One of the fascinating failures of the Communist system is its inability – to answer the simple question of how to replace one head of state with another.
Under the Communist system, those who rise to the top are usually those who murder the most number of people. Once the boss is entrenched in power, no one dares to suggest that he move over to make way for a successor, no matter how old, ill, feeble, or senile he becomes.
Thus Communism, whose theoreticians issue endless tirades against those whom they label “reactionary,” is actually the most reactionary and repressive regime the world has ever seen. No king or monarch in history ever held on to the strings of power as tenaciously as a Communist dictator.
Mao Tse-tung ruled Red China for 28 years and held on to the top job long after senility and incapacity had overtaken him. His widow tried to accede to his position of total power, but this was not acceptable to others who aspire to be the boss, and China is seething with political unrest.
The ranking Communist dictator is 85-year-old Tito. He has ruled Yugoslavia with an iron hand for 31 years. Nobody elected him and he plans to select his own successor.
North Korea’s Communist dictator Kim Il-sung has decreed that his successor will be his son, Kim Jong-il. The father has been dictator for 30 years. He was inflicted on the North Koreans by the Soviets after we let them occupy the Japanese possessions in Asia. His second wife is head of the women in North Korea.
This is the 20th year of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba. No talk of a successor or free elections is permitted. Castro is still young and his reign may last as long as the long-lived Bourbon kings of old France.
Dictator Brezhnev of the Soviet Union is 70 and those who have seen him recently report that he looks like a sick man. Most of his associates are even older. The Soviet Union has no procedure for dealing with this problem. The plan seems to be: Just hang around and wait for the big boss to die, and then get ready for a cutthroat power struggle.
Because the Communists are victims of their own bureaucracy in that no one has the authority to make major decisions unless the “go” order comes from on high, the death of Brezhnev will almost surely be a period of indecision in Russia, just as it was after Stalin died.
Just because the Communists lack contingency plans to provide for the certainty that their Big Boss will someday die, that is no reason for the West to be similarly unprepared. A Communist dictator’s death offers an opportunity for the United States to take advantage of this great weakness in the Communist system.
We should have a plan of action to. push for whatever diplomatic goals are then appropriate. We could insist that the Soviets pay us back the money they have borrowed, agree to a true reduction of nuclear weapons, allow on-site verification of ICBMs and ABMs, allow free emigration, or grant some measure of human rights.
During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, our State Department sent a message that it did not look with favor on the formation of anti-Communist governments on the borders of the Soviet Union. A reverse message when Brezhnev dies might inspire the 22 Captive Nations (listed each July in our Captive Nations Resolution) to choose freedom and leave the Soviet Union.
