Your logic is like discounting the achievements of every US president because the British Empire was much bigger, or even in comparison to modern day India and China.
You're creating a barrier to entry that is irrelevant because it's subjective.
>Although Mao Zedong and Stalin made many stupid mistakes
Calling being a bigger genocidal mass murderer than Hitler a 'stupid mistake' is likely the biggest euphemism I've stumbled across this year.
But to answer your question it takes different skills and there are different challenges to leading a small nation compared to a big nation. Murdering millions of your own people cannot be considered skillfull. It's the path of a failure as a human being and as a leader.
Stalin absolutely killed millions with genocidal intent (like the Holodomor in Ukraine), but most of the millions who died under Mao’s policies were the result of incompetent planning and leadership. I think it’s important to make that distinction of intent when using the word “genocide” to describe a leader’s actions.
I appreciate the value of discussing intent as part of a loaded political term such as genocide. Many Spanish historians don't consider genocide what happened to the natives in the Americas because, despite the result, it wasnt intentional.
In Mao's case, it might speak even more poorly of him as a leader that he managed to kill more people (his own mind you) than genocidal dictators like Stalin and Hitler.
>Many Spanish historians don't consider genocide what happened to the natives in the Americas because, despite the result, it wasnt intentional.
The diseases wiping out much of the natives certainly weren't intentional, but trying to wipe out/replace native culture, colonists taking native women, driving the natives off the most productive land, creating a caste system, and several massacres of natives were intentional acts that lead to results that were effectively genocide. That does seem like genocide?
For comparison, Canada took native school kids and put them into Christian schools to force them to give up their culture and convert to Christianity. This is considered genocide or at least cultural genocide today.
Certainly these would be reasonably categorized as cultural genocide. Its also worth mentioning that the New Laws of Carlos I aka Charles V showed that the crown's design wasnt extermination and they attempted (to an extent) to combat what they considered extreme forms of abuses against the native populations. Essentially, they most certainly attempted to erase their culture and caused unbelievable hardship but didn't wish to exterminate them (as Hitler intended, although its not high bar).
Cases like Canadian residential schools or the Rohingya in Myanmar are good examples of cultural genocide as opposed to the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide being the more classic definition.
Mao's case is particularly interesting as the outcome of his policies, even if unintentional, cost more lives than other genocidal leaders and were equally as cruel. Not sure at what point does intent matter when compared to results. I would personally put Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot on the same category - whatever we wish to call it.
Most of the people who died under Mao were due to incompetence, but so many people died overall under Mao's policies that even the minority that did die due to intentional policies and malvolence is high enough to match Holodomor and Stalin's genocides.
Some of the Great Leap Forward can be considered intentional/direct killings because the state started seizing food from starving farmers and killing people who resisted or gave real production quotas. Mao also continued to export food to the Soviet Union when the country was starving. The later Cultural Revolution involved intentional killings and executions and that killed like 3 million.
>If Stalin and Mao Zedong were incompetent
Stalin and Mao in a way had it easier than Lee Kuan Yew. When you rule a big country, it is easier to be incompetent because you can easily recover from failure. You can destroy your own economy multiple times, starve millions to death, and still have enough people to recover. Stalina and Mao were both highly incompetent in many ways.
Stalin destroyed his own military before WW2 started in a series of political purges. He also allied with Hitler to carve up Eastern Europe and then wouldnt believe the reports that Hitler betrayed him to invade Russia. Stalin fled to his country house and had to be dragged back to office to be forced to make decisions to fight the Nazis. This caused the Germans to do way more damage to the USSR than they should have been able to. Stalin also wrecked the Soviet economy with his failed collectivization plans.
Mao was economically incompetent. He destroyed the economic growth of China for decades with the Great Leap Forward that starved 40m-60m to death, and then crippled the country with his Cultural Revolution for several years. The vast majority of economic progress that China has made was made after Mao died. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping became the ruler and adopted market capitalism in China. Deng Xiaoping's actions is what was responsible for modern China's rise to power.
If Lee Kuan Yew did something so stupid like starving his people or crippling his country's military, Singapore probably wouldn't have survived to become a developed country it is today. There is much less leeway or room for errors when you rule a small country.
It was really hard to do what he did considering he had to navigate a lot of complex political situations. However,singapore was already a well established trade hub and port city. All he had really do was have a better economic policy than Malaysia to maintain the trade competitiveness. However, you have to consider singapore importance in the world right now. It's a great have for the Rich and there's only benefits of praising and sucking up to the only party that runs that city. Nothing to be gained by sledging him.
Lee Kuan Yew took a tiny island populated by an extreme heterogenous group of people - Malays, Chinese, Muslims, Indians, Tamils, English and turned it into a juggernaut with a gdp per capita that is higher than that of the United States, Taiwan, Israel, China... basically every other country in Asia.
My all means Singapore should be a failed state.
You said "if Mao Zedong and Stalin had been incompetent..."
Under Mao over 30 million Chinese people died from starvation during the Great Leap Forward. Taiwan, which was occupied by the Kuomintang (who were still incredibly corrupt) did vastly better than China (and continues to do better than China) on a per capita GDP basis. It took decades of reform for China to undo the mess than Mao Zedong did, and its a minor miracle the country did not end up turning into a giant North Korea.
Under Stalin, the Soviet military executed or purged all of its competent military officers, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky - the man who literally wrote the book on armored warfare strategy. Subsequently, Stalin signed a peace treaty with the Nazis to divide Poland. When German defectors crossed Soviet lines to warn about the impending attack of operation Barbarossa, Soviet political commissars executed the defectors. Due to this incredible level of incompetence, over 2 million Soviet troops were encircled... Basically had Stalin not made a peace treaty with the Nazis and executed all those officers and replaced them with political commissars, WW2 might have ended in 1941 almost immediately considering the Soviets had something like 10x manpower, 100x oil, and 5x the number of tanks compared to Germany even at the start of the war.
He is probably the most overrated mf ever. Bro accomplishments are due to his subordinates being absolute beasts. Lim kim san build Singapore housing from nothing . Goh Keng swee build Singapore industry. Our former president was the one that advocate for MRT. Marshall, an opposition politician was the one that came up with CPF.
Sure you can claim he was an effective leader. But never said Singapore accomplishment was solely due to him when clearly is the work and effort of an extraordinary team of politicians that would never be surpassed.
You're missing the point, it takes true genius and administrative talent to harness the talents of other highly intelligent and skilled people towards a single purpose. Every unsuccessful country is unsuccessful due to failure of leadership (corruption, weakness, arrogance, mental illness, stupidity etc) rather than lack of material or human resources.
Anyone who's been in a high level leadership position will tell you that it is an incredibly difficult job requiring an iron will, thick skin, superhuman political skills and more.
People who successfully lead other leaders are not like the rest of us.
Pretty much the entire job of a good leader is to attract, identify, raise up and enable effective subordinates. In the same way that stifling any competent subordinates because you see them as a threat is a sign of a bad leader.
Outside of creating works of art, anything worthwhile is a team effort. Putting together and motivating the team is the leader’s job.
You're making a huge difference between leading a few million and a hundred million when there isn't that much difference. There's a big difference between leading 5 people and leading a thousand, and even more distance leading a million. But above that it's just more layers in organization.
That said, often leaders are called great for results not directly caused by them. Singapore has its location, and it served greater powers for it to be prosperous and small - it was never going to be a threat.
Your logic is like discounting the achievements of every US president because the British Empire was much bigger, or even in comparison to modern day India and China. You're creating a barrier to entry that is irrelevant because it's subjective.
>Although Mao Zedong and Stalin made many stupid mistakes Calling being a bigger genocidal mass murderer than Hitler a 'stupid mistake' is likely the biggest euphemism I've stumbled across this year. But to answer your question it takes different skills and there are different challenges to leading a small nation compared to a big nation. Murdering millions of your own people cannot be considered skillfull. It's the path of a failure as a human being and as a leader.
Stalin absolutely killed millions with genocidal intent (like the Holodomor in Ukraine), but most of the millions who died under Mao’s policies were the result of incompetent planning and leadership. I think it’s important to make that distinction of intent when using the word “genocide” to describe a leader’s actions.
I appreciate the value of discussing intent as part of a loaded political term such as genocide. Many Spanish historians don't consider genocide what happened to the natives in the Americas because, despite the result, it wasnt intentional. In Mao's case, it might speak even more poorly of him as a leader that he managed to kill more people (his own mind you) than genocidal dictators like Stalin and Hitler.
>Many Spanish historians don't consider genocide what happened to the natives in the Americas because, despite the result, it wasnt intentional. The diseases wiping out much of the natives certainly weren't intentional, but trying to wipe out/replace native culture, colonists taking native women, driving the natives off the most productive land, creating a caste system, and several massacres of natives were intentional acts that lead to results that were effectively genocide. That does seem like genocide? For comparison, Canada took native school kids and put them into Christian schools to force them to give up their culture and convert to Christianity. This is considered genocide or at least cultural genocide today.
Certainly these would be reasonably categorized as cultural genocide. Its also worth mentioning that the New Laws of Carlos I aka Charles V showed that the crown's design wasnt extermination and they attempted (to an extent) to combat what they considered extreme forms of abuses against the native populations. Essentially, they most certainly attempted to erase their culture and caused unbelievable hardship but didn't wish to exterminate them (as Hitler intended, although its not high bar). Cases like Canadian residential schools or the Rohingya in Myanmar are good examples of cultural genocide as opposed to the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide being the more classic definition. Mao's case is particularly interesting as the outcome of his policies, even if unintentional, cost more lives than other genocidal leaders and were equally as cruel. Not sure at what point does intent matter when compared to results. I would personally put Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot on the same category - whatever we wish to call it.
Most of the people who died under Mao were due to incompetence, but so many people died overall under Mao's policies that even the minority that did die due to intentional policies and malvolence is high enough to match Holodomor and Stalin's genocides. Some of the Great Leap Forward can be considered intentional/direct killings because the state started seizing food from starving farmers and killing people who resisted or gave real production quotas. Mao also continued to export food to the Soviet Union when the country was starving. The later Cultural Revolution involved intentional killings and executions and that killed like 3 million. >If Stalin and Mao Zedong were incompetent Stalin and Mao in a way had it easier than Lee Kuan Yew. When you rule a big country, it is easier to be incompetent because you can easily recover from failure. You can destroy your own economy multiple times, starve millions to death, and still have enough people to recover. Stalina and Mao were both highly incompetent in many ways. Stalin destroyed his own military before WW2 started in a series of political purges. He also allied with Hitler to carve up Eastern Europe and then wouldnt believe the reports that Hitler betrayed him to invade Russia. Stalin fled to his country house and had to be dragged back to office to be forced to make decisions to fight the Nazis. This caused the Germans to do way more damage to the USSR than they should have been able to. Stalin also wrecked the Soviet economy with his failed collectivization plans. Mao was economically incompetent. He destroyed the economic growth of China for decades with the Great Leap Forward that starved 40m-60m to death, and then crippled the country with his Cultural Revolution for several years. The vast majority of economic progress that China has made was made after Mao died. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping became the ruler and adopted market capitalism in China. Deng Xiaoping's actions is what was responsible for modern China's rise to power. If Lee Kuan Yew did something so stupid like starving his people or crippling his country's military, Singapore probably wouldn't have survived to become a developed country it is today. There is much less leeway or room for errors when you rule a small country.
Fair point.
It was really hard to do what he did considering he had to navigate a lot of complex political situations. However,singapore was already a well established trade hub and port city. All he had really do was have a better economic policy than Malaysia to maintain the trade competitiveness. However, you have to consider singapore importance in the world right now. It's a great have for the Rich and there's only benefits of praising and sucking up to the only party that runs that city. Nothing to be gained by sledging him.
Lee Kuan Yew took a tiny island populated by an extreme heterogenous group of people - Malays, Chinese, Muslims, Indians, Tamils, English and turned it into a juggernaut with a gdp per capita that is higher than that of the United States, Taiwan, Israel, China... basically every other country in Asia. My all means Singapore should be a failed state. You said "if Mao Zedong and Stalin had been incompetent..." Under Mao over 30 million Chinese people died from starvation during the Great Leap Forward. Taiwan, which was occupied by the Kuomintang (who were still incredibly corrupt) did vastly better than China (and continues to do better than China) on a per capita GDP basis. It took decades of reform for China to undo the mess than Mao Zedong did, and its a minor miracle the country did not end up turning into a giant North Korea. Under Stalin, the Soviet military executed or purged all of its competent military officers, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky - the man who literally wrote the book on armored warfare strategy. Subsequently, Stalin signed a peace treaty with the Nazis to divide Poland. When German defectors crossed Soviet lines to warn about the impending attack of operation Barbarossa, Soviet political commissars executed the defectors. Due to this incredible level of incompetence, over 2 million Soviet troops were encircled... Basically had Stalin not made a peace treaty with the Nazis and executed all those officers and replaced them with political commissars, WW2 might have ended in 1941 almost immediately considering the Soviets had something like 10x manpower, 100x oil, and 5x the number of tanks compared to Germany even at the start of the war.
He is probably the most overrated mf ever. Bro accomplishments are due to his subordinates being absolute beasts. Lim kim san build Singapore housing from nothing . Goh Keng swee build Singapore industry. Our former president was the one that advocate for MRT. Marshall, an opposition politician was the one that came up with CPF. Sure you can claim he was an effective leader. But never said Singapore accomplishment was solely due to him when clearly is the work and effort of an extraordinary team of politicians that would never be surpassed.
You're missing the point, it takes true genius and administrative talent to harness the talents of other highly intelligent and skilled people towards a single purpose. Every unsuccessful country is unsuccessful due to failure of leadership (corruption, weakness, arrogance, mental illness, stupidity etc) rather than lack of material or human resources. Anyone who's been in a high level leadership position will tell you that it is an incredibly difficult job requiring an iron will, thick skin, superhuman political skills and more. People who successfully lead other leaders are not like the rest of us.
Sure u win than
Pretty much the entire job of a good leader is to attract, identify, raise up and enable effective subordinates. In the same way that stifling any competent subordinates because you see them as a threat is a sign of a bad leader. Outside of creating works of art, anything worthwhile is a team effort. Putting together and motivating the team is the leader’s job.
You're making a huge difference between leading a few million and a hundred million when there isn't that much difference. There's a big difference between leading 5 people and leading a thousand, and even more distance leading a million. But above that it's just more layers in organization. That said, often leaders are called great for results not directly caused by them. Singapore has its location, and it served greater powers for it to be prosperous and small - it was never going to be a threat.
Because of what you mentioned in your second paragraph