Leaders And Difficult Times

1. Leaders And Difficult Times

2. Reflections and thoughts from the article: “How to Lose a Country Gracefully,” by Bill Keller March 1, 2011 New York Times

3. First, Some Facts About several leaders And difficult times • 1985  Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the USSR • Gorbachev was a reform-minded politician • Seeking to change the gerontocracy (rule by the old) of the Soviet Union • Inherited a Soviet Union in crisis -Political system riddled with corruption and apathy -The deadly accident at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 (demonstrating the inefficiency of the Soviet system)

4. The Afghan War raging on, killing more Soviet troops, draining the country’s finances and accomplishing nothing • Beyond that, the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union were starting become independence-minded, threatening to break up the USSR itself • The USSR was also falling behind in the arms race and did not have the economic resources to catch up with the United States

5. Gorbachev’s reforms -Perestroika (“restructuring”)  tried to strengthen the Soviet economy  emphasized local control over central planning  allowed limited free enterprise and loosened rules regarding private property  set into place some of the foundations of a free-market economy  much of perestroika was similar to what Deng Xiaoping was doing in China in the 1980s  the difference was that economic liberalization led to prosperity in China but not in the USSR due to ingrained inefficiency in the Soviet system, dating back to the Stalin period

6. Glasnost  Gorbachev allowed political and cultural liberalization at the same time  provided for greater freedom of the press and media, frank discussion of the Soviet Union’s clouded past (especially the Stalin period), public criticism of contemporary problems, and exposure of political corruption or workplace abuses  hope that glasnost would motivate the Soviet population to carry out perestroika in the political and economic spheres

7. Gorbachev began to loosen the Soviet Union’s grip on Eastern Europe • And then on the Soviet Union as well • By 1991, the Soviet Union had collapsed • On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as leader of the Soviet Union • At the same time, he declared an end to the USSR itself • Soviet Communism, whose birth in 1917 had been one of the major events of the early twentieth century, did not live to see the twenty-first

8. Apartheid in South Africa  a policy of extreme racial segregation  turned South Africa into one of Africa’s most repressive nations  Groups like the African National Congress opposed the white government  The ANC’s leader, Nelson Mandela, gained the status of sympathetic dissident during his long imprisonment (1964-1990) by the white authorities  In 1994, free elections resulted in the ANC’s victory  Mandela became the country’s president

9. F. W. de Klerk  As Minister of National Education, F.W. de Klerk was a supporter of segregated universities, and as a leader of the National Party in Transvaal, he was not known to advocate reform  In February 1989, de Klerk was elected leader of the National Party and in September 1989 he was elected State President In his first speech after assuming the party leadership he called for a nonracist South Africa and for negotiations about the country's future  He lifted the ban on the ANC and released Nelson Mandela  He brought apartheid to an end and opened the way for the drafting of a new constitution for the country based on the principle of one person, one vote

10. Muammar Qaddafi • Inspired by the pan-Arabism ideals of nationalistic Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, a 27-year-old Gaddafi successfully organized a coup to overthrow Libyan King Idris I in 1969 • After taking power, he launched a "cultural revolution" during which he removed all traces of former colonial and foreign influence, ranging from street signs and village names to the economic and political structure of the country

11. In 1977, Gaddafi invented a system of government unique to Libya called the "Jamahiriya," or state of the masses, in which the nation is supposedly governed by the populace through local councils • Though Gaddafi technically holds no formal office through this system and is officially known only by the title Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, he is still considered the de facto leader of the nation • The Jamahiriya, however, has been dismissed by several international observers, including the CIA, as a military dictatorship

12. Gaddafi has sponsored revolutionary efforts in Chad, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Morocco, the Philippines and Iran, including providing financial support to the IRA and the Palestinian Black September movement responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympic killings • After two Libyans were accused of planting a bomb in 1988 on Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, and killed 270 people, Gaddafi's refusal to extradite the suspects to America or Britain led to drastic U.N. sanctions • Gaddafi finally admitted responsibility for the attack in 2003 and paid more than $2.7 billion to the families of the victims, initiating the end of Libya's international isolation

13. Gaddafi's personal bodyguard, the Amazonian guard, is composed of women who are martial arts experts and highly-trained in the use of weapons • Protests against the flamboyant leader, famous for his all female bodyguard, have spread • And across Libya, a determined populace is keen to depose the long serving ruler • Unwilling to be forced out like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Gaddafi allegedly ordered a violent crackdown on protesters, but the death and bloodshed appears to have galvanized the protesters

14. The Article’s premise • The reporter covered two of the greatest losers of the last century  Mikhail Gorbachev lost Russia and all of its colonies and F. W. de Klerk lost the richest country in Africa • While people are understandably thrilled by the courage of those who stand up to power — from Tiananmen Square to Tahrir Square and all the streets that now teem with the young and freedom-hungry  there is another heroism, scarce and undervalued, that accrues to those who know how to stand down • Perhaps Gorbachev and de Klerk have a lesson to share with dictators and difficult times

15. It is always tricky comparing one country’s experience with another’s, but in the examples of the great losers there are some broad lessons for all the countries that are now convulsed by the revolutionary spirit — and for those of us who watch and assess them, not to mention those who bankroll and arm them

16. Mikhail Gorbachev lost Russia and all of its colonies in the last century • And F. W. de Klerk lost the richest country in Africa in the last century • What Gorbachev and de Klerk did was not always pretty, and neither man is much celebrated in his own country these days

17. Each relinquished the power of an abusive elite without subjecting his country to a civil bloodbath • Afterward, they did not flee to the comfort of Swiss bank accounts • On the contrary, they managed a feat that is almost unthinkable in most of today’s erupting autocracies: after succumbing to democracy, they contributed to its legitimacy by becoming candidates for high office — and losing, fair and square

18. De Klerk, the last white president of a South Africa that oppressed blacks for centuries, actually pressed the flesh and pleaded for votes in black townships, professing a kind of civic kinship • De Klerk and Gorbachev were triumphant partners in their own defeats, and thus in their countries’ victories

19. Both Gorbachev and de Klerk began as reformers — that is, politicians devoted to making a dreadful system less dreadful, not to actually abolishing it

20. Perhaps because of the pressure exerted by years of international boycotts and decades of domestic insurgency, de Klerk was quicker than Gorbachev to recognize that his ruling party’s life project — a South Africa carved into a commonwealth of separate and independent nations, poor black ones and prosperous white ones — was cruelly absurd and ungovernable

21. Gorbachev, however, thought he was saving the Communist Party, right up to the day that party stalwarts tried to overthrow him

22. Those regimes along the Mediterranean rim that are trying to hold back an angry tide by shuffling the cabinet or promising so-called reforms — Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia — may buy themselves some time, but revolutions have a way of overrunning reformers

23. The regimes that have sent their thugs against the press and tried to unplug the Internet are right to fear the media • According to the author, watching how the seep of information stirred ordinary Russians from a paralyzing fear was one of the true joys of covering Moscow’s spring • The Cold War voice of Radio Liberty, the underground copies of Solzhenitsyn and especially Gorbachev’s own attempts to deputize the Russian press by letting it expose corruption and incompetence — they all chipped away at the invincibility of the Soviet Union

24. Today it is Al Jazeera; Wiki Leaked cables about the extravagant lifestyles of the ruling elites; and social media that are the fuel of popular insurgency • This is how the unhappy learn that their complaints are justified and that they have company • And with their vast reach and immediacy, Facebook and Twitter are not only sources of information but also organizing tools

25. Gorbachev freed Andrei Sakharov from exile; de Klerk released Nelson Mandela • Both leaders then enlisted their liberated adversaries as negotiating partners, buying some credibility at home and abroad • These partnerships inevitably fell victim to mistrust, but they helped assure that the end of the old order was managed rather than catastrophic

26. Armies are more than instruments • They are also constituencies with families to feed, jobs to protect, a stake in the future, a yearning for respect • If a leader can command his army only with threats of summary execution or by holding family members hostage, as Libya’s desperate despot, Muammar el-Qaddafi, is reported to have done, it is safe to bet that his days are numbered

27. One of the smartest things de Klerk did to prevent the civil war many feared in South Africa was to negotiate job security for the apartheid-era army • And one of the smartest things Nelson Mandela did was accede to this demand, so that when he became the first president of free South Africa, he inherited a military that regarded him as their paymaster

28. It is not a coincidence that the surge points of the current political unrest tend to be funerals, as they were in South Africa and several restive Soviet republics • From the massacre in Sharpeville to the protesters crushed under the tank treads of a rogue army unit in Soviet Lithuania, from the persecuted fruit vendor who immolated himself in Tunisia to the crowds strafed in Libya, the dead live on as evidence of a regime’s cruelty • And few cultures cherish their martyrs as devoutly as Islam does

29. But after the dictator has been deposed, problems may still exist • Consider Egypt - where the army runs the private sector, the mullahs may or may not be spoiling to impose shariah law, the tourists have been scared off, poverty and unemployment are rife and any day the score-settling will begin

30. Today, Russia and South Africa are disillusioned democracies • Wretched poverty, crime and bad governance bedevil South Africa • Russia is corrupt and intolerant of political dissent, sometimes brutally so • Yet each country has grown bigger middle classes, expanded individual liberties and mostly kept its armies at peace • And if the Russians or South Africans run out of patience with their imperfect leaders, they have some hope of remedies other than the streets

31. The author’s final wishes : Gorbachev turned 80 earlier this month, and de Klerk will be 75 soon • Happy birthday to both, and here’s to those who make history by gracefully getting out of its way