Is former presidential speechwriter and US ambassador Mark Palmer the wildest of fantasists or a true prophet of this new 'century of democracy'? He has drawn up a rogues' gallery of the world's 43 remaining dictators - from China's Hu Jintao to Fidel Castro of Cuba - and contends that they can all be put out of business by 2025, and almost entirely through nonviolent means. In other words, in just a generation, we could have a fully democratic world.
He has laid it all out - the candidates for eviction, the nature of their regimes and a how-to-do-it guide for democracy activists - in a new book, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil.
His passion flows from years on the barricades. As a presidential speechwriter, he lent the words to Ronald Reagan's memorable Westminster speech that foretold the doom of the Soviet empire. As US ambassador to Budapest, he marched on the streets with students, sweet-talked hardcore communists into accepting the inevitable and, before his tour was over, Hungary stood among the iron curtain's new democracies.
Now, along with the bipartisan Council for a Community of Democracies and other similarly driven private groups, he looks at the possibility of the nonviolent overthrow of an 'arc of tyranny' that runs from North Korea and China to several former Soviet Central Asian republics, the Middle East and Angola, along with three other isolated western dictatorships.
He draws inspiration from the democratic successes of the last 25 years: the ousting of former presidents Marcos, in the Philippines, Suharto, in Indonesia, and Jaruzelski, in Poland, plus the collapse of the Berlin Wall - all with a minimum of bloodshed.
He notes that most of the world's Muslims already live in electoral democracies (including India and Indonesia). The days could be numbered for some of the remaining despots on Palmer's hit list - Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Kim Jong-il of North Korea, to name but two.
China's leaders are at the top of this list, but may be the hardest target of all. They perform well enough to maintain legitimacy and concede just enough space to stall serious opposition. Moreover, democracies hesitate to try to destabilise China because of its increasing weight on the world stage and the unacceptable economic cost of abrupt regime change. Still, Palmer wants to get the ball rolling by promoting civic education in the mainland and helping Hong Kong citizens maintain and test the limits of their freedom.