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We see litters of articles and papers from liberal media that democracy is globally dying. While I don't believe this is happening right away, could most democracies become less so in the future?
The German YouTuber Kraut some time ago had suggested that the political turmoil in liberal democracies is largely a result of the collapse of the USSR and with it, the Cold War consensus of combatting communism which unified various different groups.
I don't think American liberals are particularly holding up democratic principles in their own domain either, with how they deplatform and censor their opponents. Essentially, they're really just consolidating their electoral power while trying to protect the thin sheen of freedom in America. This bias extends across the US establishment. If you look at the highest-earning zipcodes they've all flipped massively to the democrats over the past few decades. Same is true if you look at the Ivy League. Seen in this light, the FBI was merely following the trend when they raided Ryan Kelley's home and other such harassment campaigns will not face scrutiny because a large portion of the US elite agree with the FBI targeting their political opponents. This is why they refuse to let Jan 6 die, it was certainly a riot, but nowhere close to a coup. We know what a real coup looks like from the recent Sri Lankan crisis. In South Korea, gender wars and the excessive divide over feminism has effectively become a major electoral talking point, although President Yoon Suk-yeol is married to a career woman himself who doesn't wish to be addressed as First Lady and has 0 kids with him. The state of the Koreas, one being a depressing totalitarian state and the other being a depressing, hyper consumerist protectorate of the US almost feels like an ill fated destiny. Even in India, the progressive pressure has generated a lot of culture wars of its own, where the ruling BJP's base perceive liberals as being sympathetic to Pakistan while levelling every epithet against India which would also be relevant to their archrival, and have reacted strongly. Couple with that the malthusian growth rates and the neoliberal decay preceding their rise to electoral power from being just another one of many parties in the country. But Russia and China, the "authoritarian competitors to the free world", are both strong societies, I can't imagine something like 1CP being done away so quickly if it was instituted in the US. They don't have to deal with electoral politics and do not have to deal with culture wars. And with an ascendant China, its proximity to China might tempt India to remodify its political institutions to have a shot at uplifting its hundreds of millions from poverty.
Now I'm not saying culture wars will end democracies, but its probably a symptom of decadence in democratic societies combined with the rise of social media highlighting our differences with millions of our own countrymen. Maybe I'm young and only speaking from my own limited experience? Curious to know what others think.
Logically, shouldn't we expect powerful absolutist/totalitarian states to dominate, ceteris paribus?
I think it was only favourable geography that shielded Britain from autocracy and let democracy get so strong. They were left alone to focus totally on naval power. Everyone else who tried this got pummelled (Netherlands, Carthage and Athens for example). They weren't islands. They had to divide their attention between sea and land. Maxxing out naval power, bringing in the trade money and having accessible coal turned out to be the dominant strategy, if you can avoid being invaded by a stronger land power while you build up.
If it weren't for British naval power, French royal or Napoleonic absolutism would've taken over Europe and the world. The British were the ones who paid for the Austrians and Prussians to impale themselves on French bayonets.
Because of that naval power and a great deal of luck the United States got the best parts of an entire continent to rule and a zero-threat hemisphere. There's no more fortunate nation on the planet - of course their inherited suboptimal quirks will survive. If it weren't for vast Anglo-American resources, Germany would've won both world wars and cemented authoritarianism as the reigning world ideology. The Germans got outspent 2:1 in both world wars. It's very hard to see how the Allies win if you take away half their resources for a 'fair' fight. We saw what happened when it was just France and Britain vs Germany, just two global empires vs a single oil-poor state no larger than Texas. Germany trounced them and the Benelux, Denmark, Norway and Poland.
Due to incredible geographical and historical luck, democracy and liberalism managed to snowball their way to global dominance despite being less competitive than authoritarian/totalitarian systems. If there was a land bridge between France and Britain, Britain would've just been another Eurasian land power like Spain or Sweden rather than an unstoppable liberal juggernaut. We would all be living in one party states today.
Liberalism and democracy has obvious issues with incentives: loot the country while you're in charge to deny it to the other side. Or loot the country to bribe your voters. It divides the country between parties and opens up avenues for foreign interference. Poland-Lithuania dabbled with liberalism on the Continent and got partitioned. Switzerland only survived due to favourable defensive geography. Illiberal states can more easily mobilize the population for offensive wars, grow stronger and repeat the process. For competitiveness between equals, you need militarism and a centralized state. You need to devote a larger fraction of the pie to military power than the enemy, you can't just be the US and have an economy so big you win conflicts just by entering them. This isn't to say that authoritarian systems are perfect or even desirable, just that they're more competitive when they're not faced with innately stronger opponents.
This bodes ill for the looming conflict with China, the first time the democracies face a power their own size. Naturally, it started with a disastrous defeat in that delusional liberals decided to transfer our manufacturing base to China on the basis that this would somehow make them liberalise. There's an echo of Munich in that. No matter that China guns down liberal protestors in Tiananmen or starts the Third Taiwan Straits crisis in 1996-7, they just ignore evidence and invest China into becoming the world's greatest manufacturing power (which had been the US's crowning achievement for over a century). I personally blame multinationals bribing foolish policymakers for this mega-disaster but it's still a failure of liberalism to allow this to happen.
Maybe we get ridiculously lucky again. Maybe we can coast on previous victories. But I'm doubtful.
What is it about autocracies that’s supposed to be more adaptive?
The 20th century provided some staggering evidence that it’s not the potential for command economy. Nor were the totalitarians particularly resilient against internal struggle; perhaps China has surpassed that issue, if they can ride their demographic transition into continued success? I’m partial to the theory that democracy serves as a release valve for tensions which would otherwise boil into bloody insurrection.
I have to wonder if a similar narrative existed in 400 CE. “It was a precarious military situation that converted Constantine; without such chance, now that the Empire is beset, surely this Christianity will collapse. Real Roman traditions always dominated before, and they will again.”
Well it was a precarious military situation that put a spear through Julian's chest. Give Julian the Apostate 30 years and Constantine 2 and things might turn out differently.
Autocracies have more freedom to undertake long-term strategies. They can resist getting dragged into popular but unwise decisions in the long term. They have a free hand to wage aggressive wars of conquest and mobilize more from their population. They can create extremely powerful militaries. As above, when Napoleonic France, Imperial or Nazi Germany faced opponents of similar economic size, they crushed them.
But the incentive of popularity isn't the only reason leaders make shortsighted choices. You could just as easily argue that democracy hedges against autocrats doing short sighted things. A military dictator panders to his cadre even in peacetime; his powerful military is a political tool as much as a diplomatic one.
Who the hell told Hitler to go forward with Operation Barbarossa?
If we assume a Platonic philosopher-king, making only morally and strategically correct decisions, there's no need to tie him down with populism. I'm not convinced that such a king can be created by concentrating power in the hands of mere mortals.
Barbarossa made a tonne of sense. Why would the Germans rely forever on a bitter ideological enemy for their vital fuel supplies? This is a question the Germans should have pondered in recent years. Stalin was building up his army and airforce, industrializing rapidly. Why wait till they get stronger? They also wanted Soviet land, that was the whole point of the war.
German intelligence thought the Russian army was under half its actual size, so it would be easy to win. They had won the last war with a bigger version of Russia while they were still bogged down in France. There was no way they could've known that every Abwehr agent in Russia had been turned. Later on Hitler said that if he knew how many tanks the Soviets were producing, he wouldn't have invaded. Barbarossa was a rational decision predicated on faulty intelligence.
The real question we should be asking is how two global empires managed to lose so catastrophically to Nazi Germany when they started off in such a commanding position, while Germany had an army of 100,000 men. Letting Hitler build a powerful army, letting him have the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia - that is the real disaster that made everything else possible. It wasn't just a failure of intelligence, it was a total failure of comprehending the situation, a surrender to cowardice. The US making China an industrial superpower is a similar kind of completely stupid decision.
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