The Strong Leader Binding Phase

The news this week was that the Syrian Civil War, the effort to overthrow Bashar Assad, has restarted. This would be a good time to review The Strong Leader Binding Phase.

I have described what I have termed "The strong leader binding phase". I consider this phase in the development of democracy to be extremely relevant to recent world events. 

The strong leader binding phase is a period of rule by a strong leader, such as a king or other autocrat, that a diverse country must first go through before it can hold together as a working democracy. Until the required strong leader binding phase is complete, a diverse country must have a strong leader to hold the country together. It is only upon completion of this phase that a diverse country can operate as a democracy without coming apart. 

Aside from the strong leader binding phase, transition from autocratic rule to democracy is difficult enough. I have written repeatedly, and for a long time, that when people rise up and overthrow a dictator in order to implement a democratic form of government, overthrowing the dictator is the easy part. Building a successful democracy afterward is far more difficult. 

The transition from autocracy, in some form, to democracy is difficult enough in any country. Diversity, whether ethnic, religious, cultural or, linguistic, makes it even more precarious. This is where the strong leader binding phase comes into play.

The more diversity that there is in a country, the longer it must spend in the strong leader binding phase before a successful transition to democracy can be reasonably expected. An obvious example is Iraq. It is a diverse, and largely artificial, country composed of three main groups, Shiite Arab Moslems, Sunni Arab Moslems and, Kurds, which are generally Sunni Moslem by religion but are not Arabs. 

The truth is that Iraq needed an dictator like Saddam simply to hold it together. The success of democracy in such a country would not be possible, at least not until it had gone through an extended strong leader binding phase. We could debate whether Iraq, put together from remnants of the Ottoman Empire, should ever have existed at all, but that is somewhat beyond the scope of our discussion here. 

Libya was put together from the two historical provinces of Tripolitania in the west and Cyrenaica in the east, as well as Fezzan further south. Libya was ruled first by King Idris and then, since 1969, by Moammar Gaddafi. In 2011 the west was delighted at Gaddafi's overthrow and execution during the Arab Spring, thinking that the country would now be a democracy. But that has never happened because the Strong Leader Binding Phase had been interrupted. Libya has reverted to being split between east and west, with Tripoli being capital of the west and Benghazi of the east.

Nigeria is another one, it is known for it's series of dictators. But once again, it was just too diverse to work as a democracy yet. Like Iraq, there are three main groups: The Hausa, the Ibo and, the Yoruba. There was an unsuccessful war of independence in the 1960s, known as the Biafran War because the aim was an independent nation of Biafra, and it is certain to require a considerable period under strong leaders before such a new and diverse country can be at it's best as a democracy. 

What happened in Yugoslavia? Plainly and simply, the strong leader binding phase was prematurely interrupted by the end of Communism, and the country could not hold together. Yugoslavia had been a diverse and highly artificial country put together by fiat after the end of World War One. As readers who watched the tragic news during the 1990s know, it was composed mainly of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and, Slovenians. Tito held the country together for three decades before his death, but more time was needed in the strong leader binding phase when the Communist east bloc disintegrated. 

Czechoslovakia was put together at the same time as Yugoslavia. It didn't survive the disintegration of Communism either, but it was a simpler country with only two main groups in better-defined regions, and it split without bloodshed (The Velvet Divorce). 

Is it only a coincidence that the great European dictators of the early Twentieth Century, Hitler, Mussolini and, Franco led countries that were more diverse than other European countries, Franco's Spain, or had relatively recently been united, Italy and Germany? Spain is quite diverse and today still has two major separatist movements, the Basques in the northwest of Spain and the Catalans in the northeast, around Barcelona. In the Nineteenth Century, Germany and Italy were each united from several smaller states which spoke the same language, Italy by Garibaldi and Germany by Otto Von Bismarck. All three countries naturally required a strong leader binding phase and I see Hitler, Mussolini and, Franco as the manifestations of that phase. 

The United States underwent it's strong leader binding phase under English kings prior to gaining independence in 1776. If not for this period, there is no reason to believe that the diverse and distant colonies in New England, in Virginia and, in Georgia would have bonded together to form a single nation. There would certainly have been several smaller countries comprising what is now America. Even so, I see the U.S. Civil War of 1861-65 as being the result of the necessary strong leader binding phase being interrupted by the war of independence. The country needed more time in the strong leader binding phase before it was genuinely one unit, and ready to be a democracy. 

Canada spent longer than the U.S. in the strong leader binding phase under English kings, not becoming independent until 1867. Although Canada does have Quebec separatism, it never had a civil war. There was a Canadian parallel to the U.S. Revolutionary War known as the Upper Canada Rebellion, but it did not have enough support. 

The point of all this is that before we think that every country can be and should be a democracy, in the form of the western democracies, let's remember that not only is it very difficult to build a working democracy after the overthrow of a dictator, but that the dictator may actually be necessary to hold the country together until it's required strong leader binding phase is complete. The western countries were ruled by kings for a long time before they were ready to be democracies.

In Iraq the U.S. fought many of the same people three separate times. The hoped-for democracy that would appear as soon as Saddam Hussein was removed never came to be. Upon invading Iraq U.S. forces fought the Iraqi Army. When that army was disbanded a roiling insurgency suddenly began. When that was finally put down Islamic State, IS, suddenly emerged as the new force in the Middle East.

The reason that Bashar Assad is there is that Syria was created from remnants of the Ottoman Empire and requires an extended period under such a strong leader before it is ready to be what the west would consider as a democracy.