Freedom House is a highly respected, non-profit research and advocacy organization focused on democracy and human rights. Each year it issues a report summarizing “Freedom in the World.” The report for 2022 was unequivocal – it was a warning that read in part as follows:
Global freedom faces a dire threat. Around the world the enemies of liberal democracy… are accelerating their attacks. Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do this same…. The global order is nearing a tipping point, and if democracy’s defenders do not work together to help guarantee freedom for all people, the authoritarian model will prevail.
No one at Freedom House or anywhere else predicted that before 2022 was over three of the world’s most powerful and apparently secure authoritarian leaders would run into trouble. But they did, serious trouble. This is not for a moment to say any of the three are done and gone. Not by a long shot. But it is to point out that in the last several months Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei each faced significant resistance to their rule. In each case followers who were supposed completely and indefinitely to succumb to their command refused.
Most Ukrainians have resisted, many even risking their lives to fight against Putin’s unprovoked attack on their country. Some Chinese have rebelled against Xi’s unbridled attempt completely to control their lives ostensibly on account of Covid. And some Iranians have protested the oppressiveness of Khamenei’s regime, one that for three decades has silenced and suppressed them, especially women.
None of the three dictators has had much experience with dissent – which means that none know exactly how to respond or proceed. Because of their tyrannical leadership, and because of the length of their time in power, each now finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. Give an inch and the people will take a mile. Refuse to give even an inch and resistance will not shrink it will grow. In response to fear and loathing in Ukraine, Putin’s War is far larger and longer, and more brutal than any that Putin imagined. And in China and Iran while the resisters would go underground – they would though only to the naked eye disappear in response to police brutality – truth is that both Xi and Khamenei have already been nicked. Or maybe pricked. Or maybe pierced as one would an armor made of metal.
Impossible to know how this will all turn out. What is possible to know that each of the three leaders thought they had followers who would weakly and meekly follow. But they thought wrong.