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Chris Harris's avatar

It occurs to me that China's authoritarianism probably has more domestic legitimacy than that of Russia or the USA since the country was lately very poor but now 'works' after the fashion of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, whereas in the contemporary USA, authoritarianism would probably mean doubling down on failure. The USA would be the weakest and most unstable link in the triad (which is otherwise strikingly reminiscent of Orwell's Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania, by the way).

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Charles Bastille's avatar

Thanks, and yes, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of movement for another revolution in China by any means. Something like 500 million people joined the middle class. They’re surely not eager to toss out the people responsible for that. And in fairness, it’s a genuine success.

Putin was popular, too. Russians are used to dictators, a condition that acted as its own form of authoritarian infrastructure Putin was able to feed from. The Ukraine war may be impacting his popularity some. That seemed apparent when Prigozhin seemed to be welcomed with open arms when it looked like he might march into Moscow. Prigozhin probably would have been an even worse kind of dictator than Putin if he had somehow prevailed.

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