Lenin Was Right! And Wrong

The Geek is back.  The two week break was involuntary.  It was imposed by Al Gore Weather--snow, cold without precedence in all the years here in the canyon.  With the cold came frozen, broken pipes which tested the Geek's less than well evolved handyman skills to the max.  Now the water is flowing, the snow is melting and the world continues to give much (disastrous) grist for the mill.

You all  remember Lenin, right?  The man had a glib tongue, a facile pen, and one profound insight which led in the fullness of time to the Soviet Union.  The not overly bright Bolshevik-in-Chief gained his success by hitting on a truth which has, can, and will apply to all  human societies.

Here is the Lenin Insight: Because the vast majority of people are preoccupied with the mundane realities of quotidian life, a small, well disciplined group can use a combination of propaganda and terror to overthrow a regime which lacks confidence in itself and has little if any legitimacy in the estimate of the inertia enchained majority.

Lenin depended first and foremost on his ability to impose discipline on his followers.  He was convinced that only rigid, from the top authority enforced by the most robust measures would provide the hardened and sharpened tool of revolution necessary to accomplish the goal of Communism over all.

The Lenin method worked in Russia.  And, you can't argue with success.  The Lenin method was also successful in its several export versions.  From China to Vietnam to Cuba to Yugoslavia it worked like a charm.  And, you can't argue with that kind of success, can you?

With the Lenin Insight, the ability of a very small number of True Believers to impose their views on a majority more focused on the matters of living than on True Beliefs and against a government lacking self-confidence and widespread perceived legitimacy is possible.  Lenin's Insight is bang on.

But, it is possible, indeed, necessary to dissent from Lenin's Method, the method of a tightly disciplined group ruled strictly from the top in which, as the Germans used to put it, "corpse like obedience" is required and enforced.  We even have a case in point which demonstrates that the Lenin Method is not necessary to cause a government to waver and a radical, revolutionary movement to come ever closer to power.

That case in point is called, "Pakistan."

It is not a dedicated, hardened, and sharpened movement under rigid discipline which threatens the stability and future integrity of Pakistan but rather a set of ideas fostered and magnified, spread and implanted by a loose assemblage of clerics.  The ideas may be rooted at some point in the sacred literature of Islam, but in their current manifestation are the products of the minds of men and not the word of the deity.  If anything, this makes the words, the ideas, and their impact on the minds of men throughout Pakistan more deadly not less.

The shooting of the governor of Punjab by a member of his own bodyguard as well as the widespread praise of the killer and his deed give ample example of both the breadth and power of the words of clerics who, propelled by fear and hate, have served to find and stroke the suitable lines of Koran and Haddith with the intent and goal of spreading their views farther and harder.

In a very real sense, the process is the hijacking of a religion by a very small number of clerics and their followers.  The truth of this is, however, irrelevant.  It is irrelevant because of the powerful accuracy of Lenin's Insight.

The utter and absolute accuracy of the Lenin Insight is the reason that the Geek has groaned (or worse) every time some "authority" has proclaimed that political Islam, particularly in its violent form, is the product of a "tiny minority" of Muslims generally.  It may be an accurate observation, but it is massively irrelevant.

In short, Lenin was wrong in insisting on the necessity of a tightly disciplined cadre, a "vanguard of the proletariat."  It is sufficient to have a set of ideas, rooted in a shared belief system, articulated over and over by men of persuasive tongue to an audience disenchanted with their identity, their status, their lives generally.  Given this and the fact that most people, most of the time, simply want to live their lives with a modicum of dignity, peace, and certainty, the potency of the tiny minority is awesome.

The power of the minority is potentiated by the willingness of the clerics and their followers to employ violence in the service of the "Cause."  The violence can be low level like street demonstrations.  Or it can be high and lethal as in the killing of the governor of Punjab.  In either the result is the same.

Over time the social compact is tested to the point of failure.  Over time people are forced to choose sides.  Over time the adherents of political Islam will gain strength.  Over time the government will find its self confidence further eroded.  The polity and society fall into a graveyard spiral.

Humans detest risk.  Uncertainty is risk.  The true cause of the graveyard spiral underway in Pakistan is the growing uncertainty in the minds of the vast and all-too-silent majority.  As the "liberals," the reformers such as the dead Punjabi governor, retreat in fear the uncertainty is accelerated.  The only voices are those of the New Order, the advocates of political Islam.  In search for certainty, in quest of lowering risk, the majority will fall ever deeper in the gravity well created by the clerics and their fellow travelers in the mob.

The Obama administration is attempting to reinforce the spine of the Pakistani government and military by the promise of more money.  Money and cooperation, the Deep Thinkers of the administration believe will bring the reformers out of their funk, mobilize the government, the army, and the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence to abandon support tacit or otherwise of groups or individuals espousing political Islam.  It is not likely that this proposed increase in bribe payments will be any more successful than all the earlier efforts to buy Pakistani political will.

The dreary conclusion is that Pakistan has passed the tipping point.  Whether the current trajectory can be arrested, let alone reversed, is up to the Pakistanis alone.  It is up to the cowed reformers, the ever silent majority, to decide if they really want to live in the future envisioned by the clerics and their mobs.  The US can do little to change the minds, to charge the courage, to bolster the political will of the government and the elites of the country.

Realistically, the only course of action available to the US is contingency planning regarding the Pakistani nuclear capability.  In addition, the Afghan operational planning must take into account the continued existence of cross border safe havens in the FATA and beyond.  This, in turn, implies that the US and other civilized states must contemplate the prospect of failure in Afghanistan and plan accordingly.

Hating to start the New Year on a pessimistic note, the Geek must point out that a similar dynamic is under way in Iran.  This time the dynamic is running against the theocratic regime.  There are profound indications that in the contest of political wills, the Green Movement is gaining the upper hand.  The Supreme Guardian and his stooges are showing increasing signs of confusion, of non responses to the challenge of the opposition.  There is a failure of political will to squash the Green Movement leadership despite very tough talk.

Iran like Pakistan exhibit the critique of Lenin's Method as they show the correctness of his basic insight.  In both countries the anti-government movements are diffuse in leadership.  In both it is the power of words and ideas which galvanize the discontented, the disaffiliated, the alienated.  In both the government and supporting elites have been lacking faith in themselves and their position of power.  In both places the majority simply want a lack of risk, an abundance of certainty in the pursuit of daily living.

Most importantly, in both Pakistan and Iran, the long suffering and inarticulate majority will gradually, perhaps with glacial slowness or, less likely, with fulminating speed, move to the side which most credibly promises the prospect of certainty and absence of risk.  The Obama administration would be well advised to consider the truth of Lenin's Insight in the formulation of policy with respect to both countries.

Only in this way can failure be avoided.