How to Deal with Dictators
Excerpt from “Why Knot?” Buy the book at Amazon
(There will always be dictators, so we need to find better ways of dealing with them. The following essay was written in 1998, when Fidel Castro was still alive and still ruled Cuba, but the ideas remain relevant.)
Perhaps Major League Baseball could help put an end to tensions between the U.S. and Cuba. Baseball is extremely popular in Cuba, and Castro himself was a player with professional potential before he became a revolutionary and then dictator.
Consider the possibilities if Major League Baseball were to offer Castro personal ownership of a major league franchise in Havana. The sole condition would be that he retire from politics. This would in one swift stroke
• give Castro a way to step down, gracefully, without losing face;
• give Congress and the President an excuse to re-establish normal relations, without losing face;
• create a firm basis for quickly opening commerce between Cuba and the US, starting with business opportunities related to the games, news coverage, television rights, the stadium, travel, visitors/tourists, etc.
It could also provide common ground for understanding between the American people and the Cuban people, through their enthusiasm for baseball.
Such a move could not only reduce political tensions but also lead to establishing a Caribbean or Latin American League, having equal status with the American and National Leagues, including inter-league play and participation in the World Series.
Now consider present issues with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. What might he want? What could become the basis for negotiations for reducing the possibility of nuclear war?
Remember his fascination with basketball and Dennis Rodman. Might an NBA franchise prove tempting? Or remember the academy-award-winning move Argo. Might he want to star in a Hollywood blockbuster, perhaps in the role of a hero who saves the world from alien invasion?
If you take out a dictator, he gets replaced by someone else at least as nasty or you leave a power vacuum. If you pile on economic sanctions, innocent people suffer and starve. Instead, consider unorthodox solutions that play on the unique and eccentric interests and tastes of individual dictators.
