Seven years after Brexit and the spectre of right-wing authoritarianism still haunts Western democracies. This is despite the fact that Putin is the weakest he’s been in decades. And the abject failures of Brexit notwithstanding, the political phenomenon persists. “Brexit has been a messy failure; a majority of Britons now regret that it passed,” reminds Fareed Zakaria. “Though it’s true that some populist heroes and causes have been battered, the core appeal of the movement persists and has actually gained ground in recent months.”
This is not just happening in Britain, where stagnation has followed Brexit. Authoritarianism — soft and hard — remains a persistent global political phenomenon. This weekend, Cambodia lurched further towards authoritarianism. Last week, Trump and his allies announced plans to “increase Presidential power” in 2025. “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Russell T. Vought, who ran the OMB in the Trump White House, told The Times. To which Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the authority on authoritarianism, tweeted, “This is the very definition of authoritarianism.”
The far-right made a comeback in Greek elections earlier this summer. And Kyrgyzstan, once an “island of democracy” and which has a long border with China, is slipping into an autocracy. Further, in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu, despite public objections from his country’s most powerful ally, has pushed through an overhaul of the judiciary system, veering it farther away from democratic norms. Is Israel even still the only democracy in the Middle East now?
There has been some good news. Tens of thousands of Israeli citizens marched in favor of democracy this weekend. And hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens marched on behalf of democracy in early June. Latin American democracy is stabl(ish). In this weekend’s Spanish elections, the widely reported far-right surge failed to materialize. Women across Iran are refusing to wear headscarves in protest against the regime over the arrests of thousands. So there’s that.
Fareed Zakaria sees the main problem of the continued and persistent authoritarian right-wing wave as immigration and the inability of nations to control their borders. He writes:
If I had to point to one issue, however, it is the one that has always been at the heart of the rise of modern far-right populism: immigration. Everywhere you look, you see that fears of uncontrolled immigration have produced political rewards for the “anti-globalists.” Covid-19 destabilized many developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere, which then exacerbated poverty and violence as those countries struggled. The Ukraine war has caused a once-in-a-lifetime movement out of that country on one side of the world, while Venezuela’s brutal crackdown has led to another of similar magnitude on the other. Climate change adds to this toxic brew. When you put it all together, you end up with a historic movement of people across the world.
Incidentally, the inability of nations to control their particular borders is in and of itself a powerful argument for international law. Border control is not only one of the most difficult, intractable political issues, it also demands the fellowship of neighbors. International law addresses issues of human rights and asylum claims. Moving through the mechanisms of international law is probably an easier lift for fragile democracies than passing immigration reform (just ask the Vice President).
And all of these global events, we cannot fail to note, are occurring through the prism of the Ukraine War. Conversely, the Ukraine War can only be properly construed through the prism of this present global right-wing authoritarian wave. Fiona Hill, in her Lennart Meri lecture, calls the Ukraine War a “system changing war.” By that she means that the old international order appears to be passing away and the Ukraine War is exposing the fault lines of that dying system of 20th century empire. “Russia is the last continental empire in Europe,” she notes. Adding, further:
The central tenets of international law are still a universal order or ordering principle, especially for smaller states. Countries across the globe have broadly acknowledged and condemned the facts of Russia’s aggression, including in multiple votes in the United Nations General Assembly. The International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other international rulings have emphasized that Ukraine has the legal not just the moral high ground in the war. Moscow’s brutal conduct and atrocities alongside its military blunders and failures have diminished Russia’s standing. But how most states and commentators feel about the United States is their prism for assessing Russia’s actions.
This is quite an interesting interpretation. In other words, the Russia model — authoritarian, but also empire building and of the previous century — is being viewed by the rest of the world in contrast to the American model, associated with human rights and also to some degree, international law. Or, is that too “globalist”? But, of course, the American model is not pure, Hill notes. And the Third World has a long memory of the nefarious reach of the CIA and, for that matter, our most recent, clumsy forays into the Middle East. Bush the Younger’s influence, unfortunately, lingers.
That having been said, international law is a model that in its ideal form transcends mere national interest. And Biden, to his credit, extricated us from Afghanistan, however crudely, allowing us to at least have such a conversation with the rest of the world without the cloud of imperial hypocrisy hanging over us. His administration — particularly at State — is touting the Biden Doctrine, heavy on human rights and democracy over authoritarianism, hard and soft. “At the State Department, we’ve been ramping up programs to provide emergency support and legal assistance to those who are out there defending human rights around the world; pressing for the release of political prisoners; holding human rights abusers accountable, including with sanctions, visa restrictions; strengthening the rule of law and systems of transnational justice,” Secretary of State Blinken said, recently, at Freedom House.
In the early 90s we had a brief “international law” moment. Roger Rosenblatt, in a review of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s On The Law of Nations, captured some of the mood, in 1990, as the Soviet Union collapsed and America’s ensuing hyperpower made all things seem possible. He said at the time:
Mr. Moynihan writes of those earlier American violations: ''As the United States became more committed to the advancement of democratic values in the world at large, it came more and more to do so by means of covert strategies. . . . This is not difficult to explain; it is difficult to defend. It costs too much, it achieves too little; and it gives power to presidents to do things that come to seem merely extralegal, rather than illegal. Not lawless, simply above the law. The intelligence community cannot help but make presidents feel this is what they are there for.''
… He admires Presidents Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, while frequently breaking the rules of international law themselves, nonetheless envisioned the world's eventual compliance. He admires considerably less President Ronald Reagan, who also broke international law but seemed to disdain it as a hindrance to beating up on evil empires wherever they were found, or were thought to be found - in freedom's name. Senator Moynihan may be suspending judgment on President Bush after Iraq. With dreams go responsibilities. The best way to promote democracy, implies the Senator, is to act lawfully.
True, but the First Persian Gulf War, it should be noted, was fought on dubious legal grounds. Still, Moynihan, earlier than most, perceived that the post-Cold War era would eventually come down to multipolarity. That American hyper-power would not last; the world would not allow it for long. And a multipolar world would lead, at least in the beginning, to a world of pandaemonium. An uncertain world, a dangerous place.
Moynihan, a student, however flawed, of ethnicity, sought refuge in international law. “In a globalized world, the task of containing rising authoritarianism cannot be left to individual countries,” writes Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist of the World Bank and chief economic adviser to the government of India, for the Japan Times. “As we can see from recent global supply-chain disruptions — with Russia’s war in Ukraine exacerbating food shortages and inflation in Africa — the fallout from authoritarianism can be felt far and wide.” His solution? Expanding the scope and authority of international law as well as international institutions, like the ICC, which issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.
It is, quite frankly, not a bad idea
Why international law serves U.S. national interests (Ted Piccone/Brookings)
Can the Movement Against Judicial Overhaul Become a Movement Against Jewish Supremacy? (Peter Beinart)
“The Civil Rights Act of 1968 (also known as the Fair Housing Act) prohibited discrimination in the ‘sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, sex and (as amended) handicap and family status.’ A year or so later, as a reporter for The Washington Post assigned to Prince George’s County just southeast of Washington, D.C., I was covering racial unrest at Bladensburg High School. I described this as ‘the new American front line where the inner city meets the suburb.’ What was happening at a striking pace was that Prince George’s County, which had been overwhelmingly white, had become integrated and would soon be a majority-Black county -- and in time the wealthiest majority-Black county in the entire United States.” (Peter Osnos)
“Before we explore Gerasimov’s defensive strategy, let’s review the range of options that were open to him once Ukraine began its 2023 offensives. In a June 2023 article, I explored three broad courses of action that were available to Gerasimov. His strategic options were quite narrow because Putin sees advantage in drawing out the war. As such, holding territory seized from Ukraine had to be the central element in any Gerasimov strategy.” (Mick Ryan)
“In the spirit of Tronc, Elon Musk has decided to throw away more than a decade of brand equity by changing the name of Twitter to…the letter X.” (Joshua Benton/Neiman Lab)
“A zombie Twitter, known only as X, reluctantly endures. A warped and disfigured platform, X marches on like a White Walker, an ugly shell of its former self under the command of a loathsome leader.” (Reliable Sources)
Publishers want billions, not millions, from AI (Ben Smith/semafor)
Texas A&M suspended professor accused of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in lecture (The Texas Tribune)