Anne McElvoy While Russia scores with this World Cup the global powers jostle for position
Longevity is a powerful weapon in politics and it bestows greater authority among global leaders. Autocrats are good at wielding it because they can squash any sources of opposition or discontent along the way. With the salient exception of Merkel, the team of New Authoritarians is outliving Democracy Disunited in the time governments last at the helm. The important thing is not to mistake that for strength — “strongman” is a description of people who rule by corralling institutions to their interests, denying plurality and intimidating the press and opposition. More often they rule by fear, unaccountable personal fiefs and constraining individual rights, because their underlying anxiety is being overthrown. Few know how to leave office on peaceful terms, which means problems are stored up for successors and corruption thrives. Even fewer want to take the risk of a reckoning by being replaced by the choice of the popular will.
One of the mercifully robust things about the US under the Trump maladministration is that it can only last two terms at most, because that is what the 22nd amendment says (Franklin Roosevelt was the only exception, after wartime). Democrats will have to do business and have political and security dealings with a growing number of authoritarian countries (on the last point, Turkey’s drift is of more concern to Nato and the Western alliance than whether Putin glories in handshakes, goals and visitors currying favour). So I watch Russia 2018 wishing I was back in a country that I saw emerge from the Cold War, and feel fragility under the bombast. Thank you for the football and all the official fun that goes with it — and then drink to better days.
⬤ Anne McElvoy is senior editor at
The Economist