October 04, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -    There is currently a good deal of hysteria here in Washington about something called “authoritarianism” allegedly taking the offensive against democratic systems of government.  A century ago, imperialists, colonialists, fascists, and communists did indeed articulate theories about their superiority to democracy and seek to impose autocratic systems of government on others.  In World War II and the Cold War, ideology played almost as large a role as geopolitics.

Today there are plenty of countries in the grips of autocratic regimes, but there are none propagandizing on behalf of autocracy or “authoritarianism.”  The international appeal of authoritarian systems of government, if any, derives from the extent to which they deliver prosperity and domestic tranquility to their citizens.  In the case of China, this is considerable – vastly superior so far to democratic India, for example.  In the case of Russia, not so much.

Present-day systems of government in countries with authoritarian governments are specific to their birthplaces.  They are not exportable.  They have little in common with each other and, despite the way Americans lump them together, they don’t seem to feel a bond.

What is happening is not the advance of some sort of united front of the world’s many incompatible varieties of authoritarianism, but the retreat of representative democracy, constitutionalism, secularism, the rule of law, and the rule-bound international order.  We are witnessing the erosion of systems built on the values of the European Enlightenment and implemented most radically here in the United States.  The West disseminated these values and imposed them on the world over the past two centuries.  They have been the foundation of global peace and development and remain the most widely accepted standards of good government.

As the Cold Peace that followed the Cold War ends in renewed hostility between great powers, it is not clear what values will shape a new world order, when and if one emerges.  This is deeply disquieting – especially when one acknowledges the active role of the present U.S. administration in unraveling the world order American hegemony invented, sustained, and managed throughout the last half of the last century.

Democracy is contracting, not because it is under pressure from foreign foes, but because citizens in democratic countries have diminished confidence in it.  They increasingly regard their elected leaders as incompetent, indecisive, self-serving, corrupt, contemptuous of them, and ineffectual or indifferent to their interests and needs.  Dissatisfaction with what democratic governments now actually deliver to their citizens fuels “populism” and empowers demagoguery.

Resistance to ethnic and cultural change takes the form of phenomena like “white nationalism” and fury at “political correctness” that appears to privilege previously despised minorities over those previously favored.  We are being reminded that populism has historically found its highest expression in various forms of ethno-cultural “fascism.”  Disillusionment with democracy creates fissures that geopolitical adversaries inevitably exploit.