A Reading Guide for Several Foreign Affairs Essays
Essay [1] discusses the weakness of contemporary authoritarian regimes. It is worth reading and solely motivates me writing this note, which then turns to a guide to connect the knots of more FA works. However, I am concerned by the lingering usage of this term as a "bucket." While the author already points out the term's origin and distinction with "totalitarianism" (p.11), we readers are especially disappointed by the continual failure in understanding what PRC is and has been. (In a better case—worse for the readers, these authors are pretending just so as to "save face" for former U.S. leaders and foreign policies). Putting PRC aside, I would like to talk about another point of disappointment here.
There are at least two types of authoritarianism for which it can maintain a sane definition.
The first is, as seen in the Cold War era, that a society was dictated by some individual or clique in the suspension or temporary shutoff of democracy, usually constitutional with the emergent power of defeating imminent threats to the nation and society. Classic examples are Taiwan (RoC) under Chiang's martial law (and 動員戡亂), Spain under Franco's regency, and South Korea under Park Chung-hee's or Chun Doo-hwan's military dictatorship. Pinochet's rule of Chile, too.
The second and later one refers to once operative democracies that have reverted or slid back to autocracy. Such a regression typically starts with defective constitutions or an absent rule of law, intensifies in rigged, manipulative, or corrupt elections, and is reaped by populist politicians who manage to circumvent the change of office. Examples: Orbán's Hungary, Erdoğan's Türkiye, Putin's Russia, and Chávez's Venezuela. The emerging tendency in Israel and the United States can find commonalities with these countries. (More is spoken of in [2].)
On the surface, the populist leaders wear a strongman persona that resembles the older guys of the first type. Yet, not only are they performers, but the regime's rationale and conditions are completely different, even the opposite.
The decisive distinction between these two is that the enemy of the former was tangible and concrete, and the threats real, namely, international communism and its expansion, infiltration, and continuing civil wars. On the contrary, the latter only pictures imaginary hostiles linked to foreign/ Western agencies, such as native ethnic or religious minorities, transnational capital (incarnated as Jews), nongovernmental organizations, and any "traitors" loyal to Western values. The need for such narratives proliferates numerous conspiracies. Nevertheless, it is rather noteworthy that the latter one hardly makes coups and takes much less bloodshed to maintain power. The men in power need to buy the voters for their approval in essence—lack of disapproval on the table. The compensation may be internal stability, economic welfare (regardless of actual growth), national pride, chauvinism, or protection of traditions from "Western" invasion.
Logically, the first type of authoritarianism would dissolve when the external threats recede to such an extent that people feel more unbearable with their "protector." This could be true; but the prerequisite for a functioning democracy is more than the cancellation of autocracy. In those 20th-century examples, the authorities did not eradicate, though might restrain, the basis and support of a civil society—propertied class, political nuclei, bottom-up participation, and the frozen constitutional procedure. This fact distinguishes them from the communist states. "Freezing" is the proper figure here since the ice will eventually melt and the vegetation preserved beneath it will revive. From the outside, liberal democracy, exemplified in Western Europe and North America (back then), must be appealing and desirable for those people to pursue. The national level partnership or alliance made it impossible to isolate from the exchange of ideas and familiarity with each other's values.
Ironically, the most powerful and enduring enemy is the imaginary one. A war against imaginary enemies can be prolonged indefinitely and yet win endlessly, until you encounter a real fight. The 21st century's regression is hard to reverse, not because the authorities suppress the growth of a civil society or build firewalls to lock it down. It is a new thing, endogenous to the deterioration and decay of liberal democracy worldwide, which has a close relation to the crises of free-market, free-trade capitalism. Those countries have had a democratic government in form and a market economy at large, or at least have been in the hopeful progress toward a partner of the "liberal world order." They are too familiar with that world, especially the fragility of its building strategy, which stimulates disdain and fosters knowledge of manipulation. Their successful existence as an antagonistic force confirms the symptom of the deep-seated maladies plaguing "Western" nations—along with beliefs and identities. However, their existential success is based on others paying for global security. Therefore, new changes will not come until the order establisher withdraws from its bad bet and retracts resources to its own troubles. ("Bad bet" is illustrated in [3], pp.32–36. That essay articulates the mistakes and costs of the "enlargement" strategy to build a "liberal world order", exemplified by President Bill Clinton, his advisers, and neoconservative thinkers, e.g., Anthony Lake, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan.)
(For interested readers, essay [4] elaborates on why the U.S. should pivot from the "global-first" to a nationstate-based model. The main content exceeds the scope of this series, though.)
References
[1] Kotkin, Stephen. 2026. "The Weakness of the Strongmen: What Really Threatens Authoritarians?" FA 105(1): 8–29.
[2] Levitsky, Steven, Lucan A. Way, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2026. "The Price of American Authoritarianism: What Can Reverse Democratic Decline?" FA 105(1): 30-43.
[3] Cass, Oren. 2025. "A Grand Strategy of Reciprocity: How to Build an Economic and Security Order That Works for America." FA 104(6): .28–43.
[4] Schadlow, Nadia. 2026. "The Globalist Delusion: Why America Must Build a New Operating System." FA 105(2): 38–53.
