Hostages of Eternal Autumn: Why Aging Leaders Won't Step Down Without a Major Bloodbath

The political calendar of an autocracy is easy to read. It reads like a schedule of disasters. Where power has been held for decades, elections cease to be a procedure and become a threat to the ruler’s personal survival. And there is a tried-and-true response to such a threat: bombings, war, a state of emergency, and rallying around the flag. We’ll examine two mechanisms by which aging leaders convert the blood of others into their own approval ratings, and three instances where they worked flawlessly: Russia in 1999, the U.S. after 9/11, and Israel after October 7. The geographical contexts differ—but the template is the same. In the conclusion—why a ruler in his eighties has no planning horizon beyond tomorrow, and what practical conclusion everyone living within such a system must draw.