Russia, Iran target democracies

Tony Abbott recently nailed what is at stake in Ukraine’s defence of its sovereignty. “The Ukrainians are fighting for everyone’s freedom not just their own,” he told Sky News. The point needs repeating and extending because democracy and the innate human freedoms it protects are being attacked by the regimes of Russia and Iran and its proxies, which are using war to extend their power. For all the complexities of the war in Ukraine, Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas and the US-led coalition’s maritime defence of free trade in the Red Sea, they share a core characteristic. They are conflicts between liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes, determined to stay in power permanently.

For critics of the US and its allies, and apologists for Russia and Iran, there is a question they cannot answer. When was there last an election in Moscow, Tehran, and Gaza, where the men – and they are always men – now in power accepted the decision of citizens in a free and fair vote?

Despite obfuscations about the ethnicity of some Ukrainians and the nation’s long subordination to tsars and Soviet commissars, Mr Abbott’s view is beyond dispute. The democratically elected government leads the nation in a defence against a Russian invasion, mounted because it suited Vladimir Putin’s ambition to lead a world power. It is a return to the Europe of the 17th century, when monarchs thought greatness depended on conquering neighbouring kingdoms, regardless of the blood and treasure wasted, with no thought for ordinary people. For Mr Putin to force Ukraine to surrender all or part of its sovereignty would be a return to a world where the rule of law, designed to protect nations from invasion, does not apply.

Then there is Tehran, a combination of theocracy and kleptocracy. It has elections – one is due in March – but candidates must be approved by a council of clerics, which makes winning more about organising the numbers in the religious establishment than pitching to voters. The Revolutionary Guard, which answers to the clerical-appointed supreme leader, includes troops and “morality police” empowered to enforce religious rules, especially on women. The Guard also controls much of the economy, which enables it to fund client terror organisations – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and Houthi rebels in Yemen. This is a way for the clerical government to attack Israel and Western democracies. The Houthis are using drone strikes against merchant shipping in the Red Sea, directed against Israeli-, US- and UK-flagged vessels. Whether or not Iranian people share the clerical regime’s hatred of Israel, they may not be willing to pay the price of Western sanctions or accept that women can be imprisoned, and killed, for not wearing a headscarf in public. The people have no say.

In Gaza, Hamas came to power in a 2006 election, following Israel’s withdrawal. It defeated the Fatah branch of the Palestinian resistance, which had failed to deliver basic services. But Hamas has run Gaza to suit its own interests, not those it rules. Most Gazans probably despised Israel before the war. But the idea they would have supported Hamas’s terror attacks on ordinary Israelis in October, given what was bound to follow, is absurd. The core message of the last century is that democracies do not fight each other. Their leaders know winning a war is no guarantee they will win the next election.

Perhaps Mr Putin, in power since 1999 and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, in office for 25 years, could win elections without the power of the state. But don’t hold your breath.

Humanity’s greatest political achievement is government of the people, by the people, for the people. Regimes that oppose it always put their own interests ahead of those they rule, not govern.