2023 Will Be a Stress Test for the New Authoritarianism
Making predictions is such a tricky maneuver and one that pundits I actually trust rarely engage in. I tend to avoid them myself, but I do want to make a prediction lite for 2023:
2023 will be a stress test for the new authoritarianism.
Since 2015 it has been liberal democracy in crisis, beset by the forces of reactionary, authoritarian populism. Brext and Trump kicked off years of tumult. 2022, however, seems like a year of transition, despite the recent elections in Italy. Bolsanaro lost in Brazil, Trumpy Republicans did poorly in the midterms. Le Pen lost in France, and most importantly, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine galvanized liberal democracies and gave them a sense of purpose that had been absent for years.
Russia and China are the two most powerful nations critical of the liberal world order, and both are facing major challenges in the next year. Russia is losing the war, and Putin’s dreams of a revived Russian empire in Eastern Europe have been broken. When it began Putin claimed to be liberating a people who yearned to go back home to Mother Russia. Events have disproven this narrative, and the Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure show that they’ve given up on it.
Xi Jinping looked to be on top of the world after winning a third term as party chairman, but his authority has been undermined in recent months. The protests against his “zero COVID” policy were met with harsh crackdowns, but also with a lifting of his signature policy. The regime had been forced to move against its will. Despite the bluster of Xi’s regime, the party is not synonymous with the people, and the party does not have total control over society.
Other regimes in the anti-liberal camp have been shaken as well. Take Iran, which has had its own bouts of protest and civil disobedience. Unlike these moments in the past, the people in the streets are not calling for a reform of the Islamic Republic, but a replacement.
I am calling my prediction of a stress test for the anti-liberal bloc a prediction lite because I make no claims to the direction this stress test will take. Russia is currently reconstituting its forces and successfully inducting new waves of draftees after a rough start. They might well be able to break the stalemate and force a favorable outcome. Now that Xi has been willing to bend, Chinese people’s trust in the system may now be restored. Iran’s regime seems able to weather the storm, and its military assistance to Russia might turn the tide. What I am predicting is that regardless of the outcome, we are seeing a shift in power dynamics in the world where the fundamentals of liberal democracies look stronger and those of illiberal authoritarians and populists look weaker.
This should remind us of the significance of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The liberal world order has its problems. but its biggest success has been in preventing land wars in Europe. Hearing the names of World War II battlefields wreathed in blood again has been a stark reminder of what can be lost. The invasion of Ukraine shook a lot of moribund Westerners out of their apathetic funk. This issue has also united opposing political parties in the West like few others. Yes, hard-edged right-wing ideologues like JD Vance might poo-poo support for Ukraine, but old-line conservative pols like Mitch McConnell do not.
The new authoritarians derive their power from comparison. When they can point to liberal democracies as places full of chaos and dysfunction, it allows their people to feel that they have made a good trade by giving up political freedoms for security and economic prosperity. When the authoritarians can’t deliver on their promises, that’s when the trouble starts. They might be able to get through these narrow straits, but it will necessitate some compromises. My hope for 2023 is that these compromises will lower the global political temperature a bit after years of a raging fever.