The Chinese and Russians may have lost their faith in communism. But that doesn't mean they're ready to embrace democracy

Like the expectations of an end to great-power competition, hopes for an ideological "end of history" were based on a set of historical circumstances that proved fleeting. Communism passed from the scene, but powerful challengers to democracy have not.

Since the mid-1990s, the nascent democratic transformation in Russia has given way to what may best be described as a "czarist" political system, in which all important decisions are taken by one man and his powerful coterie. Vladimir Putin and his spokesmen speak of "democracy," but they define the term much as the Chinese do. For Putin, democracy is not so much about competitive elections as about the implementation of the popular will. The regime is democratic because the government consults with and listens to the Russian people, discerns what they need and want and then attempts to give it to them. As Ivan Krastev notes, "The Kremlin thinks not in terms of citizens' rights but in terms of the population's needs." Elections do not offer a choice but only a chance to ratify choices made by Putin.

A majority of Russians seem content with autocratic rule, at least for now. Unlike communism, Putin's rule does not impinge much on their personal lives if they stay out of politics. Unlike their experience with the tumultuous Russian democracy of the 1990s, the present government, thanks to the high prices of oil and gas, has at least produced a rising standard of living. Putin's efforts to undo the humiliating post-Cold War settlement and restore the greatness of Russia is popular.

For Putin, there is a symbiosis between the nature of his rule and his success in returning Russia to great power status. Strength and control at home allow Russia to be strong abroad. Strength abroad justifies strong rule at home. Russia's growing international clout also shields Putin's autocracy from foreign pressures. European and American statesmen find they have a full plate of international issues on which a strong Russia can make life easier or harder, from energy supplies to Iran. Under the circumstances, they are far less eager to confront the Russian government over the fairness of its elections or the openness of its political system.

Putin has created a guiding national philosophy out of the correlation between power abroad and autocracy at home. He calls Russia a "sovereign democracy," a term that neatly encapsulates Russia's return to greatness, its escape from the impositions of the West and its adoption of an "eastern" model of democracy.

Putin looks to China as a model, and for good reason. While the Soviet Union collapsed and lost everything after 1989, as first Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin sued for peace with the West and invited its meddling, Chinese leaders weathered their crisis by defying the West. They cracked down at home and then battened down the hatches until the storm of Western disapproval blew over. The results in the two great powers were instructive. Russia by the end of the 1990s was flat on its back. China was on its way to unprecedented economic growth, military power and international influence.

In recent years, despite repeated predictions in the West of an imminent political opening, the trend has been toward consolidation rather than reform of the Chinese autocracy. As it became clear that the Chinese leadership had no intention of reforming itself out of power, Western observers hoped that they might be forced to reform despite themselves, if only to keep China on a path of economic growth and to manage the myriad internal problems that growth brings. But that now seems unlikely, as well. Today, most

economists believe China's remarkable growth should be sustainable for some time to come. Keen observers of the Chinese political system see a sufficient combination of competence and ruthlessness on the part of the Chinese leadership to handle problems as they arise, and a populace prepared to accept autocratic government so long as economic growth continues.

Growing national wealth and autocracy have proven compatible, after all. Autocrats learn and adjust. The autocracies of Russia and China have figured out how to permit open economic activity while suppressing political activity. They have seen that people making money will keep their noses out of politics, especially if they know their noses will

be cut off. New wealth gives autocracies a greater ability to control information -- to monopolize television stations and to keep a grip on Internet traffic, for instance -- often with the assistance of foreign corporations eager to do business with them.

In the long run, rising prosperity may well produce political liberalism, but how long is the long run? It may be too long to have any strategic or geopolitical relevance. As the old joke goes, Germany launched itself on a trajectory of economic modernization in the late 19th century and within six decades became a fully fledged democracy. The only problem was what happened in the intervening years. So the world waits for change, but in the meantime two of the world's largest nations, with more than a billion and a half people and the second-and third-largest militaries between them, now have governments committed to autocratic rule and may be able to sustain themselves in power for the foreseeable future.

The power and durability of these autocracies will shape the international system in profound ways. The world is not about to embark on a new ideological struggle of the kind that dominated the Cold War. But the new era, rather than being a time of "universal values," will be one of growing tensions and sometimes confrontation between the forces of democracy and the forces of autocracy.

During the Cold War, it was easy to forget that the struggle between liberalism and autocracy has endured since the Enlightenment. It was the issue that divided the United States from much of Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It divided Europe itself through much of the 19th century and into the 20th. Now it is returning to dominate the geopolitics of the 21st century.

The presumption over the past decade has been that when Chinese and Russian leaders stopped believing in communism, they stopped believing in anything. They had become pragmatists. But the rulers of China and Russia, like the rulers of autocracies in the past, do have a set of beliefs that guides them in both domestic and foreign policy. It is not an all-encompassing, systematic worldview like Marxism or liberalism. But it is a comprehensive set of beliefs about government and society and the proper relationship between rulers and their people.

The rulers of Russia and China believe in the virtues of a strong central government and disdain the weaknesses of the democratic system. They believe their large and fractious nations need order and stability in order to prosper. They believe that the vacillations and chaos of democracy would impoverish and shatter their nations, and in the case of Russia already did so.

Chinese and Russian leaders are not just autocrats, therefore. They believe in autocracy. And, historically speaking, they are in illustrious company. The European monarchs of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were thoroughly convinced of the superiority of their form of government. Along with Plato and Aristotle and every other great thinker prior to the 18th century, they regarded democracy as the rule of the licentious, greedy and ignorant mob. Only in the past half-century has democracy gained widespread popularity around the world, and really only since the 1980s has it become the most common form of government. The rulers of Russia and China are not the first to suggest that it may not be the best. - Excerpted from The Return Of History And The End Of Dreams by Robert Kagan. Copyright 2008 by Robert Kagan. Reprinted with permission from the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

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