TOTALITARIANISM IS MAKING A COMEBACK

Claudia Rosett warns in Forbes that totalitarianism is on the rise again in the 21st century (via Hot Air):

Dictators are making a comeback.

Just four or five years ago, the headlines were full of democratic movements, notably the yellow, rose and cedar "revolutions" in the Ukraine, Georgia and Lebanon. The Taliban had been toppled, Saddam Hussein overthrown. Democratic stirrings were heralded from the streets of Iran and China to promises of reform in Saudi Arabia and Libya. Freedom was continuing a roll begun way back in the Reagan era. Tyrants were on the outs with polite society.

These days, dictators are on a roll. Among the many signs was last week's op-ed in The New York Times by none other than Muammar Qaddafi, unrepentant and brutal tyrant in Tripoli for the past 40 years--though, for the purposes of this piece, the Times identifies him politely as "the leader of Libya." I am still pondering that article, and not solely because this is the same New York Times that last fall rejected an op-ed by John McCain when he was running for president. Qaddafi used his patch of American editorial space to float a plan that would demographically blitz democratic Israel out of existence by setting up a single combined Palestinian-Israeli state, which he suggests we call "Isratine."

It's tempting simply to dismiss such stuff as unintended self-parody--whether on the part of Qaddafi, the Times or both. But it is also a token that tyrants are back in style, not only feeling safe to venture out of their spider holes but preening as elder statesmen and increasingly welcomed back to the parlors, editorial pages and negotiating tables of democratic high society. [...]

Freedom House Research Director Arch Puddington highlights Iran, Russia, Zimbabwe and Venezuela as showing "enhanced anti-democratic tendencies." But these are surrounded as well by a scene of broader decline.

Freedom House attributes part of this slide to "gathering authoritarian pushback against opposition parties, nongovernmental organizations and the press." It might be tempting to blame such pushback on President Bush's democracy agenda. Except, coinciding with this decline, Bush dropped the dead-or-alive approach to terrorists and their state sponsors during his second term, and soft-pedaled the democratization push. Increasingly during his final years in office, he relied on soft power, talks at Annapolis, talks with North Korea, talks via the European Union and the mechanisms of the predominantly undemocratic United Nations.

I'm glad to see that she's acknowledging Dubya's betrayal of principles that really took effect during his second term of office. But she's wrong that there's ever been any real democratic push in Lebanon, and come to think of it, in Iran or China either. And Russia is certainly moving back to totalitarianism, and has been ever since Vladimir Putin took office.

The Cold War, it's sad to say, has returned, mainly because would-be democratic leaders failed to make any convincing effort to ensure that democracy would hold steady.

And one more note: to think that the House of Saud could be so easily persuaded to allow democracy is simply missing reality.