The Failures of Autocratic Leadership and Policies

  ‘Netanyahu, in a different league,’ 2019 Israeli election poster

Kim Jong-Un and Trump in the DMZ in 2019

2019 - Trump-Putin Bromance

 Trump and Xi in 2017

The Failures of Autocratic Leadership and Policies

The World’s a Mess!!!

It’s not just nations with established autocratic rule; it’s also democracies where autocrat-wannabes want a system change to empower themselves and their cult-constituency. You can easily detect politicians who fit this mold, as they seek each other out and cast admiring glances (rife with compliments) over autocrats the world over. They prey on vulnerabilities, seeking those fearing change, often seeking refuge in past “greatness.”

You can see it in Vladimir Putin who openly advocates for a restoration of the greatness of the Soviet empire long since crumbled and fractionalized. It is present in Xi Jinping as he decimates his privileged captains of mega-capitalism, leers longingly upon Taiwan and covets the power once enjoyed by Mao Zedong. The Ayatollah Khamenei proselytizes the global spread of fundamentalist Islam, the destruction of the West and its presumed puppet “Israel;” arming his foot soldiers in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthis) and Gaza (Hamas) to do his bidding. Yet the economies of all the above nations are in plunging disarray.

It’s no accident that Mexican cartels have adopted the al-Qaeda/ISIS-like kidnap-murder syndrome in their operations, that the basic ingredients for making fentanyl (that kills thousands of Americans every year) are manufactured in China and exported to Mexico and points south and that many of these autocracies have figured out how to harness Western social media to undermine free elections, sow doubt among voters and spread knowing falsehoods and conspiracy theories to erode democracies. And while world leaders often gather and meet, even their enemies at global events, the above photographs of world autocrats or autocrat-wannabes all represent leaders whom Trump has gone out of his way to admire, flip-flopping when it suited him. Today, Trump blames Netanyahu and praises Hezbollah.

Israel is in a quagmire that the Iran-Hamas cabal, well planned to weaken Israel, that puts the Jewish state in a position to engage in a lose-lose scenarios in the eyes of most of the world, taking the United States down a notch too. Hamas is more than aware that global journalism is fickle, willing to describe the butchering and murderous terrorism that punctuated the initial Hamas breakthrough into Israel, slaughtering innocents (including babies who were beheaded) and taking civilian hostages… but soon to shift global sympathies to Gazans, as Israeli strikes take out hospitals, schools and cut off medical supplies, food, water and electricity to 2 million Palestinian residents. That Israel warned half the Gazan population to evacuate the north before the Israeli strike and gave Hamas a clear path to restore vital services and imports (“release the hostages”), as Hama and its Iranian puppet master well knew, would produce the images of horror and suffering that would soon dominate global news coverage. Gazans face hostile Egypt as well as Israel if any might prefer to leave the country. They can’t!

The common thread in all of these failed autocratic leaders is a complete disdain for their followers, willing to use them to further their ambitions and purging anyone they see as disloyal to their autocratic aspirations. Hamas and Iran couldn’t care less if tens of thousand of Gazans die, even as they purport to be champions of Palestinians everywhere, that innocent civilians will suffer horribly. It suits their goals: take down Israel and the United States.

It is pure evil masquerading as God-fearing beliefs. These autocrats and their followers have used our own First Amendment rights against us, eroding confidence in our elections and our leaders. Unfortunately, too many American political candidates have succumbed to this erosive use of media and the spread of conspiracy theories, preferring personal gain and power to the best interests of the nation as a whole. Lying to achieve personal power is too often their standard practice.

Callous autocrats either force or seduce their followers into political subservience. They knowingly make promises that their constituents want to hear but which they know they cannot deliver… and most of all, they love to blame others. Blame releases them from living up to their pledges, and by carefully naming their enemies (foreign and domestic), their constituents become unknowing pawns in these leaders’ quests to increase their personal power.

It is no coincidence that Putin so underestimated the US response to his Ukraine invasions, based on his friendly relationship with the last President of the United States. Or that Benjamin Netanyahu, having focused on decimating his judiciary and hammering West Bank Palestinians, lost his focus on the bubbling, roiling efforts in Gaza - two years in the making. There is no way Gaza could have mounted their assault against Israel without smuggled Iranian weapons.

Even as Netanyahu blames his own intelligence and military for failing to see what was building in Gaza, it is indeed Netanyahu whose provocative actions gave Hamas (Iran) a greenlight (“justification”) to plot and fuel their diabolical assault on an increasingly weakened and distracted Israel. As hundreds of thousands of Israeli protestors, including military reservists, railed against Netanyahu (who is in the middle of a corruption trial) and his desire to suppress judicial rulings he objected to (via his coalition in the unicameral Knesset), the leadership in Iran and Gaza smiled.

Despite facing horrific urban warfare in one of the most congested concentrations of people on earth - probably why Israel did not move against Gaza earlier - Israel will prevail. A rapid victory might reinforce “Teflon” Netanyahu’s continued “leadership” in Israel, a clear march to autocracy. A doddering geriatric Joe Biden, so far unable to convince necessary independents of his clear legislative successes, has allowed Donald Trump to sidestep the real issue for the 2024 election: which system of government will American’s elect - autocracy or democracy. Unless Americans wake up to what is truly at stake, looking at failing autocracies around the world creating violent distractions and placing blame, we just might join that litany of democracies that have transitioned into autocracy, a path of self-destruction.

I’m Peter Dekom, and “those who do not study history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.”