Alarming state of the world

The following excerpts are from a speech given last year to "a group of Turkish, European, and U.S. experts and policymakers at a meeting organized by the German Marshall Fund of the United States" by Dr. Paul T Levin from the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies.

My Swedish political science colleagues at the Varieties of Democracy project in Gothenburg collect data about the state of democracy in the world. And their latest (2023) report is a chilling read. The democratic advances over the last 35 years have now been entirely wiped out. 72% of the world’s population now lives in autocracies. If you count states not people, there are now more dictatorships than liberal democracies. [...] The most precipitous decline has happened over the past 10 years and it does not appear to be stopping. Right now, there are 14 countries that are democratizing according to their estimates. But there are 42 autocratizers, and that is a record.

[...]

[T]his is how democracies are often lost today: Sometimes through coups but often through elections of populist candidates who proceed to slowly dismantle independent institutions and checks on their powers.

Next year will see a record number of elections across the globe, and there are worrying signs in Europe and elsewhere.

[...]

What are the likely geopolitical consequences of a second term Trump presidency for Europe?

NATO is ultimately a defensive military alliance, not the boy scouts. But at the heart of what is to be defended are shared democratic values.

[...]

I know that there are some here who would scoff at the very notion of a so-called liberal international order, perhaps especially today, in light of what many see as Western complicity in the Israeli bombings in Gaza. Those are fair objections, but “less than perfect” in defense of democracy is very different from “fully autocratic.”

[...]

Trump obviously couldn’t care less about “shared democratic values”. If he can make better deals with fellow autocrats like Putin than with needy and judgmental European allies, he will do that.

It is no secret that he has long wanted to pull the US out of NATO entirely.

[...]

And it seems he has learned from the bureaucratic resistance he encountered during his first term. This time, he reportedly doesn’t want any “NATO lovers” in senior positions.

We should therefore be prepared for the possibility that he may actually attempt to pull the US out of NATO.

[...]

Even if he stops short of a complete withdrawal, Trump is quite likely to seriously undermine the alliance in various ways. Already during the first term, he undermined the credibility of article 5 by asserting that the US would not risk World War three to defend smaller NATO member states. Center for Renewing America—a think tank stacked with MAGA Republicans—has proposed what they call “burden shifting” to Europe. By this they mean a unilateral decision to rapidly pull US troops out of Europe, shifting the entire burden of defense of the continent to Europe itself.

[...]

Let me end with two sober conclusions: First, when it comes to NATO and a possible Trump victory, Europe needs to be ready. We may hope for the best, but we must prepare for the worst.

Second, we have to internalize that we have now left the post-Cold War era where we confidently promoted democracy across the globe. We must take the threat to democracy worldwide and at home seriously. I include my own country here: Sweden is far from immune to threats to its democracy, whether from abroad or within. And I worry that taking the threat seriously means focusing on defending democracy rather than spreading it.

This worries me because I do want democracy to spread. I certainly don’t want us to abandon democrats in places like Turkey. But for now, I would be grateful if we even managed to stem the spread of autocracy.

  Paul Levin