Authoritarians across the globe had a big year in ’22
I write after reading Jonah Goldberg’s commentary, “It was a bad year for authoritarianism” (Dec. 22). I disagree. Look around the world. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has targeted women for severe repression. It has, most recently, banned women from attending universities. In Iran, though women continue to protest the moral police, the mullahs have not relented.
They have killed hundreds of protesters and jailed others for daring to cross them. In Myanmar, the military has conducted a successful coup, arresting democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi and putting her on trial.
There are other dictators who have seized power through elections like Viktor Orban of Hungary, with whom the U.S. right is enchanted, and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who surrendered his country’s economy to bitcoin, on a whim, acting as the sole decider of El Salvador’s fate.
Daniel Ortega is the dictator president of Nicaragua who has thrown dissidents in prison, and his vice president is Rosario Murillo, his own wife.
Then there is Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, a dictator much reviled by the U.S. now allowed to rehabilitate himself on the international stage. The world needs Venezuela’s oil, and after U.S. sanctions on that country are lifted, Chevron is expected to be there to get that oil.
Cuba remains a communist dictatorship where dissidents pine in prison after years of U.S. sanctions and hostility.
The Arab Spring never really bore fruit. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, a repressive leader, seems well ensconced in Egypt. Peru and Pakistan are weak democracies, corrupt and shaky, where power has been changing hands frequently. Sri Lanka is a failed state due to the Rajapaksa brothers who ruled there with an iron fist while robbing and misspending the island country’s treasury.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un throws ballistic missiles around while his own people starve.
Vladimir Putin kills off his enemies, invades Ukraine, commits war crimes and being the consummate kleptocrat he is, he protects his own wealth and health on the backs of conscripted Russian soldiers. Then there is Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, Putin’s buddy.
The Chinese chafe under Xi Jinping who is an accomplished authoritarian and a clear threat to China’s neighbors. He may have lifted his zero tolerance COVID policy, but that doesn’t mean he is willing to relinquish his despotism. Authoritarians are thriving in the Middle East, for example, in Saudi Arabia and Oman. Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and our very own Donald Trump, two right-wing wannabe dictators, may have suffered electoral defeats, but they are unwilling to concede and disappear.
Dictators are quite resilient and wily, though there are times when they miscalculate. They plan long-term to avoid existential threats. They have three pillars to support them: a sadistic secret service at their beck and call, a compliant military and a generally terrified populace that they have calculatedly terrorized. Authoritarians are only defeated when they’re isolated and their own collaborators turn against
them or when they are attacked by their own secret service or military or if powerful external forces invade them and defeat them or when they’re assassinated by internal enemies. It is not a guarantee that the end of authoritarianism in any place will be followed by the beginning of a liberal democracy.
I agree with Goldberg that authoritarianism comes naturally to humans. I was born in India after India attained independence from British rule, and growing up I heard some of the older people in my parents’ circle talk wistfully of the British Raj, how trains ran on time under the British, life was safer, crime and sectarian conflicts were low and corrupt Indians were not in power sending India down the river. This always astonished me because I admired India’s freedom fighters, and I was grateful for India’s hard fought democracy despite its flaws.
Apparently, some Indians were not in agreement. That is because authoritarianism seduces with the promise of safety and stability. It may not deliver in the end, but it does have a glitter for humans in search of a father figure they imagine will take care of them and keep them safe.