Authoritarian regimes losing ground

There are different ways of looking at the world. One is to see it as a batch of things arranged in a certain manner. Another is to see it as a cluster of processes that are always on the move, creating what Shakespeare called "tides in the affairs of men."

Back in 2016, there were several authoritarian populist regimes in Europe. In a fit of extraordinary levity, the United Kingdom voted for Brexit, and the US voted for Donald Trump. Further east, Russian President Vladimir Putin was tightening his grip on Europe's economy and its elites, while Chinese leader Xi Jinping was quietly increasing his Communist Party's control over everyday life. The future looked distinctly authoritarian.

That tide is now beginning to turn. Three almost simultaneous events in recent weeks are clear indicators.

First came the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, which Beijing failed to stop, despite making a great deal of noise about it. Official China was reduced, as the Russian saying goes, to "swinging its fists in the air after the fight has ended" by conducting military exercises around the island. By that point, Pelosi was long gone.

Then came the explosions at the Russian military air base Saky, in Crimea. The third event was the FBI search of Trump's home in Florida.

Beijing's response to Pelosi visit

No serious observer expected China to start making warlike noises because of an American politician's visit to Taiwan. Even Chinese commentators — insofar as they managed to make themselves heard on the other side of the "bamboo curtain" — seemed flabbergasted by Beijing's haste and rashness. Such behavior is atypical. After all, those in the Forbidden City have a habit of planning generations in advance.

Just 10 years ago, while the West was trying not to drown in its financial and sovereign debt crises, China was being painted as the economic "model" of the future. Moreover, its economic "soft power" seemed to be gradually taking over Asia, Africa, Latin America — and even the Balkans.

Decline in China's prosperity and influence

But any historian worth his or her salt will tell you that dictatorship, economic prosperity and growing international influence cannot exist side by side for long. Either the dictatorship has to go, or the prosperity and influence begin to dwindle. This is what has happened to China. As the dictatorship has grown stronger, the country's prosperity and influence have waned.

Today, China admits to a debt that is over 250% of its GDP — Greece was declared bankrupt at 127%. China experts have warned that there is additional hidden debt, which is around 44% of the admitted debt. Add all this up and we are talking about a total debt in the region of 350% of GDP — a completely incredible and totally untenable situation.

When dozens of provincial banks became unable to serve their customers recently, tanks were sent in to protect the banks from the incensed population.

Mobilizing support with belligerent behavior

Xi Jinping wants to be reelected general secretary of his party. Yet he cannot afford to stand in that election as the man on whose watch the economy went "belly up," as the Americans say. He has obviously decided to "do a Putin," in other words to mobilize support with belligerent behavior.

We no longer see a China that is confident that the future is hers. We see a failing authoritarian regime on the verge of panic.

BRICS fails to reach stated aims

The blowing up of the Saky air base in Crimea tells us something similar — this time about Russia.

Only 10 years ago, while China looked like the great economic power of the future, Russia seemed to be a hegemonic geopolitical power in the making. Back in 2006, it had even cobbled together an international alliance called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China, joined by South Africa in 2010), the stated aim of which was to end global American hegemony in the field of advanced technology.

The original BRIC states also vowed to undermine the international standing of the US dollar by producing their own BRIC currency. In Europe, Russian hybrid "soft power" was taking over politics, culture and the media.

By 2020, however, it was becoming clear that the BRICS alliance had been unable to achieve any of its stated aims. BRICS had not superseded the Americans in the field of advanced technology, nor managed to dent the US dollar.

Russia's soft power on the wane

Meanwhile, Russia's version of "soft power" was also beginning to fizzle out. Trump lost the presidential election in the US in 2020, and in Europe, authoritarian and populist parties sustained and (in some cases) financed by Putin were rapidly losing ground.

In 2017, Emmanuel Macron won the French presidential election against Putin ally Marine Le Pen, running on a modern, progressive, non-nationalist platform. In the Bavarian election of 2018, the far-right Alternative for Germany party, instead of sweeping the board as expected, was undermined by the Greens, which became the second-most powerful party.

In 2019, the Strache scandal decapitated the Austrian far right. In Poland and Hungary, the regimes began losing control of big cities in local elections. Finally, despite much pre-election bombast, the European far right did not win the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.

Europe: Putin's allies begin to lose sway

Europeans were turning Putin's friends out of power, replacing them with centrist-liberal-green coalitions. In 2021, the far right was thrown out of parliament in Bulgaria, as people elected to power a progressive center-green coalition. Two months previously, Germany had elected a left-green-liberal coalition government.

As he saw his "soft power" taking hits throughout the civilized world, Putin saw that "hard power" was his only remaining option to influence the course of geopolitical events. On February 24, 2022, he used that hard power.

The plan was obvious: Putin expected to subjugate Ukraine in a matter of days, whereupon he would move further West to begin redrawing the borders of European states. He planned to attain with tanks what he had failed to attain with "hybrid" weapons.

No quick victory for Russia

But the Ukrainians did not share Putin's faith in his tanks. By August 2022, Moscow's army had lost the initiative and was reduced to taking up defensive positions. In this context, the explosions in Crimea have demonstrated that Russia's defensive positions are not easily tenable and that Russia is likely to lose this war — and after that, everything. Its "hard power" has become the laughing stock of the world. It no longer has "soft power." It also no longer has a viable economy.

We are witnessing the end of the ideologies of the "Russian world" and of the "Chinese model." It is becoming clear that we in the democratic world are not doomed sooner or later to live under such "models." They are no longer advancing. They are retreating.

Trump facing criminal charges

The FBI's search of Trump's home, in turn, signals the waning of the threat of authoritarianism within the democratic world.

Ten years ago, America, that bastion of democracy, seemed to be teetering on the brink. By 2016 it had elected a president who was openly in awe of dictators around the world. People worried that America was on the road to its own authoritarian "model." Today, Trump is no longer president and instead may soon face criminal charges.

Serbia and Hungary

The nations of Europe have also grasped the connection between authoritarianism, criminality and ultimately, war — as in the case of Putin. Europe today has only two surviving authoritarian regimes, those in Serbia and Hungary. In Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic is visibly trying to wriggle out of Moscow's embrace and doesn't appear to be on the ascendant at all.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is no longer propagating his model of an "illiberal state" as the future, having been reduced to acting as the foreign sales manager for Gazprom in Europe. That is not a good position for an autocratic strongman to be in, and his nation will turn her back on him, as the Bulgarians did in similar circumstances, abandoning "strongman" Boyko Borissov after 12 years.

In any case, nobody looks up to Hungary and Serbia as models of a desirable future. On the contrary, both regimes seem like rusted wreckage from a dark, bygone age.

Tide has turned

Against this backdrop, the FBI raid on Trump's home is a signal not only that the political time of such men (why does it always seem to be men?) has passed, but also that, as their political futures disappear, what awaits them are criminal charges.

People like Putin, Xi Jinping and their imitators will be around for a long time. But theirs is not the future. The "tide in the affairs of men" has turned. Now it is our job to take it "at the flood," securing a future in which government of the people, by the people, for the people remains dominant.

Bulgarian academic, author and political analyst Evgenii Dainov is professor of politics at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia.

Edited by: Rüdiger Rossig and Aingeal Flanagan