Introduction
Franklin D. Roosevelt once supposedly said of Nicaraugan dictator Anastasio Somoza García that he "may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch". In so doing he encapsulated the logic that has led the United States, and many other western countries, to support unsavoury governments in the Third World: they might be bad guys, but they're better than the alternative (especially if the alternative is Communist or, nowadays, Islamist). The United States has poured billions of dollars into people like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, and Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan in the hope they would provide some measure of stability and advance American interests.
And nine times out of ten, things haven't worked out anything like Washington hoped.
The U.S. pours money into these governments for different reasons, but what it usually demands in return is some sort of influence over what the government does. We can generalize pretty accurately about what the U.S. usually wants in these situations. First, it wants the government to keep forces which are less friendly to American interests out of power - the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. Secondly, Washington usually demands that the regime receiving the money reform itself and become more democratic. This is especially the case when American soldiers have been dispatched to actually protect these governments, like in Afghanistan and South Vietnam - it's hard to explain to the public why American soldiers should die to defend a dictatorship.
But do our sons of bitches ever listen to us? Very rarely. Throughout history, all of the money and all of the American lives put on the line for foreign leaders has delivered a remarkably little amount of leverage over their actions. The common accusation that these regimes are "American puppets" hides a much more complex reality. In South Vietnam, the U.S. green-lighted a coup plot that led to the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem, but a few years later his successors were flouting American wishes morning, noon and night. Nowadays, Hamid Karzai periodically threatens to go and "join my brothers in the Taliban" and can barely open his mouth without slurring the nation whose soldiers are the only thing standing between him and the people who want to string him from a lamppost, just like they did his predecessor.
Just what on earth is up with these sons of bitches?
Reason #1: The son of a bitch needs to demonstrate independence
Imagine you're a leader who is heavily dependent on the United States, so much so that you wouldn't be able to pay the salaries of your police without it and its troops are storming about your country killing your mutual enemies, but taking scores of civilians with them. For a nationalist leader, this is a tricky situation. You face the charge that you've sold out your country to the U.S., that the troops you let in will never leave because they're only there to advance their own interests - permanent military bases, for instance. Your neighbours in your region aren't too happy about you becoming a permanent platform for foreign troops who might threaten them, either. Everyone is asking: can't we just get rid of the Americans and sort out our differences ourselves?
Reason #2: The son of a bitch can easily demonstrate independence
A leader who is in this situation, if he's a savvy politician, will do what all savvy politicians do - they balance different interests against each other. He needs the Americans but he needs a large portion of his own people behind him, too. So he starts to look for ways to distance himself from the Americans without alienating them entirely. But soon his advisers will make an interesting point. If the Americans really care so much about defeating the Taliban or the Viet Cong - and given they sent hundreds of thousands of troops here, they seem to care quite a lot - then there's probably a great deal that a son of a bitch can get away with before the Americans' patience snaps.
After all, the biggest threat to any war effort - or any attempt to buy political stability in a place like Egypt by buying off its military - is chaos. Nature abhors a vaccum, and political vacuums tend to be occupied sharpish by the most disciplined and organized political force in the vicinity. This may be, depending where you are in the world, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the local Communist Party. Fearing the unknown, western leaders get addicted to the known - they're willing to keep on throwing more money and troops down a sinkhole to try to keep a government that they know minimally serves their interests rather than cutting off support and letting the local chapter of the global Anti-America League get the keys to the armoury.
Sons of bitches aren't stupid. They're smart. And they're sons of bitches. So they soon realize they can arrest American aid workers (perhaps the Transport Secretary's son), tolerate local deals and kickbacks to insurgents (Pakistan's specialty), and completely refuse to make democratic reforms with minimal consequences. The Americans can press all they want, but the son of a bitch can tell every visiting congressman, White House official and journalist (as Ngo Dinh Diem actually did): "Après moi, le déluge". And they'll listen. It's another version of the moral hazard - that son of a bitch is just too big to fail.
Reason #3: Most of the reforms Americans ask for don't really serve their short-term interests
One of the main demands that America usually places on the sons of bitches it is supporting is to be nicer: hold elections, stop beating up dissidents, stop censoring the media, and things of that nature. Being a son of a bitch, the leader is disinclined to go along with this, and he can make a persuasive case that the Americans don't really want it anyway: his government is likely to exist in a precarious balance, and ceding more power might make the government weaker. In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai barely controls large parts of his country, and has to rely on unelected local strongmen to do the job for him. As much as Washington would like to see elected governors out in the provinces, it can barely ask Karzai to cut off his local goons - the most immediate result would be the Taliban taking over the province.
Americans tend to think that decentralized, weak governments are the best sort of government, because they prevent the emergence of tyranny. They likewise tend to diagnose the main weakness of dictators like Hosni Mubarak and Hamid Karzai as being their lack of popular support - if only they were a bit nicer, the reasoning goes, the people would love them and side with them over our mutual enemies. But in a war zone, that might not be true - or it might be true and also irrelevant. When your government can barely police its territory, the first priority is take control - democratic forms can come later. Even if one disagrees with that analysis, it tends to be the argument made by sons of bitches - and Washington, usually, swallows it.
Reason #4: Americans are untrustworthy
The fourth and final reason why the son of a bitch will never completely throw in his lot with Uncle Sam and do whatever he says is because he isn't likely to trust the Americans. Sure, they're helping to hold our mutual enemies at bay, but they're also stomping around the country with hundreds of thousands of troops, following who knows what hidden agenda. And there's no guarantee the Yanks are going to stick around, either - as South Vietnam found to its dismay in 1975. It's not that Americans are a shifty people, but their democratic political system can't be trusted - every few years there's a new election and a new guy controls the purse strings.
That's the sort of time horizon a dictator can't live with. So he's bound to always be thinking about a day when the Americans won't be there any more, and how he's going to keep the Commies away from the presidential palace. Maybe he'll have to cut a deal with them. Maybe he'll need to oppress them brutally. And until that fine day comes, he's going to want to maintain his freedom of action to make sure he survives it.
And that's why we can't control our sons of bitches.