Just two weeks ago venerable New York Times columnist David Brooks published an editorial titled, “The Century of the Strongman Begins.” It’s an excellent piece – or it so it seemed at the time.
Brooks argued the liberal world order was in crisis, a theme by now a commonplace. The reason for the crisis, Brooks wrote, was democracy has been permitted to wilt while the world “returns to normal.” What’s normal? “In normal times, people crave order and leaders like Vladimir Putin arise to give it to them.” Brooks went on to add that Putin has “redefined global conservatism and made himself its global leader.”
How quaint this reading of history seems today or, better, how wrong. Today Putin might be many things, but leader of “global conservatism” he is not.
In the last several days many talking heads have remarked how, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world had suddenly changed. Most point to change in Europe, especially in Germany, which almost overnight pivoted from nearly neutral on Russia to one of its most hard-headed opponents.
But I would suggest something more fundamental. That the world has changed because the crisis of liberal democracy has morphed into an appreciation of liberal democracy. A gratitude for liberal democracy – which is to say a gratitude for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Repeatedly in the last week we saw Ukrainians willing, literally, to sacrifice their lives for what Americans have come to take for granted. This is not to say that joining the liberal world order is their only motivation. It is not. What drives Ukrainians above all is their patriotic fervor – their dedication to their homeland, their history, their culture, their language. All of which they see as entirely separate and distinct from those of Russia. Still, their gravitation – for reasons of a painful past, a promising present, and a palpable yearning for a better future – toward Europe, toward the democratic ideal, has been an incalculably powerful motivator. For Ukrainians they are an inspiration.
It would, then, be a supreme irony of history if this turns out not the century of the strongman, but the century of the strongman’s demise. Putin will not survive this crisis. Oh, he might in the short term. But he will not in the long term. In time Ukraine will do him in.
The real question is Xi – Xi Jinping and others of his ilk. Too soon to know, obviously, how the current crisis will end. How much wreckage before Putin’s demise? (Literal or political.) Safe to assume, though, that strongmen all over the world are paying close attention to the calamity in East Europe. And that whatever the mistakes that Putin has made – is making, will make – their intention will be not to repeat them.