On January 24, I wrote a post I titled “Illinois in 2021 Reminds Us of the Suddenness of Change and the Brittleness of Autocracy.” The post had two main points. The first was: “[T]he suddenness of change: the unexpected never happens – until it does. Things seem like they will never change – until they do.” The second was: “Authoritarian regimes are often a lot more brittle than they seem. They look strong, and they look like they are going to last for a long time. Until all of a sudden, something happens.”
With respect to the second point, I talked about East Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1989. I could have also talked about Argentina in 1982. On April 2, 1982, the Argentine dictatorship under General Galtiera invaded and seized the Falklands from the United Kingdom. I doubt they understood their opponent in British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. On April 5, a British task force set sail. On May 1, British forces landed in the Falklands (8,000 miles from Britain). On June 14, Argentine forces surrendered. In Argentina, the Galtiera dictatorship collapsed, and a democratic government was elected in 1983. In other words, the brittleness of authoritarian regimes and the suddenness of change.
Former National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (ret.) talked about the former on “Face the Nation” today (see beginning at 3:10):
As for the latter, I don’t expect Russia to become a democracy, but maybe the survival of Vladimir Putin is a question. If Ukraine fights hard enough (even though the West helped it way too little before the war started), if the sanctions finally hit the Russian oligarchs hard enough, and if enough body bags come back to Russia from Ukraine, who knows what might happen - or how soon.
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UPDATE (2/27/22 8:40 pm): I modified the last two paragraphs a little to make them easier to read and to make my points clearer.
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