Post Destructive Leaders
Truth Commissions and a Market Outlook
Countries get off track. It happens. While there are many things that lead a country to get off track—economic crises, extreme income inequality, simmering ethnic hatred—at the end of the day countries are people and people, us, are prone to avarice, xenophobia, delusion and rage and sometimes as a species we select leaders that reflect these unproductive ways of behaving.
The list of countries that have ended up wildly off course is so long it’s almost worth asking what countries have not lost their way, if one defines losing their way as breakdowns in governance so complete that large numbers of citizens die needlessly. Writing this in a country—Croatia—that participated in a civil war a mere thirty years ago is but one more reminder, a variation of a theme.
A key difference between those countries that find their way back to healthy functioning—like Germany—and those that don’t—Russia—is whether the legal system is utilized to restore and rectify past mistakes. Germany, France, Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Turkey, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Japan, the US and others all have difficult, painful elements in their past. In that context, how former President Trump is dealt with matters. If his alleged breaches of law are dealt with in a way that, to most people, appears fair and judicious, this will bolster confidence in both the legal system and Democratic institutions. The opposite is also true and a lot scarier.
The Template of a Destructive Leader
Once you discern the type, you discern the pattern. The further these leaders are in the past (Napoleon, Hitler), the clearer their behavior. The trick is recognizing the destructive leader—be they in politics or business or elsewhere—in the present day. Part of their weapon, after, all, is the ability to deceive, which makes it harder to discern the fact pattern. These are sophisticated deceivers, utilizing deceptions that are often so slight, a shading of the truth, that they can be hard to recognize.
Here, in former Yugoslavia, the poster child for this type of leader is former President Slobodan Milosevic. A fascinating, long, BBC documentary, The Death of Yugoslavia, details how his choices led to carnage and the break-up of a country. While Yugoslavia’s story has many twists and turns, a clear feature is a Milosoveic’s personality.
Given that the Yugoslavia break-up is in the past, but near past, it’s a good example both of a deviation and the application of the law to try to rectify mistakes. Psychologists sometimes describe certain personalities as being part of the “dark triangle”—a combination of traits that is some part narcissistic, Machiavellian and psychopathic. This doesn’t require that the person is a psychopath, only that they have psychopathic traits. A few of their identifying marks:
Prevarication. Milosevic’s rise to power began with a lie. On a visit to a Muslim-dominant region (that has since declared independence) within Serbia—Kosovo—Milosovic used ethnic Serb allies to manufacture a pre-meditated stone-throwing riot against police, about which he could then claim outrage. Throughout the documentary Milosevic says things that seem almost reasonable but, in fact, are lies. In 1995, he claimed things had spun so far out of control that no one could exert “rational control.” In truth, he had used all his power to spin things out of control and he too could pull it back from the brink, if he chose.
Exploitation. Milosovic’s primary goal was both raw power and to re-shape Yugoslavia from a Tito-led confederation in which ethnic nationalities were suppressed to his own vision where Serbs called the shots. But if he came out and openly used violence to achieve his goal, he realized the Europeans and the Americans would cry foul. Instead, he used proxies, specifically Serbian leaders inside neighboring Bosnia. If their actions were excessive, he could always claim plausible deniability, the very same tactic Putin used in the Donbas.
Lack of remorse - Milosovic rose to power both by first developing a patron—the former head of Serbian Party—and then later turning on him. More importantly, Milosovic was unmoved by the deaths of his victims. I am not aware of any moment in his trial at The Hague where he expressed remorse.
Obsession with prestige and status - There are haunting videos of Milosevic standing before massive crowds, barking into a microphone. Yes, all political rallies can look like this but it is also reflective of the adulation such types seek out. This is also, by the way, why such people loathe a free press and the documentary well details how Serbian state TV magnified Milosevic’s false claims.
Why was Milosevic like this? I don’t know and I’m not a psychologist. Obituaries when he died in The Hague noted that both his parents committed suicide. Whatever the motivations, the parallels with contemporary leaders and former leaders is obvious.
Putin’s rise has long been associated with a lie, in his case apartment block explosions blamed on the Chechens but with evidence over time suggesting that were in fact the work of the Russian secret police. It sounds crazy, I know. Similarly, Putin’s initial explanation of invading Ukraine was “de-Nazification,” etc. Trump, like Milosevic, had a keen sense of how to use ethnic divisions to his advantage, only in Trump’s case it was white versus Black as opposed to Serb versus Muslim. If you compare the speeches Xi gives in places like Davos with the actions actually taken, there is a notable gap. On paper, he pushed for cooperation around Covid and global warming. In reality, he refused to buy mRNA vaccines and boosted coal consumption. A more stark and consequential shift was Xi’s successful effort to adjust China’s constitution so he can serve for life, prioritizing his own legacy over strengthening rule of law.
Given how frequent the type of personality is, the question is if it’s almost a requirement to have these characteristics to make it to the top in a Yugolsavia or Russia or China or whether, particularly under the harsh light of open inquiry, we can move past such characters. After all, applying a psychological prism to behavior is relatively new. Freud’s revolutionary The Interpretation of Dreams was only published in 1899. As is typical, our knowledge runs ahead of our governing practice. You need to pass psychological tests to hold lots of different types of work, like running a nuclear power plant. Maybe voters will start to, effectively, administer them to politicians as well?
The Truth Antidote
Another question is how a country best recovers once it has experienced the sometimes cataclysmic disruption of a leader characterized by some version of the “dark triangle.”