The dictators are again persecuting the free world

From Will Marshall “The Hill” /A century ago Benito Mussolini took power in Italy and Joseph Stalin took control of the Soviet Union. These events marked the origin of fascist and Communist totalitarianism, which soon brought Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, sparking the fuse of World War II and then the Cold War.

That era seemed to end in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, and when the Soviet Union began to collapse. Popular uprisings brought down tyrants, and liberalizing winds swept across the globe. But the totalitarian idea is coming back today thanks to Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping.

Like their ancestors, these dictators are dangerous because they have plans to devour the territory of others, have little internal control over their power, and contempt for the stability and determination of free societies. Putin's unpronounced invasion of Ukraine has again attracted him to the former East-West conflict. Today's slide toward the new Cold War was not inevitable.

Following the recent benefits of Soviet communism, Russia and China seemed initially open to political and economic changes. In the 1990s, under Boris Yestin, Russia accepted the break of Soviet-era countries and satellites, and normalised relations with the West.

Moscow curbed the once extraordinary powers of the secret police, ended the Communist Party's monopoly on power, and embraced shock “therapy to privatise state companies and promote competition in the market. In 2000, however, a sick Yeltz made a fatal mistake, handing over power to his untested prime minister, former KGB officer Vladimir Putin.

The latter has spent the past 23 years undoing Russia's short experiment with freedom and democracy. He has outlawed opposition parties, manipulated elections and suppressed civil society. In a return to KGB-style gangster government, state intelligence agencies have been involved in the killings of independent journalists and dissidents living abroad.

Putin says his aim is to make Russia again big, but he has shown little interest in improving his country's poor economic performance. Instead, he has allowed a handful of corrupt oligarchs to dominate the economy, relying on oil and gas revenues to finance his search for the Russian Empire.

Russia's return to despotism and militarism is a tragedy for Ukrainians who want to be free, and for Russians who are denied the opportunity to live in peace and prosperity with their neighbours. He has also alarmed our European allies, and especially the countries that were once deceived by what Putin calls Russkiy Mir, the Russian world.

China followed another path. The 1989 massacre on student protesters in Tiananmen Square showed that the Chinese Communist Party (PKK) would not tolerate any popular challenge to its rule. But if political change was out of the question,

China finally embraced market-oriented economic growth.

It moved millions of villagers from villages to cities, welcomed foreign investments and trade, and became the coloss of global production. Economically, China's unique hybrid of autocratia and capitalism has been a spectacular success. According to the World Bank, over the past 40 years, it has expelled over 800 million people from poverty.

If it can return to growth rates before pandemic, China can soon overcome America as the world's largest economy. However, Xi Jinping's rise to power in 2013 marked a great distance from the guarantees of his ancestors, that China would pursue a peaceful “upgrade”.

Instead, Xi has adopted a hyper-nationalist and confrontational policy, threatening to have “goda on her head” countries trying to tease or “reference”

China. Under his leadership, China began building and militarizing islands to support its widely rejected claims on the South China Sea.

It has launched a rapid expansion of military power, aimed at preventing American forces from coming one day to aid Taiwan. In the meantime, she uses her diplomats, who themselves are known as the <x0 fighter fighters” to intimidate China's critics worldwide, threatening them to secede from its large markets.

In 2017, the Chinese government began gathering hundreds of thousands of olive trees and other ethnic Muslim minorities in concentration or reform camps, triggering a nationwide protest. Since 2019, it has eliminated the last traces of democracy once very dynamic in Hong Kong.

Today, in the midst of hysteria for “the” conflict promoted by state media, police are brutally suppressing anti-war voices in Russia. Like Putin, Xi aims at a total political checkup. Last year's fall, China's Communist Party unpredictably gave him a third five-year term as party leader, provoking comparisons with Maon.

Xi sees Putin as a valuable counterweight against America and its allies in Atlantic and Pacific. Both declared a cross-border “partnership” just 3 weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. If we are looking at a continuation of the Cold War, then let us have no doubt as to who caused it.

Vladimir Putin wants to undo his country's losses in the Cold War. Xi Jinping, meanwhile, wants to have free hand to bring Taiwan under control after decades and to design power throughout Asia. Both are aimed at curbing a US-led liberal order, as it presents legal, moral and military barriers to their great ambitions.

Putin and Xi are reminding us that tyranny itself is the main source of conflict and international war. totalitarian dictators are essentially dangerous, especially when inspired by the Messianic ideologies or visions of restoring national greatness. Depriving their people of freedom and voice in decision-making, they are unlikely to respect the rights of people in other countries.

As long as they have eliminated the internal opposition, they are not even likely to give up any worldly opinion. Fortunately, liberal democracies know how to cope with totalitarian leaders. The Cold War tool package - collective security, control and prevention - has not lost its benefit. But it requires courage and endurance. Putin and Xi are betting that liberal democracies have very little of both. The free world will have to prove once again that dictators are wrong.

Note: Will Marshall, is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).