How the autocrats’ club keeps dictators in power

In place of global revolution or the dictatorship of the masses, today’s autocrats’ prime objectives are the accumulation and preservation of power – and their own enrichment.

North Korean President Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Today, there’s “an ironic, inverse version of globalisation,” in which tyrants share tools and tactics while defending and propagandising for one another. AP

Jonathan Tepperman

Aug 22, 2024 – 5.00am

Email LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber?

On May 28, the republic of Georgia was thrown into uproar when its parliament, overriding a presidential veto, passed a controversial new law requiring media and nongovernmental organisations that get more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence”.

That the government of Georgia – a democracy seeking NATO and EU membership, with a public that is among the region’s most pro-Western – would take such a step might seem mystifying. But for the tens of thousands of protesters who took to the streets, there was no mystery at all. The explanation was obvious from the derisive name they gave to the new legislation: the “Russian law”.

Foreign Policy