Putin bares the flaws of autocracy for world to see

President Joe Biden has often said that the struggle of our age is democracy versus authoritarianism. If that is the case, in Russia’s cruel war against Ukraine it is the autocrats who so far have been diminished and discredited.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s gross underestimation of Ukraine’s ability to fight, NATO’s will to resist, and his own army’s unreadiness are the obvious examples of this. But China also seemed unprepared for the geopolitical turmoil that followed Russia’s invasion. Far-right populist politicians in the West with Russian ties, such as France’s Marine Le Pen and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, are rushing to distance themselves from Mr. Putin and his Ukraine adventure.

This dynamic could change. The war in Ukraine is only three weeks old. But in that brief time the sense that in this historical era authoritarians are on the march – that they have more energy, vision, and vitality than democratic counterparts – may have been defeated, says Larry Diamond, a democracy scholar and professor at Stanford University.

“If that’s the case, this will not only be Putin’s Waterloo, it may prove to be the Waterloo for global authoritarianism to some extent as well,” says Professor Diamond.

A debacle visible to the world

One of the reasons why the Ukraine war seems to undermine the autocratic style of leadership is that it so obviously has gone nothing like Mr. Putin and other Russian leaders expected. Troops didn’t have food, gas, or munitions for weeks of ferocious fighting. Russia has yet to establish full air dominance over Ukraine, according to Pentagon officials. Casualties have been high. Russian units are stalemated outside Kyiv and a few other cities, battering them from afar with missiles and shells, devastating civilians.

So far there is little reason to think that these failures are loosening Mr. Putin’s grip on power. State-sponsored media ensure that most Russians don’t know the real story about Ukraine. After some two decades at the pinnacle of the state, Putin has a vast repressive apparatus at his disposal, says Brian Taylor, professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

“I don’t think we should see this as the regime coming unglued immediately,” says Professor Taylor.

But outside the Russian information bubble, the rest of the world can see in Mr. Putin’s situation why decision-making in personalist autocracies is often highly problematic. Actions can be taken quickly and decisively – but they can also be rash and poorly thought out. Debate and exposure to other points of view are limited. 

“With authoritarian regimes, the risk is that power becomes so centralized in one person or a small group and they end up just only hearing the information that they want to hear,” says Michael Beckley, a professor of political science at Tufts University and co-author of a Foreign Affairs analysis on how Ukraine is fortifying democracies.

War and other armed belligerence can expose these autocratic flaws in a catastrophic manner. It pushes things outside boundaries autocrats know well and raises the stakes. Foreign adversaries push back.

“Dictators, just because they’re so used to being able to exercise power by fiat at home, suddenly have a rude awakening when they try to push abroad,” says Professor Beckley.

Democracies showing agility

Meanwhile, the democracies of the United States and Europe and the Pacific Rim – stereotyped as gridlocked, unresponsive, self-referential, and plain slow – have come together in a united response to Ukraine with stunning swiftness.

Economic sanctions already in place against Russia are likely the most stringent ever enacted against an economy of Russia’s size. The coalition behind them stretches from South Korea to Switzerland and includes most of the world’s prosperous democracies. Hundreds of Western firms are ending or pausing their Russian operations.

Part of that may be due to the efforts of President Biden and NATO allies to rally what in Cold War days was called “the free world.” But much of it is likely the result of the sheer shock of Russia’s actions and the moral clarity of the situation.

“This has been a wake-up call to those democracies and like-minded countries and nations that yes, there is a real challenge here to everything that we stand for,” says Paula Dobriansky, senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and former undersecretary of state for global affairs.

In recent years authoritarianism sometimes seemed the rising form of national governments. China built a huge economy, lifting millions out of poverty, with a circumscribed autocratic leadership. Russia recovered from the chaos and poverty that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union as Mr. Putin amassed power, becoming something close to an autocrat, if not a dictator.

But for now, democratic governance seems revived. Open debate about options by many voices hasn’t weakened the coherence of the response to Russian aggression. If anything, it’s strengthened it.

“The unified response of the West somewhat undermines the arguments that one used to hear not too long ago that the West was too internally divided both within countries and across countries to stand up to the rise of authoritarian states like Russia and China,” says Professor Taylor.

“A very high human price”

It’s far too early to say an apparent era of autocratic rise has ended. Stymied in the opening phase of its invasion, Russia seems certain to redouble its military efforts. More Ukrainian civilians will suffer. How much of Ukraine remains after the war, and who wins it, will have an enormous impact on the challenges of reconstruction and resettling of refugees that lie ahead.

“If it is going to turn out to be historically the case that a birth of freedom happened at this moment, it’s happening at a very high human price,” says Professor Diamond of Stanford University.

Meanwhile, the world’s largest autocracy, China, may see the current struggle between Russia and the West as an opportunity for itself to gain relative strength by remaining aloof from the fight. 

Chinese leaders appeared surprised by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, wrote Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, shortly after it occurred. Since then Beijing has struggled to strike a rhetorical balance between supporting an autocracy with which it has friendly relations, and maintaining deep economic ties with the West while expressing sympathy for Ukrainian civilians.

American officials believe China’s strategy may be to profess neutrality in public while helping Russia behind the scenes. Beijing and Moscow share a major strategic interest: weakening the U.S. and the Western alliance.

That is why President Biden, in a two-hour video call on Friday, warned Chinese leader Xi Jinping against agreeing to any Russian requests for military aid.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week said China has a responsibility to use its influence with Russia to defend the international rules “it professes to support.”

“Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction by refusing to condemn this aggression while seeking to portray itself as a neutral arbiter,” Secretary Blinken said.

Challenges for far-right populists

Far-right populists in the West have had a more difficult time dealing with their Putin problems.

For years they have praised Mr. Putin and his policies of closed borders, ethno-nationalist rhetoric, and belligerence toward Western alliances. Now Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, France’s Marine Le Pen, and others are trying to backpedal without completely reversing previous positions.

Mr. Salvini, Italy’s leading right-wing politician, once wore a T-shirt featuring Mr. Putin’s face in the European Parliament. Now he’s walking the fine line of condemning the violence in Ukraine while avoiding criticism of Mr. Putin personally. 

Mr. Orbán, whose critics say he has rolled back democracy in a NATO country, has had a close relationship with Putin. Now, though he appears poised to win elections in April, he’s supported sanctions on Russia and welcomed Ukrainian refugees.

Ms. Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party has borrowed money from a Russian bank. In the past she has declared Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea to be legal. But now, running for president and badly trailing incumbent Emmanuel Macron in the polls, she has denounced Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine as “completely reprehensible.”  

“It changes, in part, the opinion I have had of him,” she has said.

The war could also damage former President Donald Trump’s chances in 2024, although how much remains to be seen. Mr. Trump has spoken admiringly of Mr. Putin in the past. In February, just days before the invasion, the former president labeled Mr. Putin’s pre-invasion declaration of portions of Ukraine as independent states to be “savvy” and “genius.”

A galvanizing moment for the West?

No longer will Mr. Putin’s global image be one of clever ruthlessness, akin to a movie villain, say these democracy experts. Instead, for the Western world he seems to have morphed into a reckless authoritarian who rants at rallies about ethno-nationalist themes and talks openly about the possibility of resorting to use of nuclear weapons.

The West’s comfortable assumptions that its “soft power” of prosperity and freedom was more important than the hard power of armies, and that autocracies like Russia were bluffing when they threatened military action, have been exposed as too optimistic, says Professor Beckley of Tufts.

Democracies tend to do the wrong things until they are sort of snapped to attention by events, he says. Now they are putting together a response based on sanctions and unity that could serve as a framework for action against future authoritarian aggression.

“A lot just lies in the hands of top leaders among the leading democracies right now,” says Professor Beckley. “They could ... build this out into effectively a new democratic order.”