Luis Rubio
Leaders inherit their circumstances, affirm Zelikow and Rice.* “Facing those circumstances between the years 1988 and 1992, some leaders chose, quite deliberately, to transform the basic operating principles of whole societies. They chose to abolish countries and create new ones. They chose to roll back and substantially disarm the larger and most dangerous military confrontation in the world… But, like all human creations, their new system made trade-offs, flaws and set up new issues…” The authors refer at the end to the Soviet Union, but the concept is applicable to a good number of nations that, during the same years, focused on transforming themselves, the majority of these in integral fashion, as in the case of Korea, China, Spain, Portugal, Taiwan and many others, including Mexico: great transformer leadership, but with unanticipated consequences. The judgements arrived at decades later are logical and politically relevant, but not always useful for correcting the sequelae of those unforeseen consequences.
One common characteristic, although with enormous differences in degree, in all the nations that opted to transform themselves was the authoritarianism that characterized them. In some cases, these were military regimes, in others authoritarian governments and in yet others systems devoted to the integral control of their populations and that came to be called totalitarian. The transformation undertaken by those leaderships, in some cases with great clarity, vision and sense of purpose, in others less so, threw open a vast window to the freedom of the people.
“Imagine the hopes and fears of this generation [Gorbachev, Kohl, Mitterrand, Bush, Delors, Thatcher]. For the majority of these men and women, words like ‘tyranny’, ‘freedom’, ‘war’ and ‘security’ were no empty extractions. They brought back very real traumas…” Something similar can be said about Adolfo Suárez, Felipe González, Carlos Salinas, Kim Dae-jung, Lee Teng-hui and Deng Xiaoping. Some of these leaders procured a strictly economic transformation, others understood that it was impossible to separate an economic liberalization from its consequent political liberalization (a concept that China continues to defy).
The transformations have been real and have changed the nature and circumstance of dozens of nations, in most cases for good. But the unanticipated consequences to which these authors refer are not lesser ones and have translated into factors of true contention: from the war among the nations comprising the former Yugoslavia to governments that, more recently, have tried to turn back the clock of history or that, simply, have constructed, strengthened or recreated authoritarian systems. AMLO’s morning press conferences are a perfect example of a unipersonal leadership dedicated to moving back the hands of time as if to return the genie to its bottle or the toothpaste to its tube. But, beyond the personal style of misruling of each reactionary leader, there are two things not at all in doubt: one is that, in effect, there were indeed unanticipated consequences, and these must be seen to; the other is that it makes a huge difference in how those consequences are in effect seen to.
The how of something is on occasion as much or more important than the what. For example, it is undeniable that the liberalization of the economies brought about a redefinition of the logistics of industrial production at the worldwide level and this, in turn, generated very differentiated impacts. On liberalizing their economies, the developed nations saw many jobs leave for countries that aspired to become industrialized. Korea, Taiwan and other nations embraced the opportunity and transformed themselves along the way. Mexico arrived a little late at the party and its attempt to transform itself was less ambitious, thus translating into lost opportunities of which China diligently took advantage, becoming the factory to the world.
The key point is that it is fundamental to understand that governmental actions have consequences and that, therefore, the way in which the problems are attended to entail impacts that frequently do not appear evident beforehand. To what extent should the government act in a direct manner in the economic arena? What consequences involve an apparently unstoppable tendency to transfer all projects and institutions to the Army? Utilize the market for assigning resources or harass it? It does not matter what the government does or the ambit within which it acts, its deployment gives rise to effects that incentivize favorable or unfavorable actions. That is, although the country has few formal counterweights, the informal ones are overly effective and do not always yield the results that the leader anticipates or prefers.
Each one will have their preferences regarding the questions in the latter paragraph, but the important part is that what leaders desire or prefer is not always the result. That is why it is so important not to lose sight of the fact that the function of governing is much more delicate than is apparent.
As Orwell wrote, “the fact is that certain rules of conduct have to be observed if human society is to hold together at all.”
*To Build a Better World
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