Arseholes, considered as a strategic resource

Why didn't the Egyptian army fire on the demonstrators. Because they had learned how to be nice from the American army?. I think not. Looking at the TV pictures, the Egyptian Army didn't start anything because they didn't get on the streets early enough, and by the time they had, the crowd had got so big that I would imagine the phrase "torn limb from limb" might have been drifting through a few minds.

Numbers make a difference. An invading army can take over a city quite quickly; partly because an invading foreign army can usually be reasonably sure that all the guns are pointing in the same direction, partly because an invading army has physical momentum and has worked out ahead of time where it is marching to, but mainly because the population of an invaded city are usually not on the streets in anything like the numbers seen in Egyptian cities. Even a tank[1] is surprisingly little protection once it has stopped moving[2] and is surrounded by a mob. I saw pictures on the news yesterday of a tank crew sitting around at the edge of a square in Cairo - I have never in my life seen the crew of a tank looking so small and vulnerable. People are still talking about the army as if it was in control of the situation and for the moment at least, it just isn't.

And so that brings me to a useful piece of advice for any readers who are aspiring dictators, one that the Communists knew, Suharto knew, but that some modern day tyrants seem to have forgotten. There is always a level of civil unrest that outstrips the capability of even the most loyal and largest regular armed forces to deal with. In all likelihood, as a medium sized emerging market, you will have a capital city with a population of about five or six million, meaing potentially as many as three million adults on the streets in the worst case. Your total active-duty armed forces are unlikely to be a tenth of that. When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you.

And that is, a reactionary citizens' militia, to combat the revolutionary citizens' militia. Former socialist republics always used to be fond of buses full of coal miners from way out the back of beyond, but the Iranian basijs are the same sort of thing. Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren't interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, arseholes. Arseholes, considered as a strategic entity, have the one useful characteristic that is the only useful characteristic in the context of an Egyptian-style popular uprising - there are fucking millions of them.

This is my advice to any aspiring dictator; early on in your career, identify and inventory all the self-pitying, bullying shitheads your country has to offer. Anyone with a grievance, a beer belly and enough strength to swing a pickaxe handle will do. You don't need to bother with military training or discipline because they're hopefully never going to be used as a proper military force - just concentrate on nuturing their sense that they, despite appearances, are the backbone of the country, and allowing them to understand that although rules are rules, there are some people who just need a slap. The bigger and burlier the better, but when the time comes they'll be fighting in groups against people weaker than themselves, often under cover of darkness, so numbers are more important than anything else. The extractive industries are indeed often a good source, as are demobbed veterans (Zimbabwe) or the laity of an established religion.

I think this is my new rule for assessing the stability of any dictatorship around the world, and I am on the lookout for any Francis Fukuyama style book contracts. The key factor in determining the survival of repressive regimes isn't economics, religion or military success. It's arseholes.

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[1] Can I make it clear at this stage that if it turns out to be the case that the vehicle in question (a Warrior) is not technically a "tank" for some obscure reason of military terminology, any attempt to explain this to me will be resisted viciously with the comment delete button. It has tracks and a fucking gun.

[2] If you are sitting around on a street corner in Cairo in your tank, you have to open the hatches or you will get too hot; even the minority of tanks which have air conditioning systems will run out of fuel to run them eventually. If you open the hatches, you are no longer in a heavily armoured and invulnerable battle vehicle - you are a bloke sitting on top of a van.