LONDON — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's speeches grow ever more delusional: last Thursday he accused al-Qaida of putting hallucinogenic pills into the coffee of unsuspecting Libyan 17-year-olds in order to get them to attack the regime. But he also said something important. Defending his massacres of Libyan protesters, he pointed to the example of China, arguing that "the integrity of China was more important than [the people] on Tiananmen Square."
The Chinese regime will not be grateful to him for making that comparison, but it is quite accurate. Gadhafi, like the Chinese Communist Party, claims that there are only two choices: his own absolute power, or chaos, civil war, and national disintegration. The "integrity of Libya" is allegedly at stake. Also like the Chinese ruling party, he is willing to kill hundreds or even thousands of his own fellow-citizens in order to maintain his rule.
Ruthlessness will not save Gadhafi now: He has already lost control of more than half the country, and the oil revenues that enable him to reward his allies and pay mercenaries will soon dry up. But ruthlessness certainly did save the Chinese Communist regime in 1989, when the army slaughtered between 300 and 3,000 young prodemocracy protesters in Beijing's central square. Might it need to deploy such violence again in order to survive?