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Probably the most dangerous thing in politics is when a leader needs conflict – when he depends on conflict for his political power, maybe knows no other way to hold on to it.
He drives up fears of others, launches deliberate provocations to incite violence, to then expand conflict, all for his own power. There’s no thought for the threat of death and destruction others will face because of it.
Opponents are seemingly left with two bad options. If they fight, they give him more of what he wants: conflict used to justify his power. If they are passive, he escalates anyway, because he needs the conflict.
And so, a country seems on the edge of something disastrous.
The situation has not just arrived out of the blue, of course. For a while now, many people have felt it drawing closer and closer toward the darkness, toward an abyss of mass violence.
There have been rising tensions, and leaders have emerged who, rather than seeking to cool those tensions, instead sought to exacerbate them to expand their influence.
Like Serbian President Slobodan Milošević in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and 90s, these politicians say: those other people are dangerous, but I’ll protect you. The tensions – the conflict, the wars – became central to his political survival.
At some point in such a situation, de-escalation of tensions and conflict may seem impossible, because powerful people are depending on them continuing, even deepening. What that point is exactly is hard to say. It surely wasn’t inevitable for Yugoslavia to descend into mass bloodshed. Until it was.
If there is a way out, it might start with folks remembering the basics about what keeps societies more secure and peaceful: respect for human rights.
For example, people have a right to express opinions the government doesn’t like and shouldn’t be locked up for it. People have a right to due process in courts and shouldn’t be imprisoned, deported, or disappeared at the whim of security forces. People have a right to peaceful protest.
Elections put politicians into power, but that doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want. There are limits. At the heart of democracy, human rights help establish those limits. Human rights are a red line to power.
If people can rally around that shared understanding of the limits to political power, there’s a chance they can prevent even the most conflict-needy politician from wrecking their country.
It’s a big “if,” sure. Support has to come from across the political spectrum, and it’s usually the lack of precisely that which has facilitated the rise of the dangerous leader.
But ordinary people – even people on opposite ends of the political spectrum – will always have one thing in common: they don’t want their country to fall into an abyss. Even if a leading politician thinks it might be useful.
