[Politics_Observer]

Given the events that have transpired since Russia's indirect attack on American democracy waged through indirectly through it's proxy, Donald Trump and Russia's continued interference in U.S. elections, it has become apparent that a strategy that is being pursued by both China and Russia is making the world safe for dictatorships, tyranny and oppression. This means, for the Russian strategy, that it must do it's best to sow division in the U.S. through proxy politicians like Donald Trump in an effort to destroy American democracy.

If Putin succeeds in such a strategy, then he can further his ambitions of occupying and conquoring neighboring NATO member states that are enjoy EU membership and economic prosperity currently. Putin views the success of some of these neighboring NATO member states that are on their borders as a success to his personal power in Russia.

So, he wants to see these NATO member states occupied by Russian forces and their democracies and their economic success extinguished. That way the Russian people won't have anybody living close by them that they can look to and see they are living a better life and ask "Why can't we live as good as they are?" It assures that Putin remains in power and enjoys the trappings and privileges of power.

Meanwhile, China's Xi Jinping is pursuing a foreign policy designed to make China the world's number 1 economic and military power in the world. This assures that no border states near it's borders will be democratic in nature. It also beholden other democracies to China and China can use that leverage against those democracies to further the cause of tyranny and oppression. We are already seeing the results of the true motives of China in Hong Kong where it is currently crushing freedom and democracy in that country.

It is therefore incumbent on Americans who genuinely value freedom, voting and democracy to fight the strain of tyranny and populism that is currently going through the republican party. To fight voter suppression and to fight for democracy and freedom. Freedom around the globe, starts with fighting for freedom here in the U.S. against republican attempts at voter suppression and attempting to extinguish the will of the people. It is a fight here at home against people like Donald Trump who seek to become dictator of the U.S. with unchecked power and thus, whose goal is to destroy the U.S. constitution and the rule of law.

Putin and Xi Jinping have taken Woodrow Wilson's concept for the U.S. going to war in World War I to "make the world safe for democracy" and flipped it on it's head and are pursuing foreign policies to "make the world safe for tyranny, oppression and dictatorship."

I leave this post quoting from an article entitled "While Trump stands by, the world’s tyrants are trying to make the world safe for dictatorship" that was written in 2019 while Trump was still in power and before he was voted out of office in the 2020 election. But Trump still remains a threat to freedom and democracy here in the U.S. given that republicans have passed voter suppression laws and Trump seems intent on exploiting voter suppression laws to get elected and then stage a coup to tear up and destroy the U.S. constitution to install himself as dictator with absolute and unchecked power. Which would be good for other tyrants like Putin and Xi Jinping who want to stay in power in their own countries.

A strange reversal is taking place across the world.

America — or at least, America’s president — is no longer trying to make the world safe for democracy. But dictators are working hard to make the world safe for dictatorship.

The United States is retreating, almost apologizing for ever having thought about promoting democracy. Everyone from Rand Paul to Bernie Sanders and many in between agrees we should stay home and mind our business.

But the result is not a world in which every country is free to go its own way.

Instead, the world’s tyrants — while still complaining about color revolutions and U.S. interference — roam far and wide, promoting their ideologies and their corporations, bullying and buying and burrowing and shooting their way to influence.

Russia and China, the loudest conjurers of imaginary CIA pro-democracy plots, have become the world’s most active underminers of democracy beyond their borders.

Russia clandestinely stokes racism and xenophobia in Sweden, as the New York Times reported. Far less covertly, as the Times also reported, Russians bribe candidates, stack rallies and buy TV ads to sway and undermine an election in the African island nation of Madagascar.

Sometimes the regimes deploy troops, as Russian President Vladi­mir Putin has done to keep Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power.

Sometimes they deploy corporations. When Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni feared a challenge from a suddenly popular opposition politician, his intelligence agency turned to China’s flagship communications company Huawei to help penetrate the dissident’s encrypted messages, as the Wall Street Journal recounted in August.

Other nations follow the lead of the big two. Dictators in Saudi Arabia and Egypt have sought to squelch democracy and bolster dictators in Sudan and elsewhere across the Middle East.

Sometimes the motivation is so mercenary that even United Fruit Co. at its heyday might have blushed. China’s Belt and Road Initiative aims to lock up natural resources and impose big infrastructure contracts on one-sided terms. Russia’s Madagascar dirty tricks were aimed at maintaining a stake in a local company that mines chromium.

But the world’s dictators also act to save themselves at home.

Not so long ago, democracy was ascendant, and the dictators felt threatened. One by one, past lies about democracy being a “Western” value were shattered: It turned out that Asians, Slavs, Arabs — indeed, all human beings — want to live in the dignity of self-rule.

The dictators responded first with desperate brutality against their compatriots — gunning down students in Tiananmen Square, murdering opponents in the shadow of the Kremlin, luring a freethinking journalist to be dismembered in a Saudi consulate.

But they realized that freedom beyond their borders could be a threat, too. Putin invaded and still occupies much of Ukraine, because a thriving democracy on his border gives his own people dangerous ideas. China bullies and threatens Taiwan, because self-governing Chinese citizens there put the lie to Communist propaganda at home.

Democratic governments also can use international pressure and institutions to press authoritarian regimes to honor universal human rights, emboldening and encouraging the citizens of unfree nations. By contrast, put Venezuela on the U.N. Human Rights Council, and you can be sure no autocrat anywhere will be made to feel uncomfortable. The more Venezuelas there are, the better Xi Jinping can relax.

Just look at China embracing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman not long after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — and the crown prince, supposed defender of the Muslim faith, in return actually praising China for its brutal repression of Uighur Muslims in western China.

Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton or George W. Bush would be speaking up against this authoritarian aggression and for the right of all human beings to live in freedom.

Today we have a president who prefers the company of strongmen — whether Turkish or Saudi, Russian or North Korean — to that of democratic allies. His presidency is both a consequence of Russian activism — Putin worked hard for Donald Trump’s election, after all — and its enabler.

We don’t know yet whether Trump will prove a historical aberration. His isolationism obviously resonates, and it amplifies a retrenchment that began, far more modestly, in the Barack Obama years. On the other hand, Congress continues in a bipartisan way to back the National Endowment for Democracy — which, in contrast to Russia and China, supports democracy overseas transparently, and without favoring any particular party or outcome.

More heartening: Even the dictators’ onslaught and American reticence cannot stop people from rising up and demanding their rights. Algerians, Lebanese, Armenians, Tunisians, Sudanese, Bolivians, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Hong Kongers, Ethiopians, Malaysians — these people all deserve more support than they are getting.

But they are not waiting for support, nor letting themselves be intimidated by the new imperialists of authoritarianism.

https://wapo.st/2VVD8YY

[Rancid]

All hail world Emperor Xi!

[Politics_Observer]

@Rancid

I especially like this quote from the article.

But they realized that freedom beyond their borders could be a threat, too. Putin invaded and still occupies much of Ukraine, because a thriving democracy on his border gives his own people dangerous ideas. China bullies and threatens Taiwan, because self-governing Chinese citizens there put the lie to Communist propaganda at home.

And this is why Putin interferes in our elections. China is a threat as well.

[Politics_Observer]

@Rancid

See another problem here at home in the U.S. is that there is this strain of politics that I call "the politics of selfishness" and this is especially true of republicans. But the "politics of selfishness" is a ticket to nowhere and to unhappiness. This "politics of selfishness" enables people who want to be dictator like Trump.

[Rancid]

@Rancid

I especially like this quote from the article.



And this is why Putin interferes in our elections. China is a threat as well.

Indeed. If Putin and Xi could erase this very post, they would. This is the thing that the people on pofo that support such shitty regimes can't get through their fat stupid skulls.

@Rancid

See another problem here at home in the U.S. is that there is this strain of politics that I call "the politics of selfishness" and this is especially true of republicans. But the "politics of selfishness" is a ticket to nowhere and to unhappiness. This "politics of selfishness" enables people who want to be dictator like Trump.

Indeed. Politics of the entitled.

At this point it looks like Putun/Xi are going to get what they want. A shitty dystopian hellscape.

[Politics_Observer]

@Rancid

Well don't give up hope. It ain't over till it's over. And it ain't over yet. You hit the nail on the head when you said the politics we are seeing from the republican party today is the politics of the entitled. The politics of selfishness. You see that with many republicans who refuse to get the vaccine. It's that entitled white privilege mentality.

[Patrickov]

@Politics_Observer

I am sorry, but apart from them starting and getting defeated in World War III, I do not see any hope in people like Putin, Xi Jinping, and their minions punished. Either way, I have already given up the hope that I will survive.

The behaviour of the Republicans are, I think, reaction to the apparent incapability of the doves. I somehow think anti-Trumpers exaggerated their crimes. In some sense I see their authoritarian turn a necessary evil. I won't personally vote them (if I could vote in the US that is) or ask anyone to do so though.

You won't understand how some people somewhere else actually welcome Trump's policy, if not himself. This is probably why the Biden Administration has no choice but to acknowledge the righteousness of the policy and continue it (at least in principle)

[Politics_Observer]

@Patrickov

Xi Jinping will do the same to Taiwan (and perhaps worse) if he is left undeterred by the U.S. It is unfortunate what you are enduring in Hong Kong right now. Xi Jinping doesn't want a "good example" close by China. This is why he props up North Korea. It is a bad example for the Chinese people to look to on their borders.

Taiwan's political freedoms are potentially something the Chinese people can look to and also want in China and that threatens Xi Jinping's power. Hence, why he is constantly threatening Taiwan and why it's necessary for the U.S. to continue to supply weapons and arms to Taiwan to defend itself as well as preparing it's own military might to help defend Taiwan against a Chinese military attack. Putin threatens it's border states as well, especially those that are not NATO member states. Currently, Russia is deterred from attacking NATO member states on it's borders but Putin is most a certainly a threat to those border states.

He hasn't attacked yet because he believes he would start World War III and have to directly fight the U.S. if he does as well as other European nuclear powers. But, if he is able to help get politicians elected in the U.S. that do not want to defend NATO member states, I think Putin would make his move so that he could get rid of these "good examples" for Russian people to look to across the Russian border and start getting ideas of wanting the same thing and a better life which would threaten Putin's power at home in Russia. And that is unacceptable to Putin. But is being successfully deterred so far, but that can change depending on U.S. politics.

[Politics_Observer]

@Patrickov

It is why Xi Jinping is crushing political freedom in Hong Kong right now. He doesn't want a "good example" for Chinese people to look to and get ideas for wanting the same thing in China. That threatens his power.

[Patrickov]

@Politics_Observer

Xi is merely a product, just like Trump. At least part of the blame has to be on the common Chinese people.

Many of them actually know what's going on in the outside world, but they genuinely think the nation's integrity goes above, or is the basis of, the prosperity, rather than political freedom. They also genuinely think the West is setting up a bad example by "bullying" others either with their military or capitalism.

[Fasces]

Making the world safe for tyrants and dictatorships means no more ideological crusading and interfering in the internal affairs of other countries by Western powers? A return to Westphalian politics over Wilsonian moralism?

I think you could simplify the title quite easily, to be honest:

The Putin* and Xi Jinping Foreign Policy: Making the World Safe

[Patrickov]

@Fasces

It could be argued that World War II was the result of the selfishness of some Western nations' leaders trumping Wilsonian moralism, rather than Wilsonian moralism itself was wrong.

I do not see a world plagued with totalitarianism any "safer". For one, those nations will have a freer hand fighting each other.

As much as I would eat what I sow, the same would apply to the likes of you.

Or at least I will question God if it doesn't apply for the likes of you.

[Juin]

I think you could simplify the title quite easily, to be honest:

The Putin* and Xi Jinping Foreign Policy: Making the World Safe

Dictatorship can deliver safety, prosperity, happiness. And democracy can also deliver insecurity, poverty, injustice and unhappiness. A simplistic or erroneous approach associates safety, prosperity, happiness as always delivered by democracy; and insecurity, poverty and unhappiness as the only items that dictatorship will deliver.

Personally, I believe Russia has benefited gazillions of time more from Putin's dictatorship than anything Yeltsinian democracy could have delivered.

Syria's flirtation with 'democracy' has not been a happy one. The forces of 'democracy' unleashed from hell an endless parade of jihadists who have inflicted on Syrians countless horrors.

[AFAIK]

America — or at least, America’s president — is no longer trying to make the world safe for democracy.

I stopped reading at this point. The USA has played an active role in disrupting and destroying democracies and was never shy in it's support for brutal dictatorships.

[Heisenberg]

I love that Americans make so little effort to understand any other perspective that they just reflexively boil down any non-aligned country's thought process to some moustache-twirling "we must make the world safe for villainy and chaos!" bullshit.

I guess this is what happens when your main cultural reference points are superhero comics geared towards adolescent boys.

[Rugoz]

I stopped reading at this point. The USA has played an active role in disrupting and destroying democracies and was never shy in it's support for brutal dictatorships.

Clearly this had absolutely nothing to do with US superpower status, right?

Making the world safe for tyrants and dictatorships means no more ideological crusading and interfering in the internal affairs of other countries by Western powers? A return to Westphalian politics over Wilsonian moralism?

I think you could simplify the title quite easily, to be honest:

The Putin* and Xi Jinping Foreign Policy: Making the World Safe

Why drop the "for tyrants and dictatorships" part? You said it yourself.

[Rancid]

Dictatorship can deliver safety, prosperity, happiness

National harmony through physically and psychologically beating obedience into people.

A wonderful thing we should embrace.

Anyway, dictatorship can also deliver oppression and death. IN fact, its track record offers that more than anything else.

[Rancid]

Clearly this had absolutely nothing to do with US superpower status, right?



Why drop the "for tyrants and dictatorships" part? You said it yourself.

I think what people often miss about the US is that although they've done a lot of fucked up shit. They have shown a lot more restraint than most others would show in a similar position of power. For this to be shown as true, we would have to allow others to attain the same level of power/influence though. Very likely, a pandoras box of despotism is what many of our forum members sell here. To all the dictatorship/authoritarian apologists and supporters. Careful what you wish for.

A Trumpian dictatorship (whether run by Trump or a Trumpist) would remove such restraint. This would be bad for the globe as it now becomes an authoritarian free for all with the likes of Trumpists, Xi-ists, and putinists. Sounds like a shit to me.

As much "peace" and "harmony" a dictatorship can bring under its boot of tyranny. It can also crush you with that boot as freely as it wishes. This should be plainly obvious, but apparently not to some of the people on this thread.

Dictatorships are efficient indeed, but rife with abuse and unilateralism. It usually doesn't work well for most people as history has clearly shown over and over. The ride may be good initially, but shit can go south fast.

[Politics_Observer]

@Rancid

The ride may be good initially, but shit can go south fast.

It certainly can and history has shown that the good ride initially with a dictator in power goes south fast. Unfortunately, people are narrow minded in only think in short term selfish interests and don't see the what they will face further down the road by making a choice that benefit them in the short term but ultimately doom them further down the road.

[Rancid]

@Rancid



It certainly can and history has shown that the good ride initially with a dictator in power goes south fast. Unfortunately, people are narrow minded in only think in short term selfish interests and don't see the what they will face further down the road by making a choice that benefit them in the short term but ultimately doom them further down the road.

Yea, so looking at the current state of global authoritarianism (I'll get to global democracies below). Economics is the crux of everything here. It is why although it can be argued that Russia is a threat to democratic systems around the globe, they are still not that big of a threat because their relatively poorer economy constrains them to some degree. It is why China has been able to get away with everything it has thus far. The strength of their economy allows them to sustain their domestic police state (they spend more on domestic security than their military), it allows them to sustain the growing meddling, it allows them to sustain supporting crack pot dictatorships and debt trap deplomacy. The ride is good, indeed. However, once that stops, people will stop willing to trade freedom/security for this "prosperity" and "national harmony" that has been forced under the boot of authoritarianism justified by economic success. In the long term it is certainly unsustainable, but it will be a very very long time before it runs its course.

Over in the democracies side, capitalism's "prosperity" too, is running a course of unsustainability. Hence why there are growing movements to evolve/augment/change it with more socialistic means to try and make it sustainable; and to optimize it for human well being instead of profits (a flaw in the west the authoritarians have been able to exploit). We also have a significant segment of people in these democracies that want to allow it to continue to run its course off the cliff. Which brings me back to @Rugoz graphs. The interesting thing, we might be at an inflection point where the trends in that graph start to reverse. I posit, that the embrace and support of authoritarianism/dictatorship is a lower order and unrefined state of humanity; a more primal state of being. That is to say, authoritarianism is lower on the Maslow hierarchy of needs, so to speak. When times get hard for people, as they currently are in the west, people tend to drop down to those lower levels because the need becomes survival and not the higher order state of communal well being and fairness. Hence, they are more willing to embrace authoritarianism. The fault lines of capitalism are showing exactly this with the raise of Trumpism and support for an authoritarian government in the US. This is people in the west, dropping down in the hierarchy of needs. Western democracies are in control of their own system, so it is up to them to stop us from wanting to drop to a lower state of being. Although Russia/China/whoever can be considered threats to this, it is ultimately much more in our control than we like to think. It's easier to look externally for your problems. HOwever, the internal threats are probably the bigger threat. I said all of that to say, I HOPE TRUMP DIES!

When we are all reduced to a state where it's my strong man versus yours. It's probably going to be bad for most people on the planet.

The good news? I could be totally full of shit!