April 13, 2007
Those who usurped power in the 60’s through midnight coups had it easy: all they needed was a handful of soldiers who could show up at the President’s house and another group to gain control of the state radio; the rest was mere management. The country would wake up to the clamorous news of General so and so taking the reins, vowing to get rid of the corrupt politicians and restore law and order. He did not even have to promise new elections within the mythical ninety day period.
Those who perpetuated this midnight orgy of power were as varied in their temperament and outlook as General Pinochet and Colonel Gaddafi. Most had some kind of green signal from that black house of power which controls such insidious plots through invisible strings. Once in power, all that the generals had to do was follow the recipe perfected by their predecessors through expert help from the Pentagon or the now defunct seat of red power in Moscow.
This era produced some of the worst dictators in modern history. Most of South America suffered the reign of terror established by its generals for decades. The same nightmare was inflicted upon Africa, many countries of the Middle East, and some parts of Asia.
The decade of 1960 also witnessed the greatest expression of discontent with state and its institutions all over the world. The people all over demonstrated their unhappiness with the structure of state and society in a manner not seen since the great upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. This great movement to dislodge established institutions of governance was, however, a grand failure, as all it could do was to produce a generation of disillusioned people, sick and tired of their governments, but unable to change anything. They became hippies, drug addicts, and lost.
In the Western world, military might has never achieved political clout of the kind that has been the fate of the rest of the world. The control of the West passed from kings to politicians without the mediacy of military. Political institutions were established by lawyers in partnership with wealthy families, and this marriage of convenience has been institutionalized through formal and informal relations between the state and those who control the greatest economic share of these countries.
Beginning in the mid-70’s the nature of state control of lives of individuals started to change in a manner never witnessed in history. This was the process of consolidation of state power through the use of new technologies which were being produced in universities and research laboratories. These technologies were quickly adopted by the Western states to tighten the noose around the neck of their citizens. These states benefited from improved techniques of record keeping through computers. With the use of these technologies, every birth and death could be easily recorded, every monetary transaction could be tracked down, every movement across borders could be monitored.
This process of control and consolidation of state power is the single most important event of the twentieth century. Everything else becomes pale in comparison to it; even the two great wars, the displacement of millions of human beings from their ancient homelands, and the pseudo-independence of the colonized lands lose luster when compared to the all-pervading and all-encompassing change that has taken place in the nature of relationship between the state and its citizens. At no other time in human history, has the state wielded so much power.
This change in the nature of relationship between the state and citizens has taken different forms in the non-Western world, but the net result is the same. Instead of a state run by politicians, in much of the non-Western world, it is the generals who still come to power through midnight coups who are the beneficiaries of this new control of land and its resources. There is, however, one significant difference compared to the 60’s; in most of the world, generals now have to share their power and windfall with politicians. This sharing has become necessary because the Western world requires a veneer of political participation in statecraft. Generals can no longer usurp power alone; they have to give a share of the pie to politicians.
Squeezed between the generals and the politicians are the disenfranchised citizens who have lost hope of ever asserting any rights. There are hardly any bright signs on the horizon for half the population of the world which now lives in states run by generals and politicians for their own benefit and greed. The art of state craft, perfected in the West, filters down to non-Western nations in small doses of technology transfer and chokes the lives of citizens who have no means of asserting their rights. Even states like Afghanistan, where citizens could live unnoticed and unharmed by the state just twenty years ago, have become despotic with ever increasing means and power to intrude into the lives of ordinary men and women who would rather not see the face of a general, politician, or warlord.
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