Samantha Power on the Right Way to Counter Autocracy
“After years of democratic backsliding, the world’s autocrats are finally on the defensive,” Samantha Power writes in a new essay. Russia’s disastrous war in Ukraine and China’s struggles with managing COVID-19 have demonstrated the shortcomings of these authoritarian states. Now, “the United States and other democracies have a chance to regain their momentum—but only if we learn from the past and adapt our strategies.” For decades, Power argues, “advocates of democracy have focused too narrowly on defending rights and freedoms, neglecting the pain and dangers of economic hardship and inequality.” Meanwhile, antidemocratic forces have been able to exploit economic and social grievances to “gain a political foothold on every continent.” “To seize this moment and swing the pendulum of history back toward democratic rule,” Power writes, the United States and its partners must focus on emerging threats to democracy, such as corruption, lack of economic mobility, and new digital surveillance technologies. Only then, she argues, can Washington “demonstrate that democracies can deliver for their people.” Read more from Foreign Affairs on the future of democracy: “All Democracy Is Global” by Larry Diamond “The War Between Democracy and Nihilism in Ukraine” by Timothy Snyder “How Dictatorships Endure” by Sheri Berman “Why Autocrats Fear Women” by Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks “How to Save Democracy From Technology” by Francis Fukuyama, Barak Richman, and Ashish Goel |
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