I recently read “Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictator’s by 2025” by former ambassador Mark Palmer. It’s an interesting book, and I more or less agree with its basic premise that the world would be a better place without dictatorships, and I thought that many ideas for bring about such a world are interesting. I do have some quibbles with the book however.
Misrepresentation (or, more charitably, misinterpretation)
-Palmer inexplicably claims that “more women have led Islamic countries than have led non-Islamic democracies….” Honestly, I have no idea what math Palmer is using. By 2003, the year the book was written, there had been one female head of state and six female heads of government of Islamic states. What Palmer means by female leaders of non-Islamic democracies could be tricky, since he may mean women who were elected rather than appointed. I personally don’t think that there should be a difference given the fact that either way the transfer of power would be based upon a rule of law. However, to rattle off just a few of the female heads of government who were elected before 2003: Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Corazon Aquino, Helen Clark, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Mireya Moscoso, Violeta Chamorro, and Eugenia Charles.
-In his afterword, written in 2005, Palmer writes about Russia backsliding into Not Free status. He claims that Putin’s popularity in Russia is in decline as a result. I think this is blatantly wishful thinking on Palmer’s part. While there has been a steady opposition to Putin in Russia, a vast majority of Russians support him and have supported him throughout his presidency and premiership.
Over-simplifications
-Palmer writes only a couple of paragraphs on Palestine, which (justifiably) criticize Yasser Arafat, as well as call for elections in Palestine. While the government of the Palestinian Authority has some responsibility for the poor lot of Palestinians, I would argue that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is more to blame. Additionally, Palmer failed to even mention Hamas, let alone anticipate its victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections.
-In what was essentially a throwaway sentence, Palmer writes that the issue of Kashmir will only be resolved when Pakistan is democratic. This may, in essence, be true, as a dictatorship would be likely to use the conflict to shore up support among Pakistanis. Considering, however, that there have been periods of democratic rule in Pakistan which did not resolve the conflict, it appears that merely hoping that democracy will end the problem is dangerously simplistic.
-Palmer pays little attention to the problem of democratization in multi-ethnic or multi-sectarian states. As we have seen in Iraq and Lebanon, democratic government can result in inter-group clashes, where differences are used for political advantage, or even result in merciless violence.
-Dictatorship is typically considered to be the absolute rule by one individual. Palmer reinforces this conceptualization by frequently referring to the forty-five individuals who are the world’s “least wanted.” A few of these dictatorships, however, are hardly run by individuals. Some, while they may have individual figures who represent the government, are in fact run by groups of people, such as some single-party governments and military juntas. Palmer seems to recognize this by dividing the dictatorships into typologies, including military dictatorships and one-party dictatorships, but he persists in identifying the regimes with single individuals.
Random acts of bizarreness
-Palmer arbitrarily picks a single warlord as Somalia’s “dictator” to be ousted. Google "Somalia" if you don't understand how ridiculous this is.
-Palmer criticizes Bhutan’s then-king for cracking down on pro-democracy activists. This may be true, and I’m not an expert on Bhutan, but I find this behavior to be rather odd since a few years later the king abdicated in favor of his son, and, at the same time, made Bhutan a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. From what I’ve gathered, throughout the ’90s and ’00s, Bhutan actually was preparing for the transition into democracy despite the apathy that the Bhutanese had for self-government.
-Palmer lumps the central Asian –stans in with the Middle East, as well as North African states, and calls them all the Greater Middle East. I’ll admit that the term “Middle East” is pretty arbitrary, as well as the group of countries that are included in it, but creating a “Greater Middle East” makes even less sense. The countries involved are hardly all that similar, especially the central Asian states when compared to the Arab states.
Honest disagreement
-Palmer, in his prescription for ousting Iran’s dictator, argues that the United States has taken the wrong lesson from the American-backed 1953 coup: that Iranians don’t appreciate our involvement in Iranian domestic affairs. Instead, Palmer argues, the lesson should be that the US has influence in Iran; it just needs to use it to support Iranian democrats. I disagree. Pretty much all of the literature I have read on Iran states that, in general Iranians love Americans, as well as many of the ideals of America, but have a deep distrust, even dislike, for the American government. Openly aligning ourselves with Iranian democrats is probably the best way to ensure that they are viewed with skepticism by the Iranian population as a whole.
