Category: Dictatorships

China’s sharp power approach ‘more about bylines than bombs’

     

Russia isn’t the only authoritarian regime to deploy disinformation as a tool to undermine liberal democracies. “Within the last few weeks, China has leaped into the front ranks of global… Read more »

Blunting China’s sharp power: strengthening Xi’s rule ‘not just a power grab’?

     

Measures announced last month to strengthen the leadership role of the Chinese Communist Party and remove term limits for President Xi Jinping have raised fears about the increasingly authoritarian trajectory… Read more »

In new era of strategic competition, China’s autocracy at odds with democracy

     

China’s model, which has brought more people out of poverty faster than any other system in history, continues to flourish, argues Wall Street executive Steven Rattner, a counselor in the… Read more »

Threat to Western democracy ‘starts at home’

     

We have moved from a world of ideological struggles in the 20th century to a world of geopolitical struggles in the 21st—or so goes the conventional wisdom. But technology is… Read more »

Authoritarian International: Will human rights survive illiberal democracy?

     

The European Union’s response to Russia’s sham election suggests that it has decided it’s time to cuddle up to dictators, the Carnegie Endowment’s Judy Dempsey observes in the Washington Post…. Read more »

Sharp elbows behind China’s sharp power

     

Despite his stridently nationalist rhetoric, Beijing’s ‘sharp power’ poses no threat to other nations, according to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Speaking at the close of the annual session of the… Read more »

The ‘fascist’ philosopher inspiring Russia’s kleptocrats

     

An advocate of Russian fascism is having a profound influence on the discourse of the country’s politicians and kleptocrats,* including Vladimir Putin, according to a leading commentator. Because Ivan Ilyin (left)… Read more »

A Brezhnev moment: ‘coronation’ takes Putin a step closer to leader-for-life

     

  With his reelection, Vladimir Putin took one step closer to becoming Russia’s leader for life.  On paper, Putin’s victory gave him a new six-year term as president. But some… Read more »

Cuba – ‘the worst kind of dictatorship’ – denies entry to ex-presidents

     

Former Colombian President Andres Pastrana and ex-Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga said they were denied entry to Cuba on Wednesday, after traveling to the Communist-run island to receive an award from… Read more »