Speaker 1: Hilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald Adolf Hitler,
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Poulpott, Saddam Hussein. Apart from being
Speaker 1: some of the most famous dictators in human history, they
Speaker 1: all have one thing in common. They all had dramatic, violent,
Speaker 1: and disgraced downfalls, but in almost every case foreign powers
Speaker 1: played a major role in shaping the post dictatorship future.
Speaker 1: How Tyrants Fall and How Nations Survive by political scientist
Speaker 1: Marcel Dursis delves into the vulnerabilities of these kinds of
Speaker 1: regimes and explores strategies for their dismantling. Dursas was recently
Speaker 1: in New Zealand for the Auckland Writers' Festival and joined
Speaker 1: The Front Page while here to discuss tyrants and whether
Speaker 1: we've learned anything at all from the world's darkest rulers. Marcelle.
Speaker 1: The book opens with this line, the most powerful tyrants
Speaker 1: on earth are condemned to live their life in fear.
Speaker 1: Can you elaborate on this for me? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think in our democracies there's this idea that these
Speaker 2: leaders are all powerful, and that they can do whatever
Speaker 2: they want whenever they want it, and that in some
Speaker 2: ways it can be quite a fabulous existence, but reality
Speaker 2: is far from that. So one of the big problems
Speaker 2: that these leaders have is that when they lose power,
Speaker 2: oftentimes they also lose their freedom or their life. So
Speaker 2: when political scientists looked at the statistics for this, they
Speaker 2: found that over two thirds of personalist dictators ended up imprisoned,
Speaker 2: in forced exile, or dead after losing power.
Speaker 1: What are the key components of a dictator?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so I deliberately talked about tyrants in
Speaker 2: the book because I wanted to look at a broad
Speaker 2: selection of leaders. So I wanted to look at your
Speaker 2: military dictatorships, one party dictatorships, king's theocrats. And the way
Speaker 2: that I think about it is the amount of people
Speaker 2: that you need in order to maintain power. So in
Speaker 2: a functioning democracy like New Zealand, where you are free elections,
Speaker 2: you need millions of people because you need to win
Speaker 2: those elections. But if you're somebody like Vladimir Putin or
Speaker 2: you're Kim Jong un, you just need a tiny share
Speaker 2: of the population to hold that power. And usually these
Speaker 2: are your advisors. These are generals or intelligence officials. So
Speaker 2: what I'm interested in are those types of political systems
Speaker 2: where you just need a tiny share of the population
Speaker 2: because that changes everything.
Speaker 1: And what are some of the personality traits of a tyrant?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're probably got to have a pretty good
Speaker 1: reckoning of yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 2: These people are deeply, deeply weird, you know, and they
Speaker 2: would do a terrible job if they had an ordinary
Speaker 2: work to do, right, So if they set in an
Speaker 2: office environment or in a cubicle, they'd be terrible added,
Speaker 2: But they are in a way rational, and they're oftentimes
Speaker 2: very good at what they do. So within the system
Speaker 2: in which they operate, it's a good thing if you're
Speaker 2: a narcissist. It's a good thing if you have no
Speaker 2: empathy for others, because you need to horrific violence on
Speaker 2: people all of the time. And perhaps you have a
Speaker 2: normal conversation with them, smiling at them, and in the
Speaker 2: evening you order their death. So these people are not
Speaker 2: normal in any sense of the world, but they are
Speaker 2: often quite suited for that particular role.
Speaker 1: Are there any warning signs that a populist politician is
Speaker 1: becoming an authoritarian leader? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean the first thing is intent, so you know,
Speaker 2: you're sort of boring, run of the middle. Politicians usually
Speaker 2: don't want to be dictators. You know, I don't know
Speaker 2: what it's like in New Zealand, but you know our
Speaker 2: Chancellor is a boring centrist. I really don't think he
Speaker 2: wants to be a dictator. So the first question is
Speaker 2: do they want it? And then from there on out
Speaker 2: it gets a little bit more difficult because there's really
Speaker 2: not a one way in which people dismantle democracy. But
Speaker 2: if I look at some of the struggling democracies right now,
Speaker 2: you know there are things that are particularly alarming. So
Speaker 2: one of them is the justice system, because if you
Speaker 2: can ignore judges or you can replace them with your own,
Speaker 2: democracy is going to struggle immediately. But even more importantly
Speaker 2: is what happens to the security forces, because a court
Speaker 2: judgment is no good if you can't implement it, and
Speaker 2: whether a court judgment gets implemented or not ultimately depends
Speaker 2: on the men and women with guns. So if you
Speaker 2: can ignore them, or if you can find a way
Speaker 2: to capture the military or the security services, then democracy
Speaker 2: will almost inevitably die.
Speaker 1: Your book is a bit of a positive in some
Speaker 1: ways because it shows that a lot of tyrants are
Speaker 1: susceptible to a downfall. What makes them so prone to
Speaker 1: this kind of failure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one of the things that dictators often struggle
Speaker 2: with is something called a dictator's dilemma. So they don't
Speaker 2: ever actually know who's genuinely loyal and who's just pretending
Speaker 2: to be. Because if you advise that dictator and he says, listen,
Speaker 2: I have a great idea, you're not going to say
Speaker 2: it's a bad idea because you don't want to go
Speaker 2: to a gulag or die, so you're going to lie.
Speaker 2: And over time, what happens is that these leaders are
Speaker 2: constantly being lied to every day for multiple years, and
Speaker 2: gradually they just detach from reality and they no longer
Speaker 2: understand what is happening in their own country, let alone
Speaker 2: in a different one. And this is something that invites
Speaker 2: catastrophic mistakes, and that's part of the reason why they're
Speaker 2: so prone to falling right.
Speaker 1: And they're just encapsulated by that bubble of yes people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also, you know, the thing to remember is that,
Speaker 2: I mean, some of these people have grown up in it.
Speaker 2: So Kim Jong Lunn, for example, started carrying a pistol.
Speaker 2: When he was a child, you know, he would where
Speaker 2: the sort of make believe uniform, and when he saw
Speaker 2: an actual general, that real general, an adult would salute him.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He liked to play with these little toy ships, and
Speaker 2: if he had a problem with one of his toy
Speaker 2: ships at night, he would summon a nautical engineer, and
Speaker 2: that nautical engineer would have no choice but to go
Speaker 2: and help him. Right, So it is no surprise that
Speaker 2: people like that are totally broken and aren't able to
Speaker 2: make good decisions.
Speaker 3: Do dictators love Trump? That's unclear. Dictators are transactional. They
Speaker 3: use each other. If dictators are loving Trump at the
Speaker 3: moment is because they think that he can be an ally,
Speaker 3: that they can get something from him. If we take
Speaker 3: as the example Vladimir Putin, he and Trump have a
Speaker 3: good relationship, and yet he allows Trump to be marked
Speaker 3: on Russian television as a useful fool.
Speaker 1: How long do these leaders reign for usually, and how
Speaker 1: do people go about toppling one of these regimes? Because
Speaker 1: some of them are quite short, so a few years,
Speaker 1: but some of them last for decades.
Speaker 2: Some of these people are extremely good at making the
Speaker 2: kind of trade offs that they need to make in
Speaker 2: order to maintain power. But one of the huge weaknesses
Speaker 2: that these systems have is succession. So again, if you
Speaker 2: take a functioning democracy like New Zealand or Germany or
Speaker 2: the UK, you get one leader gets voted out and
Speaker 2: then you know, a couple of days later, the next
Speaker 2: one walks right back in. And if there's some sort
Speaker 2: of dispute, we have institutions to deal with it. We
Speaker 2: have courts, we have an electoral commission, we have independent
Speaker 2: journalism toward people accountable. But in these systems, what the
Speaker 2: dictators tend to do is to either destroy all of
Speaker 2: those institutions or try to capture them. So when the
Speaker 2: dictator is no longer around for some reason, the whole
Speaker 2: thing often goes up in flames, because all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: then that dispute turns from the shooting in the streets.
Speaker 2: So the length can vary quite a lot. And when
Speaker 2: it comes to the best ways to toppling these leaders,
Speaker 2: you know, just as dictators are forced to make trade
Speaker 2: offs in order to maintain power, we have to make
Speaker 2: tradeoffs in trying to deal with them. And a large
Speaker 2: question is, you know, how much risk are we actually
Speaker 2: willing to assume, because of course, you know, when democratic
Speaker 2: leaders go on TV, they say, oh, this is all
Speaker 2: about democracy promotion. You know, we just want to you know,
Speaker 2: bring our values into the world. But obviously that's not
Speaker 2: how it actually works in reality. You know, states have
Speaker 2: all kinds of interests. Some of them might be related
Speaker 2: to democracy, but many are not.
Speaker 1: Are there any kind of common weaknesses or blind spots
Speaker 1: between these regimes that other countries are able to take
Speaker 1: advantage of in order to limit their impact on the
Speaker 1: rest of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the things that is comparatively
Speaker 2: easy and comparatively low risk is looking at the ways
Speaker 2: in which these regimes try to use our own system
Speaker 2: against us. So you know, in Europe, for example, there's
Speaker 2: barely a football club inside that isn't owned by some
Speaker 2: oligarch or you know, royal family in one way or another.
Speaker 2: You know, China is buying up ports. You know, there
Speaker 2: are all kinds of critical infrastructure investments that these regimes
Speaker 2: are making, and we let it go on in essence
Speaker 2: because we're greedy. You know, We've got hordes of accountants
Speaker 2: and bankers and lawyers that are making money of this,
Speaker 2: and this is something that we could change if we
Speaker 2: wanted to, and it would make life a lot more
Speaker 2: difficult for these types of leaders.
Speaker 1: If there's huge power in something like nonviolent protest, for example,
Speaker 1: in regimes where dissent is met with extreme violence, what
Speaker 1: options do civilians realistically have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So interestingly, nonviolent protests can be incredibly effective even
Speaker 2: in regimes in which violence is used regularly, And in
Speaker 2: a way, that's a fascinating topic because you know, you
Speaker 2: look at these pensioners, you look at these teenagers, and
Speaker 2: these just unarmed people marching in the streets, and oftentimes
Speaker 2: they can bring down even entrenched dictatorships, and you think, well,
Speaker 2: how is that possible? And the way that it works
Speaker 2: is that if there are too many people in the streets,
Speaker 2: dictators have to respond because they cannot afford to look weak,
Speaker 2: so they use violence. But when you club down women
Speaker 2: and children or pensioners, oftentimes the next day you have
Speaker 2: even more people in the streets, and then you're forced
Speaker 2: into something that in German we call a choice between
Speaker 2: the plague and cholera. So there are no more good
Speaker 2: options for the dictator, because if that dictator orders the
Speaker 2: use of lethal force, somebody actually has to do the firing,
Speaker 2: and oftentimes it is exactly at that moment when the
Speaker 2: opposition looks the weakest and the regime looks the strongest,
Speaker 2: that the security forces refuse because they don't want to
Speaker 2: kill their neighbors, they don't want to kill their own people.
Speaker 2: And when that happens, the dictators lose control, or alternatively,
Speaker 2: palace leites might refuse to go along with it. So
Speaker 2: if you can bring out enough people into the streets,
Speaker 2: you can almost get these regimes to collapse under the
Speaker 2: weight of their own repression.
Speaker 1: For the book, you interviewed everyone from diplomats to disidents.
Speaker 1: Was there a conversation within all of the ones that
Speaker 1: you had that had the greatest impact on your thinking
Speaker 1: about the subject and why is that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was important to me to talk to people
Speaker 2: that had actually been there, so to speak. You know,
Speaker 2: I didn't want to make it too dry and too
Speaker 2: too theoretic, So yeah, I mean, I talked to war criminals,
Speaker 2: I talked to coup plotters, intelligence officials, and one conversation
Speaker 2: is always going to stay with me, and it was
Speaker 2: with a coup plotter who originally was a non violent activist,
Speaker 2: so you know, he was half American off Gambian, and
Speaker 2: he would raise money to weaken the dictatorship at home,
Speaker 2: so to speak. But eventually things at home got so
Speaker 2: bad because there were just more reports about people being tortured,
Speaker 2: people being killed, that he had a decision to make.
Speaker 2: You know, at what point would he give up the
Speaker 2: non violent struggle and be willing to use violence or
Speaker 2: to support violence in order to bring down this horrendous dictator.
Speaker 2: And eventually he decided that nonviolence just wasn't enough.
Speaker 1: What was the point for him?
Speaker 2: I think the point was just that he saw that
Speaker 2: there was no real hope in nonviolence in that particular case,
Speaker 2: so he wanted to use nonviolence. You know, this is
Speaker 2: who he was. He was a peaceful activist. You know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't somebody who's going to pick up a gun
Speaker 2: or support that in any way. But he just thought
Speaker 2: it became increasingly futile, and you know, as people were
Speaker 2: suffering so much. And what happened was eventually that he
Speaker 2: became convinced that violence was the only solution, and this
Speaker 2: peaceful activist turn into an international arms trafficker. So you
Speaker 2: would buy guns and mass in the US and then
Speaker 2: they would be shipped in oil drums across the Atlantic,
Speaker 2: where then a team of fellow coup plotters would use
Speaker 2: it back at home in West Africa. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think this is something that I'm German, so given
Speaker 2: our history, I often think, well, you know, what would
Speaker 2: I have done? And you know this type of question, Okay,
Speaker 2: when does violence become justified? I worry might be something
Speaker 2: that all of us will have to think about more
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 1: And being German as well as and having that history,
Speaker 1: how did that affect how you approached the subject, if
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's a topic that's difficult to
Speaker 2: void if you're German, and for good reason. You know,
Speaker 2: we think about it a lot our history and you
Speaker 2: know what we can learn from it and what we
Speaker 2: need to do in order to prevent anything like that
Speaker 2: from ever happening again. So I think I've always been
Speaker 2: interested in the topic in some way, purely because it's
Speaker 2: difficult not to be. But I guess what really what
Speaker 2: really got me onto the topic is after university I
Speaker 2: decided to work in the Congo for a while, and
Speaker 2: when I was working in a brewery in Lubumbashi, there
Speaker 2: was a coup attempt in the capital in Kinchassa, and
Speaker 2: even though I was quite far away, there was some
Speaker 2: shooting in the vicinity and you know, an explosion nearby.
Speaker 2: And that day also really stuck with me because when
Speaker 2: it happened, I felt kind of helpless and in danger,
Speaker 2: and I since then, I've always wanted to find out
Speaker 2: what happened and why, you know, like how do you
Speaker 2: get rid of these people? How do they stay in power?
Speaker 2: How does a coup work? You know, when do people
Speaker 2: get assassinated? So yeah, I think it's history, but it's
Speaker 2: also just you know, live the experience in a way.
Speaker 1: So we often hear about you know, Stalin Hitler movies,
Speaker 1: TV school history classes, But do you think there are
Speaker 1: perhaps better examples out there we should be placing better
Speaker 1: emphasis on when studying these kind of regimes.
Speaker 2: The book is an attempt to look at general mechanisms
Speaker 2: to understand what these leaders might do, what their incentives are,
Speaker 2: whether they're Stalin or Hitler or somebody from Paraguay or
Speaker 2: you know, the Gambia. But I do think in some
Speaker 2: ways we limit ourselves in our analysis by always looking
Speaker 2: back to Hitler or to Stalin, so we see a
Speaker 2: democratic politician who would like to turn into a dictator
Speaker 2: or an authoritarian. And you know, it's always like, well,
Speaker 2: this is like Hitler, this is like Hitler. But you know,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of you know, non democratic leaders
Speaker 2: in human history, and in fact, you know, I would
Speaker 2: argue that tyranny is the default of human existence. You know,
Speaker 2: usually we have been ruled by tyrants in one way
Speaker 2: or another. So yeah, I mean, I think we would
Speaker 2: do well to look at a wider range of these
Speaker 2: leaders to understand what is happening in the world today.
Speaker 1: Are there any that you would suggest for a high
Speaker 1: school history teacher who came up to you and I you,
Speaker 1: what should my next term's topic be? What would you
Speaker 1: tell them?
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's probably easiest to approach these
Speaker 2: topics with people who haven't thought about it a lot
Speaker 2: by making reference to the contemporary world. You know, my
Speaker 2: experience is that it's maybe a little bit more difficult
Speaker 2: to get people to be interested in seventeenth century Paraguay.
Speaker 2: You know, then it would be to talk to them
Speaker 2: maybe about Kim Jong un or to talk about Putin,
Speaker 2: and to talk about contemporary leaders. So I think what
Speaker 2: I would do is to look at contemporary leaders and
Speaker 2: you know, see how they behave, see what they do,
Speaker 2: what they don't do, and then maybe try to explain
Speaker 2: their behavior by looking at people from the past.
Speaker 4: History made overnight. As Syrian dictator Bashal Assad is overthrown
Speaker 4: in a lightning move by rebel fighters, they are this
Speaker 4: morning inside the presidential Palace walking it's huge halls, celebrating
Speaker 4: amid the abandoned luxury of the Assad regime. As outside,
Speaker 4: jubilation spreads on the streets of the capitol. For a moment,
Speaker 4: few saw coming rebels declaring victories, the state TV studios
Speaker 4: saying the city of Damascus has been liberated. The tyrant
Speaker 4: bashal Assad has been toppled, the rebels seizing Damascus almost
Speaker 4: without a fight, as Assad's military appeared to evaporate.
Speaker 1: Is there ever a right way for a dictatorship to
Speaker 1: fall or are they just all kind of doomed to
Speaker 1: be quite messy, quite unpredictable and eventually dangerous.
Speaker 2: If it is possible, the best way to bring down
Speaker 2: dictators is soon nonviolence. So you want to bring out
Speaker 2: those people in the streets, and you want to bring
Speaker 2: them down by not using force. And part of the
Speaker 2: reason is again due to incentives. So if you know,
Speaker 2: couplotters bring down a dictator, usually their comparative advantage is
Speaker 2: violence because that's what they just used. So going forward,
Speaker 2: they might not be particularly interested in democratizing the country.
Speaker 2: But usually when you have masses of people in the streets,
Speaker 2: they're already good at forming some sort of consensus on
Speaker 2: some things. You know, they have to find a way
Speaker 2: to solve their disputes without using force. So when they
Speaker 2: are then in power, you know, they want to stick
Speaker 2: to what they're good at, So they're much like, much
Speaker 2: more likely to democratize than you know, rebels or coup plot.
Speaker 1: Of Are there any current leaders or regimes that, in
Speaker 1: your view, are exhibiting signs of vulnerability?
Speaker 2: I think all of them, do you know. I think
Speaker 2: this is one of the things that I think people
Speaker 2: get wrong. So people look at these dictators staying in
Speaker 2: powerful multiple decades, and they think that that necessarily translates
Speaker 2: into stability.
Speaker 1: In the future.
Speaker 2: Well, look at b Alasade, you look at Basha a Lassade,
Speaker 2: and you know, one of the reasons for that is
Speaker 2: because in these regimes you cannot afford to lose just
Speaker 2: a few people, you know, These are winner takes at
Speaker 2: all systems, and they are based on the perception of inevitability.
Speaker 2: So Bashallah started stayed in power because people thought that
Speaker 2: there was no real alternatives. But the moment that his
Speaker 2: own people and the people at large realized, you know what,
Speaker 2: actually that could be an alternative, he could be toppled.
Speaker 2: This could actually happened. He was toppled very quickly, and
Speaker 2: in the Syrian capital of Damascus. What you saw is
Speaker 2: that his own soldiers would just take over their uniforms
Speaker 2: from to the side of the road and go home.
Speaker 2: So even though these regimes may look stable, they are
Speaker 2: much more fragile than they seem. And every dictator can
Speaker 2: fall at any moment.
Speaker 1: And finally, what can countries like New Zealand, a rather
Speaker 1: small player on the world stage, what can we do
Speaker 1: to help communities under these kind of leaders.
Speaker 2: Usually the closer you are to power, the more influence
Speaker 2: you have on the fall of a dictator. So you know,
Speaker 2: the minister of Defense is going to have more influence
Speaker 2: than a mid ranking civil servant, and that mid ranking
Speaker 2: civil servant is going to have more influence than a
Speaker 2: shopkeeper somewhere in the hinterlands. And when it comes to
Speaker 2: foreign powers. Again, much of it is determined by their intent,
Speaker 2: you know, what are they willing to risk, but also
Speaker 2: by their capabilities, So what could they actually bring to
Speaker 2: bear in terms of economic power or in terms of
Speaker 2: military power. Smaller countries, I think, do have a role
Speaker 2: to play, but it is at the lower end of
Speaker 2: the risk spectrum. So you know, there are things like
Speaker 2: supporting journalists. You know, you can go ahead with sanctions,
Speaker 2: you can support independent NGOs, and all of these things
Speaker 2: are good. They're not necessarily going to lead to the
Speaker 2: fall of dictators immediately, but they will create the conditions
Speaker 2: that you need for that moment when that crisis arrives.
Speaker 2: You know, when there is that spark and you know
Speaker 2: a revolution could happen. Countries like New Zealand can leave
Speaker 2: the groundwork for that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Marcel, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: For having me.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
Speaker 1: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 1: at enzdherld dot co dot enz. The Front Page is
Speaker 1: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 1: our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
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Speaker 1: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.