March 26, 2018
How Russia and China Could Come Unhinged
Democratic triumphalism was wrong 20 years ago, but now authoritarianism may not be sustainable
We have moved from a world of ideological struggles in the 20th century to a world of geopolitical struggles in the 21st—or so goes the conventional wisdom. But technology is moving so fast that this world of geopolitical struggles will likely transform into another stage of conflict. Eurasia itself will become unhinged, as the destabilizing autocracies in Moscow and Beijing themselves become unstable.
In December 1997, I published a cover story in the Atlantic called “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” It was a time of unbridled optimism among policy elites about the triumph of democracy across the world. Contrarily, I argued that such a triumph would be short-lived and that new forms of authoritarianism would arise. My argument was based on experience on the ground as a foreign correspondent in dozens of countries, where elections had been held without institutions and middle classes being built. Now my experience as a reader and a foreign correspondent reveals to me another lesson: The authoritarian trend that I predicted over 20 years ago may also not be sustainable.
The explosions of middle-class wealth and technological advancement, often occurring under authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian systems, are putting pressure on governments to be more alert to the needs of their citizens. Russia and China most acutely represent this trend. They now face what I call the Samuel Huntington trap.
Read the full op-ed on The Wall Street Journal.
More from CNAS
-
Loren DeJonge Schulman on The Smell of Victory Podcast
Podcast
On The Smell of Victory Podcast, Bob Hein and Phil Walter sat down with Loren DeJonge Schulman of the Center for a New American Security to discuss the draft. Listen to the f...
By Loren DeJonge Schulman
-
Trump Gets NATO Backwards
Commentary
Returning from the World War I armistice commemoration in Paris, President Trump reemphasized his view of America’s European allies. “We pay for large portions of other countr...
By Richard Fontaine
-
Amb. Nuland on N. Korea: The U.S. 'needs to get back into real diplomacy'
Video
Amb. Victoria Nuland, CEO of the Center for a New American Security and former Assistant Secretary of State, joins Ali Velshi to discuss reports that North Korea is moving ahe...
By Victoria Nuland
-
US midterm elections 2018: Democrats abroad in the Indo-Pacific
Commentary
A partial "blue wave" crested over the US House of Representatives this week, ushering in a Democratic majority there for the first time in eight years. With Republicans stren...
By Richard Fontaine
