How to Lose a Country Gracefully

Our hearts understandably thrill to the courage of those who stand up to powerfrom Tiananmen Square to Tahrir Square. But there is another heroism,scarce and undervalued,that accrues to those who know how to stand down.

Gorbachev and de Klerk,each relinquished the power of an abusive elite without subjecting his country to a civil bloodbath. They did not flee to the comfort of Swiss bank accounts. After succumbing to democracy,they contributed to its legitimacy by becoming candidates for high officeand losing,fair and square. De Klerk and Gorbachev were triumphant partners in their own defeats,and thus in their countries victories.

In the examples of these great losers,there are some broad lessons for the countries that are now convulsed by the revolutionary spirit.

Freedom is A slippery slope
Both Gorbachev and de Klerk began as reformersthat is,politicians devoted to making a dreadful system less dreadful,not to actually abolishing it. De Klerk was quicker than Gorbachev to recognise that his ruling partys life projecta South Africa carved into a commonwealth of separate and independent nations,poor black ones and prosperous white oneswas cruelly absurd and ungovernable. Gorbachev,however,thought he was saving the Communist Party,right up to the day that party stalwarts tried to overthrow him.

Those regimes along the Mediterranean rim that are trying to hold back an angry tide by shuffling the cabinet or promising so-called reformsJordan,Morocco,Saudi Arabiamay buy themselves some time,but revolutions have a way of overrunning reformers.

A little glasnost is dangerous
Watching how the seep of information stirred ordinary Russians from a paralysing fear was one of the true joys of covering Moscows spring. The Cold War voice of Radio Liberty,the underground copies of Solzhenitsyn and especially Gorbachevs own attempts to deputise the Russian press by letting it expose corruption and incompetencethey all chipped away at the invincibility of the Soviet Union. Today it is Al Jazeera; WikiLeaked cables about the extravagant lifestyles of the ruling elites; and social media that are the fuel of popular insurgency.

Some of your best allies are in your jails
Gorbachev freed Andrei Sakharov from exile; de Klerk released Nelson Mandela. Both leaders then enlisted their liberated adversaries as negotiating partners,buying some credibility at home and abroad. These partnerships inevitably fell victim to mistrust,but they helped assure that the end of the old order was managed rather than catastrophic.

One of the smartest things de Klerk did to prevent the civil war was to negotiate job security for the apartheid-era army. And one of the smartest things Nelson Mandela did was accede to this demand,so that when he became the first president of free South Africa,he inherited a military that regarded him as their paymaster.

Dead nuisance/ martyr?
It is not a coincidence that the surge points of the current political unrest tend to be funerals,as they were in South Africa and several restive Soviet republics. From the massacre in Sharpeville to the protesters crushed under the tank treads of a rogue army unit in Soviet Lithuania,from the persecuted fruit vendor who immolated himself in Tunisia to the crowds strafed in Libya,the dead live on as evidence of a regimes cruelty.

Winning is the easy part
Congratulations,you ousted the tyrant,you won an election,your inaugural address stirred the hearts of your people. Now heres your giant goodie bag of festering miseryEgypt!where the army runs the private sector,the mullahs may or may not be spoiling to impose shariah law,the tourists have been scared off.

Today,Russia and South Africa are disillusioned democracies. Wretched poverty,crime and bad governance bedevil South Africa. Russia is corrupt and intolerant of political dissent,sometimes brutally so. Yet each country has grown bigger middle classes,expanded individual liberties and mostly kept its armies at peace.

Gorbachev turned 80 earlier this month,and de Klerk will be 75 soon. Happy birthday to both,and heres to those who make history by gracefully getting out of its way.