What war in Ukraine means for the age of the autocrat

A couple of weeks earlier than Russia invaded Ukraine, Viktor Orban visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Whereas Putin’s different conferences with western leaders had been tense and adversarial, the environment between the Hungarian prime minister and Russian president was virtually jovial.

Orban’s authorities was within the midst of a confrontation with the remainder of the EU over accusations that it’s undermining democracy and the rule of legislation. “Troublesome occasions, however we’re in excellent firm,” remarked Orban on the closing press convention, drawing fun from Putin. The Hungarian, who’s now the longest-serving chief within the EU, boasted of his many conferences with Putin. “I’m not planning to go away,” he chuckled. “I’ve good hopes that for a few years we are able to work collectively.”

Orban’s expectation that he’ll proceed to run Hungary lengthy into the long run is prone to be confirmed this weekend. The Fidesz celebration that he leads is predicted to win an in depth election — benefiting from an electoral and media system that’s now so deeply stacked in Orban’s favour that Hungary is classed as solely “partly free” by Freedom Home, a US think-tank.

Hungary’s election and its domination by Orban is a reminder that the strongman model of politics — so carefully related to Putin — has adherents everywhere in the world, together with throughout the established democracies of the west.

Since 2000, the rise of the strongman chief has develop into a central characteristic of world politics. In capitals as numerous as Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, Ankara, Budapest, Manila, Washington, Riyadh and Brasília, self-styled “strongmen” (and, to date, they’re all males) have risen to energy.

Sometimes, these leaders are nationalists and cultural conservatives, with little tolerance for minorities, dissent or the pursuits of foreigners. At residence, they declare to be standing up for the frequent man towards the “globalist” elites. Abroad, they posture because the embodiment of their nations. And, in every single place they go, they encourage a cult of persona.

It’s doable that the disaster of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will completely discredit the strongman model of politics. However these hopes must be balanced by the information that it is a motion — and a political model — that has put down deep roots over the previous 20 years.

The Age of the Strongman started on December 31 1999, when Putin was sworn in as president of Russia. It’s all too symbolic that he took energy on the onset of the twenty first century — for Putin turned the archetype for a brand new kind of strongman ruler that might reshape world politics over the following era.

Over the next 20 years, the Russian chief turned an vital image and even an inspiration for a era of authoritarians who admired his nationalism, his daring, his violent rhetoric and his contempt for “political correctness”. 

In 2003, Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned prime minister of Turkey. I first encountered him at a press convention in Brussels in 2004, the place Erdogan was urgent Turkey’s case to affix the EU. Once I requested if he was fearful by opposition to Turkish membership, he gave a solution that was properly tailor-made to liberal western sensibilities: “If the EU has determined to be a Christian membership, somewhat than one in every of shared values, then let it say so now.” 

Eighteen years later, the concept that Erdogan shares a set of liberal values with the EU can be thought to be absurd in each Turkey and Brussels. Over the intervening years, the president of Turkey has develop into more and more authoritarian and stridently anti-western in his rhetoric. He has imprisoned journalists and political opponents and now runs his nation from an enormous new presidential palace constructed for him in Ankara.

An identical strategy of disillusionment has set in with Xi Jinping. Once I met him within the Nice Corridor of the Folks in Beijing in 2013, a 12 months after he had taken energy, Xi’s message to a small group of western guests was intentionally reassuring. Talking calmly, with an enormous mural of the Nice Wall of China behind him, Xi proclaimed: “The argument that robust international locations are certain to hunt hegemony doesn’t apply to China.”

However, inside a 12 months, China had begun to assemble navy bases proper throughout the disputed waters of the South China Sea. At residence, Xi has moved China away from a collective mannequin of management and inspired a cult of persona round “Xi dada” (“Uncle Xi”). The shift in direction of strongman management was cemented when presidential time period limits had been abolished in 2018 — doubtlessly permitting Xi to rule for all times.

The excellence between the state and the chief is eroded — making the strongman’s substitute with a lesser mortal appear inconceivable

The refusal to go away energy is a trademark of strongman rule. Putin and Erdogan have additionally modified their international locations’ constitutions to permit them to increase their interval on the prime. Donald Trump “joked” a number of occasions that the US also needs to change its structure to permit him to rule for longer as president than the 2 phrases mandated by the structure. His refusal to just accept electoral defeat led on to the try by Trump devotees to storm the Capitol on January 6 2021.

Strongman leaders must be thought to be indispensable. Their objective is to persuade folks that they alone can save the nation. The excellence between the state and the chief is eroded — making the strongman’s substitute with a lesser mortal appear harmful or inconceivable.

India additionally took the strongman path in 2014, with the election of Narendra Modi, chief of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata celebration. Like Putin, Modi has cultivated a picture as a macho man — boasting of the dimensions of his chest and of his willingness to make use of violence towards India’s enemies. Throughout his profitable 2019 re-election marketing campaign, Modi assured voters: “While you vote for Lotus [his party symbol], you aren’t pushing a button on a machine however urgent a set off to shoot terrorists.”

Modi’s defenders dismiss criticism of this sort of rhetoric as liberal hand-wringing. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s international minister, as soon as instructed me very firmly that Modi’s international and home critics needed to perceive the depth of the prime minister’s relationship with the India that lies past Delhi.

Modi — like Xi, Putin and Erdogan — has inspired a cult of persona. The BJP’s electoral campaigns have centred on his claims to knowledge, power and private morality. As Ramachandra Guha, a number one historian of India, has put it: “Since Might 2014, the huge assets of the state have been devoted to creating the prime minister the face of each programme, each commercial, each poster. Modi is India, India is Modi.” 

That model of politics was as soon as regarded as alien to the mature democracies of the west. However strongman politics triumphed within the US with the election of Trump, who spoke of “American carnage” and instructed the Republican celebration conference in 2016: “I alone can repair it.”

The distinctive financial and cultural energy of the US meant that Trump’s ascent modified the environment of world politics — strengthening and legitimising the strongman model and giving rise to a wave of emulators. Trump himself clearly admired different strongman leaders and appreciated their firm. Forward of a summit with Kim Jong Un, one in every of Trump’s aides remarked to me, with a barely sheepish smile: “The president enjoys dealing head to head with authoritarian leaders.” And, certainly, Trump’s first abroad go to as president was to Saudi Arabia in Might 2017, the place he bonded with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto chief of the nation.

“MBS”, as he turned recognized, was hailed by some within the west as simply the form of strongman reformer that Saudi Arabia wanted — till the homicide and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi brokers shocked the crown prince’s western followers. When MBS was high-fived by a laughing Vladimir Putin on the subsequent G20 summit, the picture appeared to sum up the lawlessness and impunity of the Age of the Strongman.

On account of this worldwide motion in direction of personalised politics, it turned more durable to take care of a transparent line between the authoritarian and democratic worlds. Historically, US presidents have drawn a dramatic distinction between “the free world” (led by the US) and undemocratic international locations. However Trump performed down this distinction. When it was put to him in 2015 that Putin (whom he had simply praised) had killed journalists and political opponents, Trump replied: “I feel our nation does loads of killing too.” As president, he mused to journalist Bob Woodward: “I get alongside very properly with Erdogan . . . The more durable and meaner they’re, the higher I get together with them.” 

The erasure of a transparent line between management in democratic and authoritarian methods has been a key objective of the authoritarians for many years. Early in Putin’s lengthy reign in Russia, I met his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, within the Kremlin. The screensaver on Peskov’s pc was a collection of revolving quotations from George Orwell’s 1984 — “warfare is peace”, “freedom is slavery” and so forth. Once I requested Peskov about a few of Putin’s current repressive acts, he smilingly replied that “all our methods are imperfect”. 

Trump’s discourse appeared to substantiate this longstanding Russian and Chinese language place. Right here was an American president prepared to say: we additionally lie, we additionally kill, our media is faux, our elections are rigged, our courts are dishonest.

As a result of Putin was the archetype for most of the strongman rulers who adopted him, the results of his success or failure will likely be actually world

Strongman leaders regularly justify their ruthless methods by portraying their international locations as in crises so deep that they’ll now not afford to respect liberal beliefs, such because the rule of legislation. The strongmen additionally usually play on a deep worry {that a} dominant majority is about to be displaced — struggling huge cultural and financial losses within the course of.

Modi’s BJP has warned of a “love jihad” — an alleged Muslim plot to erode India’s majority Hindu standing by way of intermarriage. Orban has argued that mass migration poses a menace to the very survival of the Hungarian folks. The prospect that the US will develop into “majority-minority” by 2045 helped to gasoline the social and racial anxiousness that drove the rise of Trump.

The willingness to “get powerful” with foreigners — or minority teams comparable to migrants or Muslims — is integral to the enchantment of the strongmen. Their macho posturing additionally makes them prone to enchantment to conventional concepts of male power and to scorn feminism and LGBT rights.

Putin efficiently cultivated help amongst cultural conservatives within the west by repeatedly decrying the follies of “political correctness” — with a specific concentrate on homosexual rights and feminism. When, in 2019, I requested Konstantin Malofeev, one of many ideologues of Putinism, what he thought to be the essence of western liberalism, he replied: “No borders between international locations and no distinction between women and men.”

However in all probability the strongest frequent issue amongst all of the strongman leaders is nostalgic nationalism. In numerous methods, they virtually all use variants of Trump’s well-known promise to “make America nice once more”. President Xi’s promise of a “nice rejuvenation of the Chinese language folks” is, primarily, a promise to make China nice once more — restoring the nation to its rightful place because the Center Kingdom. Modi leads a nationalist motion that appeals to Hindu satisfaction in an excellent and generally mythologised previous — earlier than the British and the Mughal empires.

Orban has talked of someday regaining the territories that Hungary misplaced after the primary world warfare. Erdogan seeks inspiration from the glories of the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed after the primary world warfare. Even within the UK, Boris Johnson’s plan for a “International Britain” attracts on nostalgia for the interval when Britain was an excellent imperial energy somewhat than only one member of a European membership.

Nonetheless, the one most harmful expression of nostalgic nationalism has come from the unique strongman himself — Putin. The invasion of Ukraine was a logical end result of most of the worst features of strongman rule: the enchantment to a supposed nationwide emergency that justifies radical motion; the veneration of power and violence; contempt for liberalism and legislation; and personalised rule that shuts out criticism and opposite recommendation.

As a result of Putin was the archetype for most of the strongman rulers who adopted him, the results of his success or failure will likely be actually world. The western response to Russia’s invasion was swifter and stronger than Putin in all probability anticipated. That, mixed with Russia’s navy difficulties, have raised hopes that he and the strongman model he represents might be completely discredited by the warfare in Ukraine.

The longer a strongman ruler is in energy, the extra possible he’s to succumb to paranoia or megalomania

These hopes are professional. But it surely must be famous that different members of the Strongman Worldwide have remained studiously impartial on the warfare — refusing to sentence Putin and steering away from the worldwide sanctions effort. The fence-sitters embody Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, MBS in Saudi Arabia and even Trump himself, who praised Putin as a strategic genius on the eve of the invasion. An important ally for Putin is Xi — who met the Russian chief in Beijing simply weeks earlier than the invasion of Ukraine.

After which there’s Orban. The Hungarian chief has gone together with EU sanctions on Russia. However he has been accused by Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, of blocking weapons provides to Ukraine and pursuing an “overtly pro-Russian” place. Vereshchuk even speculated that Orban may need his personal designs on Ukrainian territory and “silently dream of our Transcarpathia”.

These sorts of considerations mirror the truth that strongman rule has traditionally been carefully related to violence, conquest and worldwide anarchy. The strongman period of the Nineteen Thirties noticed Mussolini, Franco, Stalin and Hitler plunge their nations and the world into wars.

Putin is now repeating this lethal sample. His invasion of Ukraine has lastly provoked the US and the EU to aim to combat again towards strongman authoritarianism. Joe Biden’s exhortation, “For God’s sake, this man can not keep in energy,” has been a lot criticised. But it surely displays the US president’s often-expressed perception that the world is as soon as once more locked into an era-defining battle between autocracy and democracy.

There are good causes to consider that the liberal democratic world will finally prevail. Strongman rule is an inherently flawed mannequin. It can not take care of the issue of succession and it lacks the checks and balances that permit democracies to ditch failed insurance policies and rulers. The longer a strongman ruler is in energy, the extra possible he’s to succumb to paranoia or megalomania. Putin’s determination to assault Ukraine exemplifies that hazard.

However strongmen are very onerous to lever out of energy. The Age of the Strongman has taken maintain over the course of a era. There could also be much more turmoil and struggling earlier than it’s consigned to historical past.

Gideon Rachman is the FT’s chief international affairs commentator. His new ebook, ‘The Age of the Strongman’, is revealed by Bodley Head within the UK and Different Press within the US

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