Although the Trotskyites could not achieve their Global Democratic Revolution through military action, their monetary policies may be doing the trick:
It's well known that the run-up in oil prices in recent years has had the unpleasant consequence of enlivening autocrats in oil-producing countries, from Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hugo Chávez. Now the latest swing in global commodities seems to be triggering a reverse effect: As prices for bread and rice soar, dictators are tottering.Oddly, one of them is Chávez, who lost a constitutional referendum in December partly because of the combination of soaring food prices and shortages he has inflicted on Venezuela. Another is Robert Mugabe, who to his surprise lost a presidential election in Zimbabwe three weeks ago, though he has yet to admit it. According to the U.N. World Food Program, the government of North Korea faces another food crisis; bread prices explain in part why Pervez Musharraf lost control of Pakistan's government in February.
Then there is Egypt, where the link between food and freedom -- or the lack of it -- has never been clearer. For more than half a century, the Arab world's most populous country has been run by a military-backed dictatorship that has supplied its millions of poor with subsidized bread. Consequently, Egypt consumes more bread per capita than France, and the only time the regime's power was seriously challenged came in 1977, when Anwar Sadat's attempt to cut bread subsidies provoked bloody riots.
