Authoritarianism Is Flawed

 While it is unclear what the Ukrainian War will look like in a month, it is abundantly clear that the terms of engagement have shifted. The early month of the war was about Russian initiative, then Ukrainian resistance and Russian withdrawal, followed by stalemate. We have now entered a potentially critical period as Russian troops are apparently abandoning both their positions and their equipment in a mad dash for safety. Offensive operations are more difficult than defensive ones and it remains to be seen how far Ukraine can exploit their amazing successes of the past week.

All of this once again returns the conversation to Vladimir Putin, a uniquely bad actor in the world today. Russia's inherent weakness was compensated for by screwing around in Brexit, the 2016 presidential election and less successfully in Catalan. It has supported the sort of Far Right authoritarianism we see in Brazil and Hungary and to a lesser extent in places like Poland and the United States.

Theda Skocpol has a thesis about revolutions: they occur when a country has been humiliated internationally. We are already seeing challenges from Putin's Right in response to the collapse near Kharkiv. Central Moscow was shutdown, presumably to ward of protests. 

If you cast your gaze back to the late '90s, Putin was considered an acceptable Russian leader because he wasn't Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Zhirinovsky was an outright fascist, Putin is simply an opportunistic kleptocratic strong man. 

A wounded Putin has always been a scary thing, as he does command nuclear weapons. If forces further to the Right seize power...yikes.

All of this, though, demonstrates that authoritarian regimes are fundamentally flawed because they lack transparency and flexibility. What we are seeing from Ukrainian forces - initiative, adaptation, creativity - is a hallmark of Western, democratic militaries. Russia is hobbled by endemic corruption (as Ukraine was under it's pro-Moscow regime) and can't muster the flexibility needed to respond to crises.

America has been through a shitstorm the last six years. However, America IS able to adapt and change. It is also - slowly - showing that it can hold corrupt figures accountable.

As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried from time to time."