1 The Dictator’s Treadmill

 1

The Dictator’s Treadmill

I will never be known as the former President of Zaire.1

Mobutu Sese Seko, president of Zaire

Being a dictator is like being stuck on a treadmill that one can never get off.2 Tyrants can run and run, but the best they’ll ever do is stayupright. If they get distracted for even an instant, their legs may shoot out from under them, and they’ll get hurt. Many dictators who falloff never get on again. And they can’t step off safely either. In the world of tyrants, trying to stay in power may end badly, but voluntarilyrelinquishing it can be even more dangerous.

But if it’s so difficult to get off the treadmill, why would anyone get on in the first place?

It’s not necessarily a bad place to be, at least for a while. Politicians everywhere tend to be comparatively wealthy. For example, themedian wealth of a member of the United States Senate stood at $1.76 million in 2018.3 In democracies, some former leaders can makemillions from speaking events and book deals. Boris Johnson (or Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to be more accurate), for example,was paid almost £250,000 for giving a single speech in Singapore after he left Downing Street.4

But democracies have rules that prevent politicians from dipping their hands into the coffers of the state. As much as democratic politicalleaders might want to, there’s a good chance they’ll be found out if they engage in corruption, as they face investigative journalists,independent policemen and a vibrant civil society. If they do get found out, there are likely to be serious consequences because judges canrarely be swayed (or paid) to look the other way. Once an infraction comes to light, opposition politicians are going to do their best tomake leaders’ lives as miserable as possible in order to win the next election. It’s not a perfect system, but it usually stops the worstabuses.

Tyrants, by contrast, operate in an environment that more closely resembles the Wild West. There may be rules, but they aren’t enforced,or are enforced selectively. Autocracies are enrichment machines. Unencumbered by the restrictions that hold back democratic leaders,the opportunities for stealing are almost endless.

The capital needs a new airport? Tyrants can give the contract to their daughter-in-law to make sure things stay in the family. A foreignfirm no longer wants trouble with the tax authorities? Get them to pay a ‘fee’ to make the case go away. Does it really matter if all of theammunition that was ordered makes its way to the army? Perhaps some can be lost in transit after a certain foreign bank account iscredited with the value of the balance. A company owned by the state is about to be privatised? Why not sell it to a loyalist for 10 per centof its actual value? I scratch your back, you scratch mine and the money never stops flowing.

When done effectively, everyone at the top makes money. But the tyrant himself? He can get rich beyond belief.

Turkmenistan is one of the most secretive societies on earth. As one of the least visited countries on the planet, its people used to beincredibly poor. In 1998, more than four out of ten Turkmen lived in extreme poverty – having access to less than $2.15 per day.5 Butthat’s not to say that Turkmenistan, the country, is poor. Far from it. According to the World Bank, ‘Turkmenistan’s gas reserves areestimated to be the world’s fourth largest, representing about 10 per cent of global reserves.’ ‘In addition to cotton and naturalgas,’ the Bank’s analysts say, ‘the country is rich in petroleum, sulphur, iodine, salt, bentonite clays, limestone, gypsum, and cement –all potential inputs to chemical and construction industries.’6

Turkmenistan’s problem wasn’t so much that there was no money, but that the money wasn’t distributed to the people who neededit. But at least one Turkmen is always rich: the man at the top. At the turn of the millennium, that man was Saparmurat Niyazov, a dictatorbest-known for the absurd cult of personality he created after coming to power in 1985. Among other things, Niyazov banned smoking inpublic after heart surgery meant he had to give up cigarettes, gave himself the title of ‘Turkmenbashi’ (father of the nation), bannedmen from listening to car radios and renamed months of the year after himself and his mother.7

Niyazov also wrote a book called Ruhnama. A combination of biography, poetry and self-help, the book was essentially treated like areligious text. Every single Turkmen student had to read it. Civil servants had compulsory study sessions on it every week. (The Ministry ofForeign Affairs, for example, met for theirs at 5.30 p.m. on Wednesdays.) The glorification was so extreme that Niyazov himself oncenoted drily: ‘Various people say it’s a personality cult.’8 It was.

When Niyazov wasn’t busy coming up with arbitrary rules for the Turkmen people, he stole from them. In 2001, Turkmenistan andUkraine signed a gas deal. According to a later investigation by the German magazine Der Spiegel, the deal was set to generate around$1.7 billion in the following year alone. But since Turkmenistan was (and continues to be) a dictatorship, much of the money didn’t gointo the government budget but into foreign bank accounts under direct control of Saparmurat Niyazov. The exact details are unknown,but even if the reports are somewhat inaccurate and Niyazov skimmed off ‘only’ 10 per cent, that’s $170 million on a single deal in asingle year. And of course, that wasn’t the only instance of corruption. When a London-based non-governmental organisation (NGO)looked into the dictator’s finances, it concluded: ‘A significant portion of revenue never finds its way into state coffers.’ ‘A horrifying75% of the state’s spending’, they continued, ‘appears to take place off [the government’s] budget.’9 Given such opportunities,it’s little wonder that dictators are often the richest men in their country.

That’s a pretty big incentive to ascend the treadmill. But the treadmill is relentless.

On 5 January 2022, fifty-seven-year-old Asel stood on Almaty’s main square. The ruling regime in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan’s biggestneighbour, had been cutting subsidies on liquefied petroleum gas. Protests quickly began in the west of the country, where the gas wasespecially important for people to get around. By the time Asel stepped into Republic Square in front of what used to be the presidentialresidence, the country was gripped by protestors.

On that day in Kazakhstan’s biggest city, the situation got out of control. While Asel protested peacefully, a group of young men arrived.Their faces hidden by masks, they smashed windows and destroyed cars on their way to the government building just off the square.Bullets started flying and people started to panic. Asel lost consciousness. When she came to, her leg was bleeding heavily. She’d been hitand if she couldn’t get medical treatment, she wouldn’t have long to live. More bullets whizzed through the air, narrowly missing her.

Dragged towards a truck by two men, she was driven to hospital. The pain was now so severe that she couldn’t help but moan in anguish.Some others on the crowded vehicle were much worse off. ‘Several people were on top of my wounded leg. Some of them were notbreathing,’ Asel later told the BBC. At the hospital, Asel’s nightmare didn’t stop. Armed men went from ward to ward, looking forpeople who had dared to protest against the regime. ‘If you go out to protest again, we will kill you,’ one of them shouted. The onlyreason why Asel wasn’t taken away by them that day is because the bullet to her leg made it impossible for her to walk.10

From the outside looking in, it seemed to be the classic story of a tyrannical regime fighting against its own people: the people rose up, theregime did its best to put them back down. But on the inside, the Kazakh unrest was much more than that. It was the struggle of one tyrant,who had formally stepped down, against another, who was trying to step out of his boss’s shadow.

Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped onto the treadmill in 1984, at the young age of forty-three, when he became first secretary of theCommunist Party of Kazakhstan. At the time, the country was still part of the Soviet Union. After the USSR dissolved, he becameKazakhstan’s dictator. Then, in 2019, he tried to step down.

Nazarbayev had succeeded in amassing incredible personal power over the years. On the day of his resignation from the presidency, hesaid: ‘I have taken a decision, which was not easy for me, to resign as president . . . I am staying with you. Caring for the country and itspeople will remain my concern.’11

Initially, things seemed to be going well for the former president. Astana, the country’s capital, was named ‘Nur-Sultan’ in his honour.If you visited it from abroad, chances are you were going to fly into Nur-Sultan International Airport, also named after Nazarbayev. In thecity itself, you might also come across Nazarbayev University or Nazarbayev Avenue.12 The man himself was no longer president, but heretained the title of ‘Elbasy’ – or ‘Father of the Nation’ in Kazakh. The Elbasy title, which was given to him in 2010, meant that hecontinued to have special privileges – like immunity from prosecution. Nazarbayev was untouchable; or at least that’s how it seemed.But then he ran into a problem that many have faced before him: it’s difficult to protect oneself after giving up the levers of government.That’s because it’s impossible to be a dictator without breaking laws and making enemies. Dictators have stolen, tortured, maybekilled. So if they ever want to step down, they need to make sure that none of that catches up with them. To do that, they need someone atthe top who will look after them. Finding that someone is incredibly challenging.

Nazarbayev’s hand-picked successor, the career diplomat Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, was seen as so toothless that he was oncedescribed as Nazarbayev’s ‘furniture’.13 In fact, Nazarbayev’s control initially remained so tight that the new president had to getthe old president’s formal approval to choose most new ministers. President Tokayev wasn’t even able to choose the head of his ownsecret service without Nazarbayev’s approval.14 That Nazarbayev could fence Tokayev in like this was always part of the reason why hewas chosen. In addition, since Tokayev had spent much of his working life abroad representing the regime in places such as Singapore andChina, Nazarbayev thought Tokayev lacked the networks and alliances at home to challenge him.15 The plan was simple: Nazarbayevwould formally step down but continue to exercise power through Tokayev and others to ensure that he would remain safe.

It’s not an unusual story. Dictators step onto the treadmill thinking that they can become rich or enjoy the power such a position brings.And for a while, it works out for them. But eventually, due to old age or fatigue, they want to step down. So they make a plan: give a littlehere, give a little there, step off the machine.

In reality, giving an inch doesn’t work: they give a little, they risk it all. Before long, this also became clear to Nazarbayev. His luck startedto run out as the protests spread. ‘Shal, ket’ (‘Old man, go!’) the protestors shouted.16 With much of the anger directed at thesystem the old man had created, Tokayev seized the opportunity to expand his power.

On 5 January 2022, the day Asel was shot in Almaty, Nazarbayev lost his chairmanship of the Security Council. Tokayev also took on theleadership of Nur Otan, the presidential political party that has since been renamed Amanat.17 The public holiday celebrating thecountry’s former president? Cancelled.18 The capital city of Nur-Sultan? It became Astana again.19 Perhaps more worrying for theformer president, the handpicked successor also began to remove some of Nazarbayev’s men from the power structures of the regime.The head of the KNB, the country’s powerful domestic intelligence agency, was not just replaced in his role but arrested for treason.20Then, on the morning of 6 January, came the final blow for Nazarbayev as three thousand Russian paratroopers, at the request of Tokayev,landed in Kazakhstan to defend the regime. With the might of the Russian military seemingly on his side, Tokayev was now unquestionablythe country’s strongest man.

None of the laws, fancy titles or council posts mean anything once tyrants have left power. The only thing that matters is whether thepeople that come after the tyrant are powerful enough to start chipping away at their predecessor’s power in order to expand theirs. Ifthey are, they usually will – and that started to happen in Nur-Sultan Astana. Events were out of Nazarbayev’s control. He risked losing hismoney, his freedom or even his life. His family was at risk, too.

There’s a central trade-off here that cannot be resolved. On the one hand, tyrants looking to step down have to find someone powerfuland competent enough to protect them once they are no longer in power. On the other hand, somebody who is competent and powerfulenough to protect them can also destroy them. And often, their successors do destroy the outgoing tyrant, because it is rare for aself-respecting tyrant to allow themselves to play second fiddle.

Dictators who try to pass the torch often get burned. So, if that doesn’t work, what alternatives are there once they set foot on thetreadmill? One option would be to turn the country into a democracy instead of passing on power to the next tyrant. It sounds attractive,not least because harsh punishments for former leaders are less likely in democracies than they are in autocracies. As the political scientistsBarbara Geddes, Joseph Wright and Erica Frantz have found, democratisation more than doubles the chance of a ‘good’ outcome forleaders once they leave office.21

There are all kinds of different models of democracy. German democracy involves a parliamentary system in which multiple parties cometogether to form coalitions. In the United Kingdom, the voting system is different so coalitions are more unusual – but no longer unheardof. In the United States, the president is also the commander-in-chief and, if need be, he or she can order military action. The Swiss haveorganised their democracy in a way that is a lot more direct. From time to time, when enough signatures are collected, everybodyinvolved can vote not just for politicians to represent them, but for or against individual policies. In September 2022, for example, Swissvoters got a direct vote on ‘factory farming’ – they could have banned it but chose not to.22

Most tyrants would rather hinder than help democracy. Democracies vary hugely but what they all have in common is that voters are incharge. There might be intermediaries (in the form of politicians) and not everybody’s vote will carry the same importance, but thepeople can change their government if they are unhappy with it.

For tyrants, being an average president or prime minister in a democracy is not a substitute for commanding the entire state from theconfines of the presidential palace. All of a sudden they’re supposed to allow investigative journalism? The Glorious Father of theRevolution is to be constrained by parliamentarians? And it’s no longer possible to turn mining concessions into millions? No, thank you.

Perhaps more importantly, there’s no guarantee that an attempt to democratise would allow tyrants to stay in power. They may end upstill losing office or worse; or be held accountable by empowered parliamentarians or independent judges. Such scenarios are especiallythreatening to personalist dictators. According to a study on the breakdown of autocratic regimes, their chance of a ‘good’ outcomeonly stands at 36 per cent even if democratisation works out. Other sorts of dictator have more of an incentive to democratise. Forauthoritarian leaders who derive their power from being at the top of a political party, the party can act as a shield, protecting the formertyrant from the masses.23 But a personalist dictator, the type with the most personal power, has no such thing. So even if a transition todemocracy happens, there’s every chance he will be in trouble.

And even if turning off the treadmill were desirable, it’s not an option all tyrants have. They can try pulling the plug, but it doesn’t meanthat they will actually reach a point at which their country turns into a democracy. The primary reasons for this are the concerns of the elitesaround them.

For this is not just a decision for leaders but also one for courtiers and power brokers around the palace, who will also have a stake in thesurvival of the regime. Just like the tyrant, many of these people will have broken their fair share of laws. Perhaps they were the ones tomake the leader’s enemies disappear. Maybe they were the loyalists who received a newly privatised company at 10 per cent of its realvalue.

All these factors can complicate a move towards democracy, but it can become even more challenging when the military is opposed todemocratisation. Imagine the following scenario: an autocrat decides that the time for democratisation has come because it’s the leastbad way forward for him personally.24 Military officers don’t agree. Perhaps they currently have a lot of opportunities for enrichmentand they’d rather be rich and serve a dictator than be poor and serve a democratic leader.

But for soldiers, it’s about more than money. The nightmare scenario for the officers is an attempted democratisation that leads not justto a new system of government but also a new leader. When that happens, there’s a dual threat: the existence of democracy itself makesit more likely that the soldiers, who have previously served the dictatorship, will be held accountable. But not just that: the new leader has ahuge incentive to make a move against the military because he is likely to be concerned that the military, fearing for their formerprivileges, may move against him. The military officers, on the other hand, have a strong incentive to make the first move because manynew democratic leaders start their time in office by reforming the security sector. For understandable reasons, they don’t trust the oldguard that has protected the dictatorship.

This scenario isn’t purely hypothetical, it has been repeatedly played out and it’s one of the reasons why turning off the treadmill can beso risky for tyrants. Leaders might want to turn it off, but the people around them simply won’t let that happen. So instead, they areeffectively forced to keep running even if they are sick and tired of doing so.

When dictators do make way for democracy, it’s usually not by choice. They are either forced into it or they simply blunder. Power istaken, not given. As Daniel Treisman at the University of California has argued after examining the history of democratisations since theyear 1800, democracy often happens by mistake.25

In spring 1982, the Argentinian dictatorship of Leopoldo Galtieri was facing tens of thousands of people out on the streets. ‘Electionsnow’, they demanded. Unwilling to give the protestors what they wanted, Galtieri made a massive gamble: he went to war. Days later,Argentinian forces attacked the Falkland Islands, a British-controlled archipelago lying some 480 kilometres east of Argentina in thesouthern Atlantic Ocean. Initially, Galtieri’s plan worked: the crowds cheered and Galtieri basked in his newfound popularity.26 Therewas just one problem: the whole plan rested on the assumption that the British wouldn’t be willing to use force to take back the islands.And indeed, this is what the dictator believed. A response would be ‘absolutely improbable,’ he said.27

Margaret Thatcher, prime minister at the time, was pushed by many of her closest advisors to make a deal with Buenos Aires. But after herpredecessor gave her the advice to exclude the chancellor from her War Cabinet ‘so that money would not be an issue in making militarydecisions’, the Iron Lady went to war.28 A British fleet comprising 127 warships, submarines and repurposed merchant ships set sailwithin days.29 It didn’t take long for it to become clear that Galtieri had miscalculated. Instead of a glorious victory that would allow himto stay in power, his forces were beaten by the Brits and he no longer had any cards to play.

On 14 June, Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo was again filled with angry crowds because the government had surrendered to the British.Three days later, Galtieri was forced to resign and Argentina was on its path to democracy.30 In Argentina, democratisation wasn’t achoice: it’s what happened when the tyrant desperately tried to stay in place, to remain on the treadmill.

For most dictators, kings and theocrats, stepping down is not a real option and they know it. Even if it were possible, doing it would bedangerous because it doesn’t guarantee that the tyrant won’t be held accountable. This leaves two options: keep running or lookaround and see what other countries have to offer. If retirement isn’t possible at home, perhaps it’s possible elsewhere? The magicword is exile. But as we’re about to learn, that’s an option fraught with difficulty and uncertainty as well.

Exile is common – or rather has been common. When Abel Escribà-Folch and Daniel Krcmaric looked at the data in 2017, they found thataround one in five dictators who lost power after the end of the Second World War fled abroad.31

The Ugandan dictator Idi Amin went from Libya to Iraq to Saudi Arabia after losing a war against Tanzania; Tunisia’s Ben Ali, to SaudiArabia. The self-declared Congolese ‘Messiah’ Mobuto settled in Morocco despite saying that he would never be known as the formerpresident of Zaire. But it’s not just shady regimes that offer exile to these cruel leaders who have created so much suffering for their ownpeople. Plenty of unsavoury characters have found refuge in liberal democracies. France has taken in a host of deposed African dictatorsduring and after the Cold War. Alberto Fujimori, the former Peruvian tyrant, fled to Japan after losing power.32

Exile is an option that is usually taken not because it’s attract-ive but because there’s no alternative – apart from death or a life in prison,obviously. Autocrats rarely just pack up and leave because they are no longer interested in having political power. In the vast majority ofcases, dictators are pushed out. According to the 2017 study mentioned above, around 84 per cent of exiled dictators who went abroad‘did so in the midst of a coup, revolt, or civil war and were thus at risk of retribution’.33

There are multiple reasons why exile isn’t an attractive option. The first is, obviously, that it leads to a loss of power. Having workedtirelessly to put themselves into a palace, to be someone, exiled dictators are suddenly reduced to being a has-been. But moreimportantly, it is extremely difficult to find the right spot to hide away. And if tyrants mess up their exile strategy, they’ve merely delayeddeath by a day or a month instead of sailing towards retirement.

Since these decisions tend to be made at a moment of crisis, it is difficult to say how rational leaders are when they make them, but thereare quite a few things they should consider when they think about their future ‘retirement’ destination. That can be difficult, becausetime is of the essence when a regime-threatening (or at least leader-threatening) moment arrives and thinking is hard to do under thosecircumstances.34

On 21 December 1989, after being general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party for more than twenty-four years, NicolaeCeaușescu stood on the balcony of the party’s headquarters. Dressed in a black coat and matching hat to brave the eastern Europeanwinter, he was about to give the most important speech of his life. Tens of thousands of people were in front of him on Bucharest’s PalaceSquare. Days earlier, the dictator had ordered his security forces to shoot protestors in Timișoara in the west of the country. Now Romaniawas in chaos and, shown on television, the great leader’s speech was meant to do its part in restoring order. It was going to be difficult,no doubt, but the self-declared Genius of the Carpathians saw himself as up to the task.

But as the genius spoke, the expression on his face slowly changed when he could feel himself losing the crowd. Instead of cheering him,they heckled and booed. Ceaușescu had a flustered look on his face. How dare they? And how was this possible? In a political system builton perceptions of invulnerability and strength, it was an embarrassing moment for the regime and the television transmission was cutquickly.35

The general secretary had struggled before, but this crisis was different. Later that night, Nicolae and Elena, his wife of forty-three years,made their way to the roof of the building. A helicopter of the Romanian military, having taken off from the capital’s airport, picked themup. The plan was for the helicopter to go to a town nearby, where other helicopters were supposed to meet them. When it became clearthat the other helicopters were not going to arrive, the pilot took off again towards a military airfield.36

Now in the air for what must have felt like an eternity, a voice came through the helicopter’s radio. The government had been toppled, itsaid. With the military no longer supporting the dictatorship, Ceaușescu (and everyone else on the aircraft) was now in acute danger.When the pilot told Ceaușescu what he had just learned, he was in disbelief. They had to land, and they had to do so quickly.

‘No. Those are only horrible lies. Are you not serving the cause?’ he asked. But after being told that they could be blown up at anymoment if they didn’t land, he finally relented. Upon leaving the aircraft, Ceaușescu asked the pilot again: ‘Are you serving the cause?’‘Which cause should I serve?’ the pilot replied.

With the military having switched sides and the dictator and his wife now on land, it was too late to escape and the Ceaușescus were foundshortly afterwards. After a show trial that was more show than trial, both were sentenced to death. Being led out of the court room,Ceaușescu sang the Internationale, a communist fighting song, while his wife Elena screamed ‘fuck you’ at a soldier who mocked them.37 Knowing that death was now certain, they had one final request: they wanted to be executed together. The executioner granted themtheir wish. He lined them up against a wall and fired on them with his Kalashnikov.38 They both died instantly.

‘Any revolution demands blood,’ the executioner would later say about that day. He had been forced to swear an oath of loyalty toCeauşescu just four days before he pulled the trigger – an oath that he would support and protect the dictator.39

The big mistake that the Romanian dictator had made (aside from choosing an exceedingly dangerous profession) was that he didn’tmake proper plans for the day he might fall before the day actually arrived. He was way, way too confident. By the time that it finallydawned on him that this might be his last day in power, he could no longer escape.

But is that really surprising? We’re dealing with people here who have led impossible lives and done impossible things.40 The youngCeaușescu went to prison for communist activities at the age of eighteen; his country then went through the Second World War and Sovietrule. Born into a family of peasants, Nicolae carved out a life in which he could build himself one of the largest palaces the world had everseen.

He’s not alone in having lived a life so unreal that it would seem unconvincing if you saw it in a film. Ben Ali went from fighting Frenchcolonial forces in the deserts of Tunisia to becoming his country’s dictator, only to be toppled by mass protest against his regime.Colonel Gaddafi or Idi Amin or Mobutu: all these people had countless brushes with death. Why should the occasion that actually broughtabout their end feel any different? Having done the impossible before, they undoubtedly believed that they could do it again. Perhapsthey even had to believe it in order to continue in power for as long as they did.

Because when it’s all over, time is so important: it’s essential to be able to flee to a place within reach – if only en route to a finaldestination.41 For many, that’s already an insurmountable obstacle because plenty of dictatorships aren’t exactly surrounded byfriends. But that’s not the only problem. Even if a neighbourhood leader is friendly and does offer a former tyrant a chance for acomparatively tranquil retirement, the tyrant’s many enemies will use everything at their disposal to change that leader’s mind. Tosurvive in relative freedom, tyrants need to find a country that will not yield to pressure and kick them out. That’s much easier said thandone, especially for the world’s most cruel leaders.

For Charles Taylor, a notoriously brutal West African war criminal, this became a very concrete concern. When he stepped down frompower in 2003, he did it on the condition that he would be able to live out the rest of his days in Nigerian exile.42 Initially, things seemed tobe going well – as if Taylor’s previous life wouldn’t come catching up with him. Nigeria’s then president explicitly promised that hewould not deport him to face justice.43 ‘We will endeavour to be good hosts while he is in Nigeria,’ President Obasanjo said whenTaylor arrived in Abuja. His new living arrangements weren’t too shabby, either: three hilltop villas guarded by a corps of Nigerianpolicemen. Even the president of the United States said that it was up to Nigerians how they dealt with him.44

But Taylor’s comfortable life on the seafront didn’t last long. Under massive pressure from human rights organisations and liberaldemocracies, the Nigerian government initially said that it was ‘bound to honour its agreement to give him sanctuary’.45 Butultimately, promises aren’t worth much in a business that’s all about power and money. Just three years after saying that this exactthing wouldn’t happen on his watch, the Nigerian president stopped protecting Taylor. Without his protector, Taylor was done for. Afterbeing sentenced to fifty years in prison, Charles ‘Butcher of Monrovia’ Taylor is now spending the rest of his life in a British jail cell inCounty Durham.46 He took a gamble by going abroad and it didn’t work out.

To avoid a similar fate, dictators forced into exile have to find a country that won’t give them up. But how? Tyrants have the best chanceof reducing the possibility of being handed over if they find a host country that is non-democratic and powerful.47 Democracies have inthe past been willing to host former dictators, but their governments are much more vulnerable to popular pressure. Understandably,many voters are not going to be ecstatic when their government says that they will open the country’s doors to a dictator who isprimarily known for a string of war crimes. At Charles Taylor’s trial, the presiding judge said: ‘The accused has been found responsiblefor aiding and abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded history.’48 Which voter would wantsomeone like that in their country? I don’t. You probably don’t.

Democratic leaders can withstand electoral pressure for a considerable time if they judge it to be in the country’s national interest, butthere comes a moment at which they will very probably crack. And even if that particular government manages to sit it out, the nextgovernment may not. Under those conditions, there’s no genuine safety for tyrants. They’re on a countdown.

Fellow autocratic regimes are preferable for two reasons: because they are more insulated from the demands of citizens and there’s aserious chance that the regime will not change policy drastically over an extended period of time. But that only works if the host regime isstable and able to withstand foreign pressure.49

If tyrants are really unlucky, they flee to a non-democratic dictatorship only to find that it one day becomes a democracy. This happenedto Chad’s dictator Hissène Habré, who fled to Senegal.50 As the political system there changed from authoritarian to democratic, so didHabré’s chances for a relaxed retirement in the Senegalese sun. In 2013, after Senegalese democratisation, he was indicted for crimesagainst humanity, torture and a whole host of war crimes.51

There is also, of course, a more direct security concern: exile might reduce the immediate threat to a dictator because his enemies nolonger stand in front of the palace, pitchforks in hand. But that doesn’t mean that these enemies have vanished into thin air the moment atyrant leaves the doors of the palace. The enemies are still around, potentially lurking behind every corner, waiting to pounce on theirvictim now that he is no longer on a pedestal, surrounded by soldiers armed with bayonets. Leaving power is going to release somepressure from the cooker, but it doesn’t mean it can no longer explode. It always can. Resilience against pressure is not enough;resilience needs to be combined with strength, and that’s a combination that few exile destinations can offer.

From the tyrant’s perspective, the type of country to aim for is a place like Saudi Arabia. Governed by the same dynasty since it wasunified by the House of Saud in 1932 and without civil wars ever since, it’s remarkably stable – especially for a country ruled by anabsolute monarch. It is also a huge oil producer with an estimated annual military expenditure in excess of $55 billion.52 There’s nofreedom of speech, no free media and no real civil society in opposition to the government. While that doesn’t make Riyadhinvulnerable, it is certainly difficult to put pressure on from the outside. It has also demonstrated its suitability by ‘successfully’ hostingmultiple deposed dictators in the past. And because its leaders change while the regime stays the same, drastic changes in policy areunlikely to happen quickly. If the father agrees to host a former dictator now, his son is probably not going to kick him out when it’s histurn on the golden throne.

A central difficulty in all this is that tyrants have to persuade someone to take them in. And why would they be prepared to do that?Independent of regime type, there can be a number of reasons to provide exile to an ousted autocrat. The first is the use a governmentmight derive from having said autocrat in their country – or, more generally, from keeping him alive. Perhaps said autocrat iswell-connected in the country and the host government believes it can use that influence to its advantage. Or perhaps there’s a chancethat the tyrant will be able to stage a comeback, owing the host country a debt of gratitude once he’s in power again. An example ofdespots returning to power after a period in exile is the Taliban, who actually had an office (at one point complete with flag) in Qatar.53

If a tyrant cannot play this card because a return to power looks highly unlikely, he has another card to play. Institutions and people havelimited resources and attention. Every hour that they are busy thinking about a real or imagined bogeyman sitting in a place they can’tcontrol, they are distracted. That can be an advantage to another government, and it’s potentially a way for the tyrant to make himselfvaluable.

Another strategy is to appeal to loyalty. When western troops hastily left Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, a great number of Afghanswho had directly helped them – as translators, for example – were simply left behind. Without the protection of the Americans, Brits,Germans and so forth, they were now at the mercy of the very people they had sought to keep away from power. On a grand scale, and inpublic, this sent the message that western governments couldn’t be trusted.

Providing exile for struggling national leaders who cooperated with other countries when they were in power can be all about sending thesignal that such leaders will not be forgotten, even if the going gets tough. Loyalty aside, there’s also a straightforward desire to avoidbloodshed. When dictators are in a situation in which they feel they have no other choice but to shoot to stay in power, they can appeal tooutside powers to provide them with a ‘Golden Parachute’. In the case of the Philippines, both of these elements came together. It wasabout loyalty to a cooperative leader who was now in trouble, but it was also about avoiding carnage.

On 30 June 2022, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr got up onto the stage at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila. Newly swornin as president of the Philippines, he told his people that he was not there to talk about the past. ‘I am here to tell you about our future,’he said.54 That was no coincidence. Thirty-six years earlier, his father Ferdinand Marcos had to make perhaps the most difficult decision ofhis long dictatorship. With masses of Filipinos in the streets and key figures of his regime defecting under popular pressure, he went on thephone to the American senator Paul Laxalt, a confidant of President Reagan.

It was the middle of the night and Marcos was scared. He couldn’t sleep. ‘Cut and cut cleanly. The time has come,’ Laxalt told him. Thiswas followed by a long pause. Eventually, the pause became so long that Laxalt asked Marcos whether he was still there. He was. ‘I am sovery, very disappointed,’ Marcos said before hanging up.55

At 9.05 p.m., two American helicopters lifted off from near the Philippines presidential palace with Marcos and his entourage on board.56Direction: Clark Air Base, some sixty-four kilometres from Manila. From there, the dictator flew, via Guam, to Hawaii in a cold and noisyC141 transport aircraft.57 Another aircraft flew the same route.

Aboard was more than his entourage – quite a lot more. We know exactly what he brought because it had to be recorded for customs.Given that Marcos officially earned no more than $13,500 a year, the twenty-three-page customs record surpasses belief. Among otherthings, the planes carried 140 jewel-studded cufflinks, two-dozen gold bricks and an ivory Jesus with a necklace made of diamonds; also,27 million pesos, the Philippine’s national currency. But even these ridiculous planes full of jewellery and gold only represent a tinyfraction of all the money Marcos stole from his people. According to a later estimate by the Supreme Court of the Philippines, Marcos mayhave stolen as much as 10 billion.58 And that’s American dollars, not Philippine pesos.

To democracies such as the United States, the question of Golden Parachutes – granting exile to dictators – is a difficult one. On the onehand, exile for tyrants such as Marcos can significantly reduce the chance of bloodshed, thereby saving many innocent lives. On the otherhand, the United States effectively helped Marcos steal yet more money from his nation after it had already contributed to keeping him inpower for years. And was that really what Marcos deserved? Surely not. After all those years in power, stealing and mistreating his ownpeople, the dictator should have been in front of a judge, not in a Hawaiian villa. But there’s a trade-off here, as there always is: ifoutsiders don’t help in that situation, a tired, scared and dangerous dictator has no way out that doesn’t involve the killing of entirelyinnocent civilians. Chances are many more Filipinos would have died if those helicopters hadn’t airlifted Marcos the elder to safety.

Over the last couple of decades, finding a safe place of exile has become even more difficult for tyrants. The reason for this is theInternational Criminal Court (ICC) and related advances in international justice. Situated in The Hague and operational since 2002, the ideabehind the ICC is unquestionably a good one. In instances in which bad actors cannot be held accountable for their crimes by nationalcourts, the international court may jump in and contribute some semblance of justice. The model has had some success. In 2012, forexample, the court sentenced a Congolese warlord named Lubanga to fourteen years in jail for kidnapping children and then forcing themto fight. At the time of the trial, a prominent human rights NGO commented: ‘Lubanga’s sentence is important not only for the victimswho want justice done, but also as a warning to those who use child soldiers around the world.’59 It is a warning, and few would disagreethat this is a good thing. If even one rebel commander or army general can be persuaded not to force a twelve-year-old to pick up aKalashnikov because of the existence of the ICC, that’s a victory.

But that victory doesn’t come free. To the people who have used child soldiers or committed war crimes, the mere existence of the courtand the threat of prosecution means that there is yet another reason to stay in power as long as possible – with all the bloodyconsequences that entails. Because even if tyrants manage not to ‘disappear’ or get killed by the person succeeding them, they mightwell disappear to the Netherlands (or County Durham, like Charles Taylor) where they will spend the rest of their life behind bars.

According to a study published in 2018, exile has drastically changed. It used to be that leaders who had presided over atrocities, andleaders who hadn’t, went into exile at roughly the same rate. Now, with all the advances in international justice and states’ reluctance toprovide a Golden Parachute to the worst of the worst, the latter are ‘about six times less likely to take the exile option’.60

That finding was published in an academic journal run by the Midwest Political Science Association so it might not have made its way to theworld’s presidential palaces, but dictators have undoubtedly taken note of the fact that things have changed. When Colonel MuammarGaddafi of Libya found out that the Nigerian government had decided to hand over Taylor, he said: ‘This means that every head of statecould meet a similar fate. It sets a serious precedent.’61 Robert Mugabe, the former dictator of Zimbabwe, was friends with Taylor. Afterseeing what had happened to him, he said there was only one way he would leave Zimbabwe: in a coffin.62

It was never easy to find a good exile destination to begin with, because of the constant threat of being killed or extradited. But now thatthe world has become smaller and the chances of being kicked out are higher, it’s even more challenging. As a result, the only rationalchoice that some tyrants can make is to stay in power until they absolutely can stay no longer. If that means more killings and morethievery, that is what they will do.

Leaving the treadmill is technically possible, then, but the stakes are high and few are willing to take the gamble. Faced with the choicebetween running, reaching to pull the plug or trying to jump, most tyrants will choose to keep running. But as they’re on that treadmill,the moving surface isn’t all they have to worry about. As they move, they constantly have to watch their backs because the people closestto them usually pose the greatest danger.

OceanofPDF.com

2