Opinion: What Putin and Xi don’t get about ‘messy’ democracy
Editor’s Note: Daniel Treisman is a professor of political science at UCLA, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the co-author of “Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Courtesy Daniel Treisman Back in February, the West impressed the world with its resolute rally behind Ukraine in the face of Russia’s brutal aggression. If allowed to fester, emerging disagreements could undercut the effort to support Ukraine while feeding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sense that time is on his side. One adviser to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently shocked his own coalition partners by scolding journalists for harping on about Ukraine’s military needs, rather than exploring the “exciting” question of future relations with Russia. The fear of division leads autocrats to cling to failed approaches, as with Xi’s Draconian lockdowns and Putin’s bullying of his neighbors, which seems now to have alienated even Kazakhstan’s usually tight-lipped president.
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