This post assumes that leaders can tell the difference between “loyalists” and “war hawks.” Many are loyalists because they think that you are a war hawk, and this just assumes that they wouldn’t just turn on you and join the war hawks. Such a strategy is risky if you don’t want to be couped and killed.
Edit: it also assumes that there are any pure “loyalists” and not solely just war hawks. How do we know that?
My impression is that severe fanaticism was genuinely common in WW2 Japan. There was a low rate of captures relative to kills because they would fight to the death, and when defeat was certain engage in a "banzai charge" or, for officers, commit seppuku. Germany was a very different story, although Hitler wanted those at Stalingrad to fight to the death.
Bingo, Dan Carlin often talks about that in his Hardcore History shows though points out it was common throughout throughout all of history. All Western soldiers vastly preferred fighting in Western Europe because it was "civilized" warfare. The Soviet and Japanese fronts though, to your average Western soldier, were just insane though in different ways. Japanese from the level of fantacism, Eastern front from the level of outright vindictiveness and cruelty of both sides.
This kind of makes me wonder if there’s not a similar approach to be taken with regime change.
The common response to campaigns like Trump’s right now are that it’s impractical to bomb an entire country’s leadership until you’re left with nothing but hawks.
But this belies other instances when we have accomplished similar things with similar types of actors/insurgencies! Most famously, the relentless campaign against Al Qaeda was basically successful! It became a running joke that we were always killing “Al Qaeda’s #2”, but the quiet story there is that we killed off so much of the organization that it largely fell apart and is now a shell of itself.
(Notably, we also seem to have managed to keep the collateral casualties just low enough to avoid creating new recruits for them)
Similarly, in a much less violent example, the 70’s-90’s RICO campaign stamped out most of the American Mob/LCN without spawning a new generation of ever-more vicious Italian-American gangsters, by imposing such a high prosecution rate that joining up was a maximally unattractive job prospect.
To be clear, I absolutely despise our current fascist regime. I want them to stop doing evil things like indiscriminately killing innocent children.
But I do feel like we should be more willing to entertain making the world less safe for evil people. Even if we decide against it, it’s a discussion worth having because of the sheer numbers of lives at stake.
Even if the Iranian leadership gave the US and Israel everything they want, I doubt that the US and Israel would cease being hostile to them. Their choice is probably between: 1) be seen as a traitor and be killed or 2) be seen as a glorious martyr and be killed.
Bingo, that was what Putin rightly learned after the West continued to rebuff and grind Russia down in the 90s when they(Russia ) was genuinely in good faith trying to reconcile and join "Europe". The Iranian leadership isn't stupid, regime change still ends with them hung from the gallows hence you ride the horse you got.
If you succeed, you get peace and infamy, a la Augusto Pinochet, and probably deep, abiding self doubt and guilt. The rest of your life second guessing your decision.
"Why on Earth would you refuse to save your own skin by simply giving the U.S. and Israel what they want?"
What does the US and Israel want? The other day I heard it was unconditional surrender.
Like genuine question here. I have no clue what my sides war aims are.
Maybe I would just conclude that the USA intends to do regime change and whatever danger I face from them I might as well take my chances on surviving.
In both Night of the Long Knives and Romania's crackdown on the Iron Legion, the regime was intent on going to war, so it wasn't a matter of "doves" vs "hawks". It was a faction that came to be regarded as dangerous to the regime. The Soviet Union also did plenty of purging, but few in the west applaud them for doing so.
There seems to be an internal conflict here. Your position is that most people pretend to go along with the regime out of fear. At the same time your step 2 requires the leader to know how to distinguish the true hardliners from the pretend hardliners. Does the leader have that knowledge? If the leader built the regime and elevated the hardliners himself, maybe he could know most of them. But it the leader simply saw the hardliners grow in power around him, I find it unlikely that he would.
This is Caplan at his most dangerous and most entertaining — taking a morally radioactive scenario, analyzing it with Econ 101 clarity, and explaining it with the calm of someone assembling IKEA furniture. Unsettling and brilliant.
You forget that it's usually the doves that first end up in jail, or killed. It starts at the lowliest deserter or priest who refuses to christen the guns, and it certainly applies to the highest levels of leadership. Don't even look at today's mess, look at the fate of France's Jaures pre WWI. Even Franz Ferdinand himself was killed not just because he was a symbol of oppression. It's because he was a reformer who wanted to create a parliamentary representation for the Slav population in the KK empire. That would have weakened the case for the nationalists who killed him. Jump right back to the ME and you see Rabin assassinated for Oslo. etc. Many such cases in history. It's the peacemakers that get assassinated first.
This post assumes that leaders can tell the difference between “loyalists” and “war hawks.” Many are loyalists because they think that you are a war hawk, and this just assumes that they wouldn’t just turn on you and join the war hawks. Such a strategy is risky if you don’t want to be couped and killed.
Edit: it also assumes that there are any pure “loyalists” and not solely just war hawks. How do we know that?
Pretty much this. It's pretty difficult to obtain accurate information about attitudes that people hold in dictatorships.
My impression is that severe fanaticism was genuinely common in WW2 Japan. There was a low rate of captures relative to kills because they would fight to the death, and when defeat was certain engage in a "banzai charge" or, for officers, commit seppuku. Germany was a very different story, although Hitler wanted those at Stalingrad to fight to the death.
Bingo, Dan Carlin often talks about that in his Hardcore History shows though points out it was common throughout throughout all of history. All Western soldiers vastly preferred fighting in Western Europe because it was "civilized" warfare. The Soviet and Japanese fronts though, to your average Western soldier, were just insane though in different ways. Japanese from the level of fantacism, Eastern front from the level of outright vindictiveness and cruelty of both sides.
This solution wouldn't only apply to the Iranian regime. I can think of at least two others directly involved in the war.
This kind of makes me wonder if there’s not a similar approach to be taken with regime change.
The common response to campaigns like Trump’s right now are that it’s impractical to bomb an entire country’s leadership until you’re left with nothing but hawks.
But this belies other instances when we have accomplished similar things with similar types of actors/insurgencies! Most famously, the relentless campaign against Al Qaeda was basically successful! It became a running joke that we were always killing “Al Qaeda’s #2”, but the quiet story there is that we killed off so much of the organization that it largely fell apart and is now a shell of itself.
(Notably, we also seem to have managed to keep the collateral casualties just low enough to avoid creating new recruits for them)
Similarly, in a much less violent example, the 70’s-90’s RICO campaign stamped out most of the American Mob/LCN without spawning a new generation of ever-more vicious Italian-American gangsters, by imposing such a high prosecution rate that joining up was a maximally unattractive job prospect.
To be clear, I absolutely despise our current fascist regime. I want them to stop doing evil things like indiscriminately killing innocent children.
But I do feel like we should be more willing to entertain making the world less safe for evil people. Even if we decide against it, it’s a discussion worth having because of the sheer numbers of lives at stake.
Even if the Iranian leadership gave the US and Israel everything they want, I doubt that the US and Israel would cease being hostile to them. Their choice is probably between: 1) be seen as a traitor and be killed or 2) be seen as a glorious martyr and be killed.
Bingo, that was what Putin rightly learned after the West continued to rebuff and grind Russia down in the 90s when they(Russia ) was genuinely in good faith trying to reconcile and join "Europe". The Iranian leadership isn't stupid, regime change still ends with them hung from the gallows hence you ride the horse you got.
Gaddafi gave up his WMDs and Nato got him killed 8 years later. Other 3rd world regimes surely took notice of that.
This is Caplans worst take since selling tech stocks during the pandemic.
If you succeed, you get peace and infamy, a la Augusto Pinochet, and probably deep, abiding self doubt and guilt. The rest of your life second guessing your decision.
Hard choices.
The Night of the Long Knives worked wonders.
"Why on Earth would you refuse to save your own skin by simply giving the U.S. and Israel what they want?"
What does the US and Israel want? The other day I heard it was unconditional surrender.
Like genuine question here. I have no clue what my sides war aims are.
Maybe I would just conclude that the USA intends to do regime change and whatever danger I face from them I might as well take my chances on surviving.
In both Night of the Long Knives and Romania's crackdown on the Iron Legion, the regime was intent on going to war, so it wasn't a matter of "doves" vs "hawks". It was a faction that came to be regarded as dangerous to the regime. The Soviet Union also did plenty of purging, but few in the west applaud them for doing so.
There seems to be an internal conflict here. Your position is that most people pretend to go along with the regime out of fear. At the same time your step 2 requires the leader to know how to distinguish the true hardliners from the pretend hardliners. Does the leader have that knowledge? If the leader built the regime and elevated the hardliners himself, maybe he could know most of them. But it the leader simply saw the hardliners grow in power around him, I find it unlikely that he would.
The main reason it doesn’t happen often is that people in power spend a lot of efforts to not be assasinated.
Well said, sir. Bryan Caplan - author of the latest edition of "The Prince."
This is Caplan at his most dangerous and most entertaining — taking a morally radioactive scenario, analyzing it with Econ 101 clarity, and explaining it with the calm of someone assembling IKEA furniture. Unsettling and brilliant.
But is it actually an “ugly” path?
Eventually all liberals and libertarians have their come to Jesus moment when they meet the Tamerlane principle. Awesome Bryan, good to see you here
You forget that it's usually the doves that first end up in jail, or killed. It starts at the lowliest deserter or priest who refuses to christen the guns, and it certainly applies to the highest levels of leadership. Don't even look at today's mess, look at the fate of France's Jaures pre WWI. Even Franz Ferdinand himself was killed not just because he was a symbol of oppression. It's because he was a reformer who wanted to create a parliamentary representation for the Slav population in the KK empire. That would have weakened the case for the nationalists who killed him. Jump right back to the ME and you see Rabin assassinated for Oslo. etc. Many such cases in history. It's the peacemakers that get assassinated first.
Japan had a lot of assassinations in the lead-up to WW2, though none against the royal family themselves as far as I recall.