Authoritarian leaders call for the end of Western liberalism

The argument

Authoritarian powers across the globe remain a significant threat to liberal democracies and to liberalism as a global phenomenon. What makes the threat hard to answer is that it does not arrive by any single route: this authoritarian threat is vast and multivalent, operating at once across domains that democracies tend to treat as separate problems handled by separate institutions. On a military level, the threat includes seizure of land, war, and exhibitions of dominance — the most visible form, and the one democracies are best prepared to recognise. On a level of coercion, the threat includes pressurization and persuasion through political and economic means, which works precisely because it stops short of anything that would trigger a military response. On a disruptive level, the threat includes undermining political power, propaganda, and cyberattacks, aimed not at a state's borders but at the confidence its own citizens have in their institutions. There is an ideological dimension as well. Authoritarian principles like boundless power and personal rule are disseminated as normal and desirable, which changes what populations regard as an acceptable form of government rather than merely what they think of any particular one. The threat also includes rupturing ties within democratic alliances, so that states which would be formidable together are faced one at a time instead. These threats face nearly every western liberal democracy. On many levels, and in many places, it has already come into effect — which is the sense in which liberalism is threatened rather than obsolete: it is being contested, not superseded. Liberal democracies must engage with and respond to their authoritarian rivals in constructive ways. They must shield against and put off the vast threat that is posed to them by the presence and ascendance of authoritarian states and ideas.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin are wrong to think that their regimes will dominate the future and liberal democracies will somehow die out. Right before the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Putin said he thinks western liberalism is obsolete. But many western leaders countered his statement by pointing out that Russia has a slow, static economy and depends upon fluctuating oil production for government revenue. They also pointed out that Putin has recently needed to deal with growing civil resistance. They retorted that Putin, like other authoritarian leaders, would love to see western liberal values die out since democracy and human rights already jeopardize his position as a leader and his capacity to control his people.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise asserts the threat rather than evidencing it. No state, incident or date is named anywhere in the argument, so the claim that this faces "nearly every western liberal democracy" cannot be assessed. [Rejecting P2] The three levels are drawn so broadly that ordinary international conduct falls under them — economic pressure and information campaigns are practised by liberal democracies as well. A category that excludes nothing cannot establish that liberalism specifically is what is under threat. [Rejecting P3] The deeper problem is that the argument does not distinguish its position from its rivals. External pressure is compatible with liberalism being obsolete, being vindicated, or being unaffected, and the sibling positions would point to internal causes — falling trust, inequality, party realignment — which this argument never mentions. As the counter-argument observes, the authoritarian states said to be doing the threatening have serious structural weaknesses of their own.