Not completely blind: What dictators do to improve their reading of the world

ABSTRACT

Current literature holds that authoritarian regimes tend to misread the international environment, both because of information processing problems and the relative lack of incentives to learn. We argue that many dictators do learn over time how to better read the international environment. While there are certain qualities that autocracies cannot correct, they do often recognize other problems and take steps to address them (if it is not too politically risky). We identify the main steps dictators take to improve the quality of their debate in the inner circle and their understanding of the West, and shed light on the degree to which these steps actually help.

Notes

1. Stephen Van Evera, “Why States Believe Foolish Ideas: Non-Self-Evaluation by States and Societies,” in Andrew K. Hanami, ed., Perspectives on Structural Realism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 163–198.

2. Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 22–23.

3. For instance, Mao Zedong relied on guidance from the Soviet Union. Michael M. Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin and the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

4. Such autocratic rulers (leaders of personalist regimes in particular) who want to make a name for themselves are willing to take greater gambles to fulfill short-term hegemonic aspirations since they consider their states merely as a tool to realize their dreams of personal greatness on the world stage no matter what the costs or risk may be for their nations. Thus their megalomania partly stems from ego needs. Hitler and Napoleon are perhaps the best examples.

5. Nikolaus Blome, Kai Diekmann, and Daniel Biskup, “Putin—The Interview: ‘For Me, It Is Not Borders that Matter,’” Bild, January 11, 2016, available at http://www.bild.de/wa/ll/bild-de/unangemeldet-42925516.bild.html

6. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 283–286.

7. Betty Glad, “Why Tyrants Go Too Far: Malignant Narcissism and Absolute Power,” Political Psychology, vol. 23, no. 1 (March 2002), 1–37. There are several processes that increase their convictions that things will work out and that their ultimate foreign policy visions will be implemented notwithstanding clearly formidable obstacles. For instance, the more times Hitler was saved from assassination attempts, the more he felt he had been sent by divine providence in order to implement his visions for Germany. Roger Moorhouse, Killing Hitler (New York: Bantam Books, 2006); Joseph Howard Tyson, The Surreal Reich (New York: iUniverse, 2010), 65–66.

8. Robert Jervis, “Commentary on Part III: Images and the Gulf War,” in Stanley A. Renshon, ed., The Political Psychology of the Gulf War: Leaders, Publics, and the Process of Conflict (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 177–78. Sometimes this conformity is not instrumental, but rather is genuine. For instance, members of the inner group may conform to the leader's views because they admire him, a very common phenomenon since dictators tend to pick those who admire them. Yaacov Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 237.

9. Barry Rubin, Modern Dictators (New York: McGrow-Hill, 1987), 16.

10. Jessica Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve,” International Organization, vol. 62, no. 1 (January 2008): 35–64.

11. See, for instance, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (Boston: MIT Press, 2004).

12. Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 227–233.

13. Tripoli, “Gaddafi's Son Warns of ‘Rivers of Blood’ in Libya,” Al- Arabiya, February 21, 2011.

14. Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Hillary Clinton, ‘Smart Power’ and a Dictator's Fall,” The New York Times, February 27, 2016.

15. On Mubarak's request for more time from Obama, see comments by “Netanyahu at War,” Part II, Frontline (January 15, 2016).

16. Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession (University of Nebraska Press, 2006); Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (London: Verso Books, 2002).

17. Benjamin Miller, “Explaining Changes in US Grand Strategy: 9/11, The Rise of Offensive Liberalism and the War in Iraq,” Security Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (March 2010): 26–65.

18. Henrik Bering, “Two Battles at Once: Democracies and Urban Warfare,” Policy Review, vol. 157 (Hoover Institution), October 1, 2009. Also available online at: http://www.hoover.org/research/two-battles-once-democracies-and-urban-warfare. Urban warfare requires higher doses of brutality in order to be effective. Yet, the liberal West faces identity costs when using excessively brutal force. Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

19. Gregory Gause, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (New York: Cambridge University Press), 153.

20. Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 502.

21. William J. Thompson, “The Fall of Nikita Khrushchev,” Soviet Studies, vol. 43, no. 6 (1991): 1108.

22. Michael C. Desch, Power and Military Effectiveness (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

23. Yuri Andropov, the chairman of the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1984, was able to reform parts of the communist bureaucracy only because the intensity of ideological commitment had been reduced within the party by the early 1980s due to the economic decline; see Mark Galeoti, “Yuri Andropov Would Drop Assad Like a Hot Kartoshka,” Foreign Policy, January 7, 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/07/yuri-andropov-would-drop-assad-like-a-hot-kartoshka-putin-russia-economy/

24. For instance, the Soviet leadership was fully cognizant of the biases of the KGB toward the U.S. and therefore based their assessments on personal impressions from meetings with American counterparts and their own personal analysis; see Raymond L. Garthoff, Soviet Leaders and Intelligence: Assessing the American Adversary during the Cold War (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), 39.

25. Indeed, we have seen many cases in which those officials who wanted most to express dissent sufficed with reporting facts that contradicted the leader's beliefs. Paul Maddrell, “The Stasis Reporting on the Federal Republic of Germany,” in Maddrell, ed., Image of the Enemy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), 68–92.

26. Rubin, Modern Dictators, 218–219.

27. Samir Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War (New York: Cambridge University Press 2002), 108

28. Amatzia Baram, “Deterrence Lessons from Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 91, no. 4 (Jul/Aug 2012): 76–90.

29. A look at the stenographic records of Hitler's daily meetings with the generals shows that the generals answered Hitler's questions or made specific suggestions but never alerted him of the big picture at the Eastern front. David Glantz, Hitler and His Generals (New York: Enigma Books, 2003); Wilhelm Deist, The Wehrmacht and German Rearmament (University of Toronto Press, 1981).

30. Antony Beevor, Stalingrad (New York: Viking, 1998), 23.

31. David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, When Titans Clashed (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 63–64, 288.

32. Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2003), 287.

33. Ibid.

34. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 94.

35. Uriel Dann, Hussein's Survival Strategy (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy), 16.

36. Peter Snow, Hussein (Washington, DC: Robert B. Luce Inc., 1972), 35.

37. Owen L. Sirrs, The Egyptian Intelligence Service (Routledge, 2011), chaps. 14–15.

38. Because the Soviet Union was so massive geographically, when two people came from the same area it quickly generated trust. On their joint ethnic Georgian background as a factor enhancing mutual trust between Stalin and Beria, see Amy Knight, Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 11–12.

39. Steffen Kailitz and Daniel Stockemer, “Regime Legitimation, Elite Cohesion and the Durability of Autocratic Regime Types,” International Political Science Review (2015): 1–17.

40. Leon Goldsmith, “Alawaites for Assad,” Foreign Affairs, April 16, 2012.

41. Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville, Asad of Syria (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1990), 104–110.

42. Alexander Bligh, “The Jordanian Army between Domestic and External Challenges,” in Barry Rubin and Thomas Keaney, eds., Armed Forces in the Middle East (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 157.

43. Kevin Woods et. al., The Saddam Tapes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

44. James Gelvin, Leonard Binder, and Khaled Abou el Fadl, UCLA CrossSection: Suleiman and Egypt's Future, February 9, 2011, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_7gOkJ2ZZ0

45. David Samuels, “Q&A: Edward Luttwak,” Tablet Magazine, September 6, 2011.

46. Irving L. Janis, Groupthink (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1982).

47. Reid Standish, “Putin Dismissed His Chief of Staff. What Does It Mean for Russia?,” Foreign Policy, August 12, 2016, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/12/putin-dismissed-his-chief-of-staff-what-does-it-mean-for-russia-ivanov-vaino-kremlin/

48. Charles A. Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson, “Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience,” International Security, vol. 36, no. 1 (Summer 2011), p. 74.

49. Hazem Kandil, Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen (London: Verso, 2012), 228.

50. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “An Unnecessary War,” Foreign Policy, no. 134 (January–February, 2003) 54; Richard K. Betts, “Suicide from Fear of Death?” Foreign Affairs, vol. 82, no. 1 (January–February 2003): 34; Mohamed Heikal, Illusions of Triumph (London: Harper Collins, 1993), pp. 232–242.

51. Judah, Kosovo, p. 81.

52. Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967).

53. Niel Barnard, Secret Revolution (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2015), 116–117.

54. Siarhei Bohdan, “Belarusian Foreign Policy: Between Tehran and Tel-Aviv,” Belarus Digest, August 9, 2013, http://belarusdigest.com/story/belarusian-foreign-policy-between-tehran-and-tel-aviv-15032

55. “Report: Ex-Mossad Chief Has Transplant in Belarus,” Jerusalem Post, October 17, 2012.

56. Bohdan, “Belarusian Foreign Policy.”

57. The Reliable Source, “Singapore's Ambassador Chan Heng Chee Ends 16-Year Service in Washington,” Washington Post, July 16, 2012.

58. “Mansour Farhang Says Islamic Republic Is Just Bump in the Road of World History,” Iran Times, December 27, 2013. The defection of cosmopolitan diplomats has been a severe problem especially for North Korea, which is why the regime in Pyongyang usually exacts revenge on relatives and friends at home. It has also been known to pursue defectors abroad and, if it finds them, to “mete out draconian punishment.” Luke Harding, “High-Ranking North Korean Diplomat in London Defects to South Korea,” The Guardian, August 17, 2016.

59. Kjell Engelbrekt, “Why Libya? Security Council Resolution 1973 and the Politics of Justification,” in Kjell Engelbrekt et al., ed., The NATO Intervention in Libya (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 47, 50.

60. Duelfer and Dyson, “Chronic Misperception and International Conflict,” p. 83.

61. Emily Tamkin, “Saudi Arabia Prepared for Trump Visit by Hiring Former Trump Advisors,” Foreign Policy, June 1, 2017, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/01/saudi-arabia-prepared-for-trump-visit-by-hiring-former-trump-advisors/

62. Both Haffez al Assad and Nikita Kruschev came from peasant backgrounds and lacked formal higher education; Idi Amin, who came from a rural farming town, only finished a fourth-grade education; the president of Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, never received a high school degree and instead received a military education; and so on.

63. This phenomenon of toppling rulers in their absence is especially prevalent in Africa, but also to an extent in the Middle East; “African-Style Coup: Depose Leaders while Overseas,” World Bulletin, May 14, 2015, available at http://www.worldbulletin.net/haber/159173/african-style-coup-depose-leaders-while-overseas

64. Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor (New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2012), 702.

65. Talitha Espiritu, “Revisiting the Marcos Regime: Dictatorship, the Media and the Cultural Politics of Development” (PhD dissertation, Department of Cinema Studies, New York University, 2007), 388.

66. Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War (London: Allen Lane, 2009).

67. David A. Welch, “Culture and Emotion as Obstacles to Good Judgment,” in Stanley Renshon and Deborah Welch Larson, eds., Good Judgment in Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 199–200.

68. Quoted in ibid.

69. Emanuele Ottolenghi, “Iran's Leaders Rail against the West—And Then Send Their Children to Study and Work There,” Business Insider, September 5, 2014; Andrew Higgins and Maureen Fan, “Chinese Communist Leaders Denounce U.S. Values but Send Children to U.S. Colleges,” Washington Post, May 19, 2012.

70. Mamdouh Noufal, “Arafat, the Political Player: A Mixed Legacy,” Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 35, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 37.

71. Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (New York: Harper Collins, 1999), 5–30.

72. Flynt Leverett, Inheriting Syria (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), 55.

73. Lawrence Tal, Politics, the Military and National Security in Jordan, 1955–1967 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 27–37.

74. King Hussein, Uneasy Lies the Head (London: William Heinemann, 1962), 200–207.

75. Ibid.

76. King Hussein of Jordan et. al., My “War” with Israel (New York: Morrow, 1969).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Or Arthur Honig

Or Arthur Honig ([email protected]) (PhD, UCLA) is a tenure-track assistant professor at Tel Aviv University's political science department. He has published extensively on issues such as coercion, intelligence, propaganda, and covert action.

Sarah Zimskind

Sarah Zimskind ([email protected]) graduated with her MA in Security and Diplomacy Studies from Tel Aviv University and a BA from University of Georgia.s School of Public and International Affairs, where she, held the title of Richard B. Russell Security Leadership Scholar there.