[saint_fiasco]

The idea is that if the leader can live luxuriously in another country, they have an incentive to stop being a bad leader and retire in luxury already.

If bad leaders got executed, then the incentive for bad leaders would be to stay in power no matter the cost.

The reason dictatorships turn murderous when they lose popularity is that the dictator knows they will be killed if the opposition wins, so they have no choice but to go all out and do unto the opposition before they do it to him.

[luckylion]

> The idea is that if the leader can live luxuriously in another country, they have an incentive to stop being a bad leader and retire in luxury already.

That sounds plausible, but does it actually happen? I mean, tyrants have certainly fled the country to live somewhere else and retire their ambitions, but have they ever done so peacefully?

[schubart]

Former East German leader Erich Honecker [1] lived in Chile until he died of cancer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Honecker

[luckylion]

I don't think he was threatened, Germans are far too nice to take revenge on their dictators (and he probably also doesn't quite fit the 'dictator' model this is aimed at, as I'm not aware of him having funneled large sums of money out of the country; he was a dictator because of ideology, not because he was a power-hungry cleptocrat, and he resigned before the government folded). He could've lived in Germany, his trial was abandoned, but chose Chile to join his family who had emigrated when he asked for asylum.

[saint_fiasco]

Stroessner ruled Paraguay for a long time, but when he was old and his generals staged a coup against him he only gave token resistance and fled to Brazil right away. As far as I know he lived peacefully there until he died.

He could have fought back much harder and plunged the country into a civil war like the one that got him into power in the first place. He chose to retire in wealth, comfort and peace instead.

[themitigating]

How could he have fought back harder if his generals staged a coup?

[saint_fiasco]

The normal way to fight back against it is to prevent it. You are supposed to generously compensate the armed forces at the expense of the entire rest of the country.

Stroessner did that, but he was not single-minded enough about it. He could have plundered much more, he could have named a successor that his generals liked, he could have raised taxes to unsustainable levels to pay off his generals and buy more time. If his life literally depended on that, he probably would have.

[MonkeyMalarky]

Was more of a thing historically wasn't it? Napoleon was exiled to a far away island before his death. Not by choice though.

[Georgelemental]

Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and went into exile without too much resistance.

[themitigating]

But they don't tend to give up power that easily right?

Also if there is some sort revolution how would they stay in power? Either the military supports them in which their potential fate doesn't matter or they have no way to protect themselves.

[rich_sasha]

NK leaders probably know there is no way out, so also nothing to lose.

Iran, for example, is less bad I guess than North Korea.

[themitigating]

So if China refuses to grant them exile they will tell the army to attack people randomly or to detonate a nuclear bomb? How many would follow this order?

[KMag]

Given the amount of media isolation in NK, and amount of demonstrated loyalty needed to rise to high levels of the military with authority over nuclear weapons, I wouldn't want to bet my life against everyone following orders.

[toomuchtodo]

Can’t new regimes simply send someone to execute the retired deposed leader(s)?

[peanuty1]

That could spark a conflict between the new regime and Venezuela.