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The U.S. military has reportedly created a deck of playing cards featuring Iranian weapons. Many will recall the deck of “most wanted” individuals released in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, all but six of whom were captured or killed. Since then, many Americans appear to have lost the appetite for military interventions and sanctions. Even President Trump partially recognizes this, as he abandoned a strike on Iran last month at the 11th hour. A card deck of modern kleptocrats, or leaders who seek to hold political power indefinitely by looting their countries, might cut through some of the noise and help rally people to a common cause—putting dictators out of the business of corruption.
The world has a dictator problem. Ignore what the new class of political operatives says; it is a very American thing to search for monsters to destroy, and it is especially easy to find them abroad. Bullying, resisting, and, yes, fighting dictators is an American tradition — the baseball of politics. Despite what the hardcore activists say, the truth is that a lot of American voters love military strikes and sanctions as much as baseball fans enjoy a good brawl or manager ejection. It’s time to play ball again.
The problem is that sanctions and interventions are not effective tools in changing the behavior of modern dictators or fixing the globally interconnected problems they create. The most sanctioned dictatorship on earth is still firing missiles and building nukes on the Korean Peninsula. North Koreans suffer repression and malnutrition while the Dear Respected Leader imports European luxury cars, American liquor, and Hollywood films. The heavily sanctioned Iranian regime is still sponsoring designated terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. Assad’s sanctioned goons are still murdering children in Syria, years after a limited US strike on his chemical weapons. Maduro isn’t in a hurry to go anywhere, except maybe Cuba, which by the way, is still not free after decades of embargos.
It’s time to think outside the box and address domestic and international problems with long-overdue policy compromises that create a more competitive and level playing field. Politicians can chew bubble gum and walk at the same time, but only if they choose to.
Getting creative means recognizing that dictatorship has long been associated with corruption. In fact, one of the best indicators of how long a modern dictator will stay in power is the extent to which he embezzles state funds while in office. Some would refer to this as kleptocracy—or “rule by theft.” The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, which describes itself as the largest-ever social science data collection effort, contains a variable called “executive embezzlement and theft,” which serves as a good proxy for this feature of authoritarian regimes.
V-Dem doesn’t measure actual instances of these crimes, rather it surveys teams of experts and constructs the variable based on one of the most transparent methodologies in this space. Teams of analysts are asked to answer the question, “how often do members of the executive (the head of state, the head of government, and cabinet ministers), or their agents, steal, embezzle, or misappropriate public funds or other state resources for personal or family use?” Responses are then run through a gamut of statistical simulations that generate confidence bounds and check for reliability. Scores range from 0 to 4, with higher scores associated with lower levels of executive embezzlement and theft and vice versa.
The results are fascinating. As with all social science data, very little, if anything, can be definitively proven, but there are some observed trends. The region that is home to what most would consider to be democracies (Western Europe and North America), doesn’t appear to have much of a klepto problem. Additionally, while the global level of executive embezzlement and theft appears to be slightly on the mend, there is nothing like the global decline in institutions described by many recent, fear-mongering works. All the more reason to push harder. The modern global economy offers unique opportunities and threats.
As a political scientist, I am far too aware that in efforts to educate mass publics about inherently political and controversial ideas, such as kleptocracy, people need to be incentivized to learn a little about the issue on their own. Nobody enjoys being lectured. Something simple, cheaply made, and commonly used can get the conversation going. However, the best way to combat the rising kleptocracy observed in the countries noted above is via education. Let’s see them playing cards. Call the card decks the “klepto-deck-o-dictators.” Regardless, it needs to be something catchy.
The truth is that there are many efforts in America and around the world to better understand this issue of kleptocracy, but they need to be made widely known if they are going to rally voters to the idea that economic transparency is preferable to war and sanctions. There are plenty of conventional initiatives we could pursue, such as the Department of Justice’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative and recently proposed legislation such as the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Rewards Act (KARRA). But none compare to the simplicity of a deck of playing cards.
Note: Explore the full Varieties of Democracy dataset here. Play: Try to guess recent executive embezzlement and theft trends in short game below.
There are plenty of conventional initiatives we could pursue to fight kleptocracy, but none compare to the simplicity of a deck of playing cards.
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