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Regarding the situation in Syria, some commentators write: the country will now plunge into such chaos that later the Assad regime will be remembered with gratitude. And Iraq is cited as an example: the fall of Hussein's regime led to deep chaos. This point of view deserves to be analyzed.
First, the Assad regime committed mass murders against its own population, bombed cities, tortured and extrajudicially executed tens of thousands of people, used chemical weapons, carried out deportations, destroyed hospitals along with patients and doctors, created artificial famine and humanitarian disasters. These actions led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to become refugees. What worse news compared to this do you expect from Syria now?
Secondly, any dictatorship is based on the belief that people are not capable of providing for themselves. They are all babies, immature and incapable, so they need a leader who knows better than them how to live their lives. Nazis, communists, ayatollah theocrats, colonialists and cannibals all tell this story. In fact, dictators justify their violence by saying that without it there would be even more violence. (The best way to protect yourself from a dragon is to have your own dragon, Schwartz's characters said.)
However, the people who made efforts to overthrow the dictator thereby demonstrated their own subjectivity. They proved capable. They are not children, but adults who have taken responsibility. Maybe they will succeed. Perhaps they will not succeed: they lack knowledge, unity, empathy, maturity, the power of human networks, and tolerance. Perhaps they will eventually become the same cannibals. But at least there is a chance. A chance for freedom is always better than guaranteed non-freedom.
Germany became a democracy after Hitler, and Italy after Mussolini. Spain raised its head after Franco. The Soviet Union showed a thaw after Stalin. South Korea has survived all its dictators and is doing well.
Thirdly, dictatorship offers everyone one way.
The fall of the dictatorship creates many paths, many scenarios.
And when everything falls apart, different pieces will go different ways. As a result, there will be less violence and more happiness.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, several countries chose the path of democracy, others reached the level of hybrid regimes, and even among autocracies there are much milder ones than the USSR. When Iraq collapsed, at least Iraqi Kurdistan followed the path of forming a modern statehood. Among the former colonies of European empires there are many quite successful countries. Either way, the destruction of a dictatorship and/or empire always opens up opportunities.
Randomly drawn post-colonial borders gather in one state people who do not have an answer to the question of why they should be together. It is not surprising that such formations are held together only by brute force and flooded with rivers of blood.
So any chance of freedom is better than guaranteed non-freedom.
The way up is not necessarily successful, but this does not mean that you are doomed to crawl at the bottom.
Therefore, the fall of each dictatorship increases joy and hope. Even if there is only a glimmer of hope.
Valery Pekar, entrepreneur, public figure, publicist, teacher of the Kyiv-Mohyla business school
