Tyranny is the most unstable form of government
and Michael Ledeen's article The Revolution Continues: It’s a different world than we’ve known explores how the great paradigm shift on the survival of repressive regimes is affecting China, Iran, and North Korea.

It has long been assumed that a repressive regime could survive as long as it had the will to crush any opposition, and that clever tyrants could deflect hatred of their regime by conjuring up an external enemy. There is still a tendency, particularly among intellectuals, to assume that these principles apply to contemporary dictatorships like those in China, Iran, and North Korea. Yet recent events suggest that these three countries, which are united by common interests and which help one another with advanced military technology, from missiles to WMDs, are losing control despite their fierce determination to cling to power and eventually fight and win a great war against the West. All three have nearby examples of new democracies, and their peoples are asking, with increasing intensity, why they are not permitted to govern themselves.

Considering the totalitarian trends in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, and Bolivia, and the ever-encopassing Cuban-Venezuelan Bolivarian revolution, let's hope Mr. Ledeen is right.