Authoritarian rulers suffered new setbacks in 2022

This year has been a tough one for the world’s worst authoritarians: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Each of them ends 2022 reeling from self-inflected wounds, the consequences of the sorts of bad decisions that hubris-blinded autocrats find far easier to make than to unwind. 

Given that, the United States and its global partners should double down in 2023 to shape the contest unfolding between democrats and despots that will define the post-Cold War order. U.S. President Joe Biden has consistently focused on this competition as a historic “Inflection Point.” His third year in office provides him his best opportunity yet to score lasting gains in that contest.

At the beginning of this year, autocracy seemed to be on the march. Presidents Putin and Xi in early February 2022, just ahead of the Beijing Olympics, entered a “no limits” strategic partnership. That was followed by President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Since then, however, in all three cases — Russia, China, and Iran — unelected leaders’ errors of commission have deepened revealed their countries’ underlying weaknesses while breeding new difficulties that defy easy solutions.

That’s most dramatically the case with President Putin, whose reckless, unprovoked, and illegal war in Ukraine has resulted in 6,490 civilian deaths, per the UN’s most recent estimate, and has prompted more than a million Russians to flee his country. International courts have indisputable, voluminous proof of crimes against humanity.

Beyond that, President Putin has set back the Russian economy by more than a decade, and sanctions are only beginning to bite. He’ll never regain his international reputation, and his military has revealed itself – despite many years of investments — as poorly trained, badly disciplined, and lacking morale.

President Xi’s mistakes are less bloody in nature thus far. The excesses of his zero-Covid policy set off large-scale, spontaneous protests that amounted to the most serious challenge of his decade in leadership. Just last month, the 20^th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party anointed President Xi with a third term as China’s president, but the protests that followed shortly thereafter shattered that aura of invincibility and apparent public support.

“Mr. Xi is in a crisis of his own making, with no quick or painless route out,” wrote the Economist this week. “New Covid cases are near record levels. The disease has spread to more than 85% of China’s cities. Clamp down even harder to bring it back under control, and the economist costs will rise yet higher, further fueling public anger. Allow it to spread and hundreds of thousands of people will die……