems of proportional

representation, or by the gerrymandered tenure of Congressional USA.)

Meanwhile, in democracies, the bureaucracy grows & grows. This is absolutely inevitable: for the people will always vote to collect

more, from programmes to be paid for with other peoples money. Peace may prevail, in the absence of actual bloodshed, but knot by

knot the entire population binds itself in the cats cradle of tax & regulation, & freedom is lost from sheer aversion to risk. In a fully-

fledged democracy, no one can hope to be let alone by the authorities. Whereas, that is the only freedom a government can confer.

Monarchy may offer peaceful transition, too; & rulers born not made, thus eliminating much squalid competition, & shutting the

power hungry outside the gates. It has many other virtues I have elsewhere puffed, though also several flaws. A legitimate heir is not

always available. Or, he is available, but happens to be insane. Or, though perfectly adequate, he falls on the field of valour, or gets

murdered in a palace intrigue. Chance comes into everything, & there are times when a good monarchy isnt in the cards. That is when

we need a fall-back position: somewhere to turn when better options fail.

*

And that is the beauty of military dictatorship. If we must have a republic, I recommend the banana variety. Generals, in the main,

are men of little imagination, & simple tastes. They love order, to be sure, but in the balance of public vices, a little order is seldom a

bad thing. They are not easily infected by ideology, or any other form of intellectual ambition; even those who acquire some may lose

it after a while. They dont much care what one is doing, so long as it will not threaten the peace, or otherwise interfere with their

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breakfast. Should the general be smart enough to fully understand his need to avoid free elections, he will become unobtrusive. He

wont go out of his way to antagonize anyone. He may line his own pockets, & those of his friends for as Valry said, Power

without abuse loses its charm. But the odd billion into a Swiss bank account is a small price to pay for freedom.

It is the officer who may not be lining his own pockets whom we need to fear; the one possessed by revolutionary zeal, associated

from the start with Party. Those, let me admit, give Generalissimos a bad name. No, it is only the career general Im proposing to push

forward: the sort already used to giving orders & having them obeyed; who will not feel the need to redesign his own uniform. Real

generals, a little on the plump side, & entirely without charisma: thats where to turn in a pinch. Not to hothead colonels.

For a real general is a man with a trade. He understands the value of elementary professionalism. Hell appoint boring accountants to

the budget office, prosecuting attorneys to every judicial bench the sort of men who have some vague idea what they are doing.

They wont be like the czars in the Obama administration. A few technocrats here & there wont do much harm. Better them than the

bug-eyed idealists.

Granted, real generals have their foibles, too, that go with the tendency to be stupid. Alas, perfection is not available in this world. But

while they may be rough & somewhat brutish in their ways, may eat ice cream with a fork & so on, there is usually some underlying

decency in them.

That would be the weakness. They are good at seizing power when the people riot against a stale-dated regime, & genuinely enjoy

their brief candle of popularity. But the wish to be loved may scramble their later judgement. They will hesitate to turn their guns on

the people who come out rioting against them, in their turn. This we saw in Cairo the year before last, when the military stood downrather than shoot more students in Tahrir Square. Not that I recommend carnage as a principle of public policy, Heaven forfend!

Rather, the cultivation of a certain tone of voice that projects well through television, & makes people not want to test you.

Add that to policy preference for mom & apple pie, & a general may last a few decades. He could be the next Franco, or Pinochet, or

Park Chung-hee the next Mubarak, perhaps granting his (ungrateful) countrymen a prolonged respite from the horror of politics,

interesting personalities, & events. Eventually, the devils displaced will find some way back to power. The world is the world, &

nothing works forever. But a long holiday is better than a short one.