Imagine if dictators backed down?

Living in a state of paranoia of your own making must be hell. It’s particularly ironic as it seems that personal freedom eventually is directly disproportionate to power.

Saddam, Qaddafi, Ceaușescu all knew this. The chart very swiftly went up and to the right. Saddam moved every night and in the end was found in a hole in the ground and hung. Gaddafi was found hiding in a storm drain and immediately dispatched in a less formal way (let’s say). For Nicolae Ceaușescu, downfall was very rapid. His residence was stormed and he was shot with his wife after a brief trial.

So why don’t people cut their losses?

There’s a little known prize called the Ibrahim Prize that rewards leaders of any of the 54 countries in Africa with a $5m prize if they were elected democratically, governed well and left peacefully. Isn’t that just doing the job, you ask? Well it’s becoming less likely in some of the major world economies and more likely in African countries. This prize has some side benefits for the country that witnesses a peaceful, democratic transition of power. When a country has 2 or more peaceful transitions of power, their standing on the world stage goes up, foreign investment flows and trade gets better. It’s not linear, but I want to make the point that prizes reward individuals, but the incentive to have this electoral outcome brings dividends to a country and its broader population.

I mean if Putin shrugged his shoulders and said, “You know what? I’m done, let’s cut a deal. I know you need to lock me up, but at least I’ll have my life, I’ve got a few years left and I can probably arrange a cushy prison in a liberal country where I can put my feet up, catch up on my reading and listen to my ballet albums til the cows come home.”

But he won’t. He can’t. Civil war will probably follow his demise. China will expand to the North and Siberia will hang in the balance. All because one guy held on too long.