Criminal Regimes

This is my first attempt to put in writing an idea that I thought about for many years. This is the idea about criminal regimes and what makes a regime to become or at least be perceived as criminal.

The subject we have to explore is what is the core purpose of a regime, any regime, Democratic or Tyrant, Republic or Kingdom and anything in between. The classic purposes, which are probably the only really legitimate purposes, are to secure the well being of the populace (subjects, citizens, whatever have you) and their interests. This usually translates to external and internal security and in the purest form, it materializes as some type of Military, some type of Police force and a Judicial system (both Civil and Criminal.) In return of maintaining these, the regime is entitled to tax the populace for a reasonable portion of their wealth in order to pay for those forces and for the regime structure itself.

When a regime is inept in fulfilling its duties, it may loose its legitimacy and would surely be either replaced from inside or be defeated by outside forces. But all that does not make it criminal. A regime becomes criminal when it commits one of two forms of deliberate crime against its own citizenry, two forms which in the core are one and the same. A regime commits the worst possible crime when it declares a war against its own populace. This is the most spectacular and easier to point to. The other form which usually is harder to point, is committing treason.

What does it mean declaring a war (officially or not,) on parts of your own populace. Nobody would have a problem to identify the Nazi regime as a criminal regime. After all they said and set to implement a policy that would exterminate parts of their own citizenry and would enslave huge parts of the civilian populace of territories that they came to occupy. Similar characteristics apply to the Communist regimes in Russia under Stalin , China under Mao and Cambodia under Pol Pot. Chile and Argentina under the Military regimes are also prime examples.

Let's look at some less spectacular, historical examples. While in America, it is tempting to look at the war that US had against the Indians, however, while true, this is not such a classic case because the Indian considered themselves as sovereign nations and were perceived as an external threat. Nevertheless, the consequences of that crime still haunt the US and will haunt it for many generations. A more classic case would be the treatment of the Irish by the British in the nineteen century. The Irish were subjugated and eliminated as a real threatening force, yet the British treatment was short of organized genocide. Another classic case is the treatment of the Jews by the Czarist regime, in which Russification efforts became more like a (poorly) concerted genocidal effort.

Internal threats are not necessarily violent in nature. If, as in the examples above, a group is of a different ethnic background or is peacefully practicing a different religion or variant of religion, is that group a threat or should the fact that this group is a part of the populace prevail? Regimes that are non-criminal in nature, try to balance the need to eliminate the (perceived) threat of the different group with the need to tend to same group as part of the populace. Regimes that are criminal in nature would not try any such balance, unless there is some external pressure that they have to appease.

The problem with such a crime is that if the regime is ultimately unsuccessful, it faces two issues. The immediate is the reaction of the victims who, in most cases do not play dead. They may resort to violence (like the battle of Little Bighorn, the bloody Irish Revolution and the wide involvement of the Jews in the Russian Revolution,) or other tactics, like bribery that would, in the long run, corrupt the regime and contribute to its downfall. The other issue is the everlasting effect on the psyche of both the criminals and the victims and the mutual relations, or generations of two groups that have to live together.

External threats to the well being of the populace, are not necessarily of military character, they could also form as cultural and spiritual, but the most important threat is economical. Such threats could develop into a full fledged war but in many cases they do not, and could brew for a long time. In such cases, the elite may do, or try to do whatever is needed to protect its own citizenry interests. but more often then not, they resort to some degree of treason.

The best example in mind for such a threat is around us today in the form of what the elites cynically call the "Global Economics." The populace interests of the Western countries such as France, the United Kingdom and the USA are sacrificed so relatively few members of the Elite could rip quick profits from unfair trade practices were trade is based on the artificial relative values of currencies without taking into account the true cost of the trade (the need to borrow money, the impoverishing of the populace in the receiving end and so forth.) Well, when committing treason, one sacrifices the long term interests of the public for his or her own short term benefits. Doing so is akin to declaring war on one's own citizenry, especially those that do not belong to the elite and do not rip those short term benefits.

Regimes and elites could, and in many cases, should, manipulate the populace to perceive some external and internal forces and groups as threats. This is an integral part of politics and statesmanship. But there is a fine line here which is easier to explain when we discuss internal affairs. The questions are, is the group you are attacking really a threat and could the war against this group really be sustained in the long run. In case of treason, the answer is resounding No! for both questions.

In the last twenty five years, the American elite appears to be committing the crime of treason. Under the guise of World Trade Organization rules they encouraged American jobs to be imported en mass to other countries. There is a fundamental difference between buying products that are available only on other countries because of natural resources availability, special expertise or patents as oposing to buying products that could be easily produced here just because the cost of labor is artificially cheaper there. Buying an original , manually weaved and artistic oriental rug for example, is not the same as buying an industrialy made local immitation. Manufacturing a mass-production shirt or coding a computer program is not different wether it is made here or there.

Had the elite wanted to guard the interests of the American people it could force the WTO to look at the whole picture and create regulations to safeguard the populace interests. With some thought and wider perspective this could have achieved without protectionism and without negating the spirit of World Trade Treaties. But tyhe elite did not want to do it and thus engaged itself in crime.