How do the inner circles of dictatorships eventually fall and crumble

Great Debates
1

With Kim Jong Un taking over in North Korea it made me think about how dictatorships aren’t necessarily about a single strongman but rather about (from what I know) several thousand powerful bureaucrats and politicians who have a strong vested interest in maintaining a corrupt and unjust system.

In Stalinist Russia, once Stalin died the entire USSR underwent dramatic changes via Khrushchev. A lot of the oppression went away with one man dying and being replaced (the USSR was still oppressive, but not nearly as bad from what I know of it after the ascent of Khrushchev and the death of Stalin).

But in most systems, one person really doesn’t hold all that power that Stalin seemed to hold. It is a few dozen, hundred or few thousand powerful people running the system who are being held together by fear and greed. And by those people I mean the heads of the military, political system, ideological system, industrial system, educational system, religious system, family members of a monarchy, etc.

On one hand, if you maintain the corrupt system you will reap massive financial benefits, and since most other people who aren’t ‘in’ with the system are barely able to afford bread and clean water having the ability to get nearly anything you want is really appealing over the alternative (destitution and abuse by the system).

Also there is fear for a few reasons. On one hand, if you betray the regime and the regime stays in power you will be horribly punished (and your family too). You lose your status, your freedom, your life, you probably get tortured.

Not only that but if the regime falls you will probably end up tortured and killed anyway since you were one of the power brokers. So it seems like no matter what happens there is no option that will not result in being tortured, killed and impoverished if you are part of the inner circle and want anything other than to maintain the system. If you seek change and help overthrow the system, you could be brought down in revenge killings and trials. If you seek change and try to overthrow the system and fail you will be tortured and executed.

So what methods exist in international affairs to break apart the cohesion of inner circles in places like Iraq, North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, etc (assuming members of those inner circles want reforms in areas like human rights, economics, political freedom, personal freedom, religious freedom, etc).

How do powerful generals, politicians, bureaucrats, royalty, industrialists, etc. against each other and against a corrupt system?

Do they cement an internal revolution first (getting tons of powerful allies within the system who know reform is necessary) and then overthrowing the system when they are cohesive enough to have a new system?

2

Typically it only takes a powerful enough chunk of the military to allow the regime to fall. Once you have enough men with guns (and tanks, artillery and warplanes), whatever grip the regime has on the rest of government is irrelevant.

Typically that means a small popular clique of senior officers, or a larger uprising amongst the rank-and-file. Enough disinterest among the parts of the army that aren’t involved so they don’t actively fight the rebellious portions of the military also helps (and even if they do would rather surrender than fight to the death).

Libya is pretty unusual as this didn’t really happen to a large degree AFAIK, but then again Qaddafi deliberately kept the military (and anyone else who could possibly be a threat to his rule) very weak. Ultimately this led to his downfall as they weren’t able to put down what were (even with NATO support) a pretty amateurish set of rebels.

EDIT - I should also add that this is why the North Korean regime goes to great lengths to ensure the army gets whatever the hell it wants, regardless of what is happening to the man on the street.

3

In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq only the republican guard was allowed into baghdad due to this (fear of a coup).

As far as North Korea, it is my understanding even soldiers are starving. What happens is the officers steal the meager rations of the conscripts, so the soldiers are also just as bad off as the peasants (a little better sadly, because a starving soldier can rob a starving peasant).

I don’t know which book I read it in, but supposedly there was a plot among high ranking generals (I believe 3 and 4 star) to overthrow the Kim Jong Il regime during the 90s during the famine by marching on major cities, but it was brought to light and the generals executed. But with North Korea being so secretive who knows if it is true.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GB18Dg02.html

4

I wonder – if somehow you could strip away the power of one individual to order the deaths of others, could that end dictatorship.

I guess I’m talking about a very loose definition of the term “due process” – that if there is one thong that everyone agrees on, no matter how high up the food chain someone is, and how aggrieved someone else makes them, the former can’t simply order the latter to be disposed of.

I guess this also depends on your definition of dictatorship. The Soviet Union was arguably one under Stalin, but not after. That’s not to say it couldn’t have become one, though, had someone equally ruthless stepped in at the right time.

Perhaps the world owes a debt, of a kind, to Stalin. He was so paranoid and ruthless he destroyed anyone else with the skills and inclination to take over and run the place as Stalin did.

5

I read a book by one of the cold-war era Soviet defectors, who said that the dictatorship was kept stable by division of power – just as in constitutional systems! The power blocs spend all their time fighting with each other, and so never manage to unify against the dictator.

The Soviet factions were the military, the party, and the KGB. These were described as a crocodile being tormented by two pygmies. The army could easily take over the whole shebang…except that the two other factions kept weakening it. And, likewise, the KGB would sometimes use the army against the party, and so on.

The dictator balanced everything. If an army general got too powerful (like Zhukov) the dictator sacked him. All horribly methodical.

6

I think communist distatorships are organized differently-Lenin was the man who perfected the model. In such a system, you always have TWO organizations doing the same job-and the heads of these are never allowed to collaborate.
This allows for control from the top-as the heads of the subdivisions are never sure if their opposite number isnt going to kill them. In Stalin’s case, you had the Army and the MVD-suppose a top army general decides to plot against the government-he isn’t sure that his opposite number in the MVD will work with him.
The same with the Navy-every ship captain has a “zampolit” under him (political officer) who watched the captain and reported on his behavior.
With a system like that, it is very hard to oppose the dictatorship-ypou might be plotting with a guy who is informing on you (and you will getb a bllet in the head for disloyalty).

7

This is not a specifically Communist tactic - the Nazis had the same divide and rule method of ensuring that no single power bloc could gain too much power. Wehrmacht/SS, Gestapo/SD, etc. This is why Goering had his Luftwaffe panzer divisions and Himmler his SS ones - so they could balance the army to some extent (and each either, too).

8

A cynic might say that that’s also why the United States still has the Marine Corps - so that not all of the ground forces are under the Army’s control.

9

It is extremely common for authoritarian governments to have two independent armed forces. One is the regular army, the other is a special “elite” ideological group chosen for political reliability. So Saddam had the Iraqi army and the Republican Guard. If elements of the army are causing trouble, you send in your SS/KGB/RG units to deal with them, and if the ideological group is causing trouble you send the army to deal with them.

And the two armed forces are trained to despise each other, the regulars are supposed to be lazy incompetant peasants, the elites are supposed to be pampered pets of the bosses who get special treatment. Note that the supposedly elite groups are almost never actually better fighters than the regulars, they aren’t chosen for their warfighting skills but for their loyalty to the regime. The supposedly elite Iraqi Republican Guards weren’t elite because they were better trained or better motivated or even better equipped than the regulars. They were elite because they were personally loyal to Saddam and could be relied on to obey orders that regular army units would find distasteful. So these units are great for ethnic cleansing and shooting civilians, not so great at fighting a real army.

10

I’ve actually heard similar claims about all the elite forces – Delta, Seals, etc. – they they balanced each other out in some fashion to prevent a coup. I think they balance each other out in political budget wars, Maybe Congress established the Green Berets, and then the admirals started pouting about how they need their own elite units too. Or something similar to that.