Most demagogues are not autocrats, and most autocrats are vacillating narcissists.
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This is how autocrats — or would-be autocrats — cement their power.
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The achievement is bad for Hungarian liberty and its long-term prospects—and an object lesson in what is possible for autocrats and would-be autocrats elsewhere.
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Militarism -- another obsession of autocrats -- also exercises Trump.
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It is a club that welcomes autocrats and democrats alike.
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To remain in power, autocrats need to nobble independent institutions.
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Autocrats in Minsk, Moscow, Ankara and beyond will take note.
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Muslim autocrats came to value the soft power they gained.
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The autocrats move in and slowly start dismantling the system.
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Sometimes their fury leads nowhere, but autocrats still fear it.
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Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats.
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President Donald Trump has made clear his admiration for autocrats.
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They are America's democratic allies in a neighborhood of autocrats.
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They have a greater chance of ejecting autocrats than insurrections.
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Old autocrats rarely resign, nor do they just fade away.
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Today, the two autocrats are coordinating airstrikes against it in Syria.
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Emboldened autocrats have little need to pretend that they govern democracies.
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Among the region's autocrats, this is usually code for suppressing criticism.
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Autocrats maintain a facade of toughness to inspire fear, Roth said.
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Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance.
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Many would-be autocrats suffer electoral setbacks like Mr. Morales did.
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That's the dream of autocrats who feel threatened by real democracy.
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It's an ugly equation that autocrats seem best placed to play.
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Michelle Goldberg on Trump and autocrats and America's diminished global standing.
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Instead, Rubio has chosen to employ a classic tool of autocrats.
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Or just a generalized sympathy for autocrats and hatred for democracy?
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This year, however, the autocrats proved as problematic as the allies.
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But even after autocrats leave office, their legacies can live on.
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Even autocrats like Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin scored better.
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But as autocrats gain clout, the room for free speech is shrinking.
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Westerners are not in any position to lecture others, retort Gulf autocrats.
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Such laws also provide an excuse for autocrats to censor their critics.
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The audience, consisting mostly of autocrats and dictators, spouted gushers of flattery.
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As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump praised autocrats and exhibited strongman tendencies.
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Autocrats of the past tended to grab power in one overpowering charge.
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But Arab autocrats regard young people as a threat—and with reason.
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Freedom of expression simply cannot be negotiated with autocrats, dictators or bullies.
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The longer autocrats stay in power, the harder they are to remove.
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The United States is no stranger to celebrating friendly Middle East autocrats.
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The world's growing ranks of would-be autocrats should study Viktor Orban.
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Latin American autocrats, including Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, have used this combination.
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Autocrats and their supporters exploited the populist backlash against weak liberal democracies.
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"I have the habit of taking autocrats at their word," Gaspard says.
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They were a 21st-century generation facing off against 20th-century autocrats.
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It also echoed the language of autocrats who seek to minimize dissent.
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Many of the autocrats are finding new ways to entrench their rule.
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It's the one long preferred by despots and autocrats the world over.
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It's become his standard dodge when criticized for cozying up to autocrats.
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Go deeper: Internet freedom crumbles as social media becomes tool for autocrats
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Mr. Trump, who so admires Russia's soon-to-be "Supreme Leader" Vladimir Putin, as well as other autocrats like Turkey's Erdogan, Egypt's Sisi, and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, appears to want to join them in the autocrats' club.
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America, especially under Mr Trump, has been willing to work with brutal autocrats.
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Autocrats who plan to stay in power for ever need to indoctrinate children.
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For example, autocrats are often paranoid because rivals are everywhere, ambitious and deadly.
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But foreign autocrats are also learning that America's president does not rule alone.
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But that could change: China's autocrats may not be as clumsy for ever.
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Like the best autocrats, Cambodia's prime minister understands the importance of social media.
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In parts of Africa autocrats are still in power and wars still rage.
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The Trump administration's policy of embracing Middle East autocrats is obviously not helpful.
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It sounds like an echo of long-ago autocrats and some contemporary ones.
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Despite extensive advantages, autocrats' electoral strategies can reveal new evidence of opposition strength.
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It was part of Mr. Trump's pattern of taking autocrats at their word.
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There were handshakes and promises shared with autocrats in North Korea and Russia.
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Autocrats like Mussolini, Franco and Hitler seemed to offer protection for their wealth.
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Clever autocrats will ensure that their political enemies suffer most of the pain.
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Authoritarian regimes and autocrats will never accept a power higher than their own.
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Or the vicious autocrats who manipulate to keep their nasty grips on power.
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I didn&apost expect him to hold up autocrats and attack our allies.
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Other autocrats in the region placed similar trust in their own security forces.
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"Autocrats only deal with what is in front of them," she told Amanpour.
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Aides to Mr. Trump argue that his outreach to autocrats has been vindicated.
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As journalism declines, autocrats and kleptocrats find it easier to oppress and loot unobserved.
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Yet autocrats emboldened by Mr Trump's support may not have a completely free hand.
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Gone are the days when democratic pretenses were required of autocrats to save face.
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Autocrats who cling to power after losing elections are particularly likely to be deposed.
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African autocrats have also benefited from China's rise as an economic and political power.
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But this is how tyrants, this is how autocrats, this is how dictators behave.
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Saudi Arabia versus Iran, monarchies and secular autocrats versus political Islamists, and citizens versus
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Trump is "demanding forced patriotism just as autocrats have done for centuries," Lemon said.
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But as long as dictators and autocrats reign, we must continue to speak out.
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" He went on, "It's not just that autocrats are winning in places like Brazil.
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Viewed from afar, Saudi kings may look like one long, undifferentiated line of autocrats.
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Yet autocrats think it worthwhile, usually to stop information from circulating during a crisis.
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"Pompeo sees his audience as the region's autocrats rather than its people," he said.
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But Morocco is looking more like its turbulent neighbours, run by out-of-touch autocrats.
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On stage, he acknowledged that big tech's products might be misused, even exploited, by autocrats.
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There seems to be a brotherhood-of-autocrats relationship between them, and it's very alarming.
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Those who end up being handmaidens for autocrats don't believe that's what they are doing.
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Central Europe's autocrats don't want the EU to crash and burn the way Putin does.
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But even autocrats can be sent packing when enough of their citizens stop playing along.
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A dose of Arab autocrats singing his praises could be just the tonic Trump needs.
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Autocrats around the world watching America will no doubt find some comfort in the turmoil.
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Raise your hand if you need a break from warmongering autocrats and fear-inducing headlines.
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Gerontocrats and autocrats still hold power, and are giving little say to the next generation.
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Xi's system inspires envy from autocrats, but little admiration from ordinary citizens around the world.
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It is also the key to unlocking the mystery of why autocrats are so appealing.
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Would-be autocrats around the world are conducting these "threat experiments" on their nations' citizens.
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They echo his earlier comments on autocrats like Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping.
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Lully served one of history's supreme autocrats, and exercised his own form of musical absolutism.
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Would-be autocrats have found cleverer ways to tilt the playing field in their favor.
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He's attacked global press freedom, after cozying up to autocrats on his recent Asia tour.
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The small returns on sales to autocrats may not be worth endangering such lucrative contracts.
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R. Ghodsee's "Electing for Autocrats", Ghodsee reveals how U.S.-led regime change breeds future demagogues.
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As our reporter writes, autocrats' power is growing from Russia to Turkey to Southeast Asia.
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Mr. Bashir's fate is a reminder that autocrats seem powerful and entrenched until they aren't.
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Then the very word becomes a sham, a disguise deployed by autocrats like Vladimir Putin.
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There is no more fertile ground for the consolidation of populist autocrats than party fragmentation.
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Still, some said Mr. Huntsman's experience dealing with autocrats in Beijing would translate to Moscow.
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In our nation, power is shared, checked and balanced precisely to thwart would-be autocrats.
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Crises present such great opportunities for concentrating power that would-be autocrats often manufacture them.
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His election represented the zenith of that popular outburst, in a region where autocrats lasted decades.
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No, autocrats enrich those around them to protect their power, to buy acquiescence, to silence complaints.
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Smartphones may help activists monitor elections, but they cannot, by themselves, stop autocrats from rigging them.
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Today, the autocrats have their hands on it, and they are pulling hard in their direction.
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There are plenty of suitors for foreign autocrats looking to whitewash their reputations on Capitol Hill.
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But that argument bears an uncanny resemblance to ones made on behalf of "rational" political autocrats.
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By holding some of the worst offenders accountable, we can send clear signals to autocrats everywhere.
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All populist autocrats try to foment divisions, find scapegoats and inflame their backers against their critics.
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Strengthens Tehran's ruling autocrats, who can once again blame the evil Americans for Iran's economic woes.
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Otherwise, they risk being taken for a ride by autocrats adept in donning a democratic wardrobe.
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Even when the Chinese and Cuban autocrats bless the enterprise, doing business in Cuba is hard.
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Autocrats around the world have echoed Mr. Trump's recitations of "fake news" in suppressing independent journalism.
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Mr. Trump seems more at home with Middle Eastern autocrats than he does with European democrats.
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Opinion As America joins the axis of autocrats, Ukrainians fear being left alone to face Russia.
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In the book, Mr. McCain scorns Mr. Trump's seeming admiration for autocrats and disdain for refugees.
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Like autocrats throughout history, he tries to divide and rule, directing popular anger at unpopular minorities.
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"I'm very worried that the President seems to have a love affair with autocrats," Biden said.
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"Since day one, President Trump has bent to the will of autocrats," said Rhode Island Sen.
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Fear of the state's unconstrained power is what Vladimir Putin and other autocrats use to govern.
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A brief list of the times the president has invoked a pet locution of autocrats. Feb.
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Trump has described journalists as "the enemy of the people" — an insult usually leveled by autocrats.
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Mr. Pompeo's prescription was short on specifics, beyond bolstering alliances with Arab autocrats loyal to Washington.
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Autocrats often come to power through democratic elections rather than at the point of a gun.
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Dictators, strongmen and autocrats have practiced the art of drumming up loathing toward others to great effect.
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Even autocrats such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko invite foreign monitors.
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When autocrats steal too brazenly, no censor can stop people from knowing—and sometimes booting them out.
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Al Jazeera, already a thorn in the side of Arab autocrats, reported extensively on the Arab Spring.
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All of these autocrats are popular not in spite of their authoritarian tendencies but because of them.
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Huawei, with encouragement from the Chinese government, is exporting this technology to aspiring autocrats around the world.
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Autocrats and dictators fear sarcasm because it destroys the mystique that is essential to maintaining their power.
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But how truly resilient are the Middle East's autocrats, even young ones such as Muhammad bin Salman?
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In the old days, autocrats often came to or retained power through military coups and violent crackdowns.
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Extremists and autocrats all around the world are often all too ready to sate this universal need.
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We need to be strengthening multilateral institutions, not dismantling them, a stance which dovetails with autocrats' agendas.
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They did, but they also armed autocrats with new ways to undermine the credibility of honest news.
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They'd rather win unfairly than lose fairly — which is, again, the kind of decision that autocrats make.
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And even when they do occur, coups against autocrats for the most part do not deliver democracy.
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In our correspondents' analysis, the remorseless calculations of Mr. Trump's foreign policy will be welcomed by autocrats.
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Historically, Republicans were associated with fiscal conservatism, free trade and standing up militarily to autocrats in Moscow.
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Of course, that probably doesn't bother Trump, who prefers autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman.
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For the world's warlords, criminals, and autocrats, there's no gift finer than an anonymous American shell company.
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The Arab Spring uprisings had toppled several autocrats, and political Islamists were rising to fill the vacuum.
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He shows how the digital tools used to mobilise peaceful revolutions have been co-opted by autocrats.
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"This visit is par for the course in terms of this administration's interest in aligning itself with autocrats and would-be autocrats," said Robert G. Berschinski, a former deputy assistant secretary of state under Mr. Obama, now a senior vice president at Human Rights First, a watchdog group.
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Yet Russia has become a lodestar for autocrats and aspiring autocrats around the world, a pioneer of the media and other tools — known in Russia as "political technologies" — that these leaders now deploy, with or without Moscow's help, to disrupt a world order once dominated by the United States.
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He is enabling autocrats in Egypt, and losing the confidence of close allies, such as Israel and Jordan.
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Mr Morales has professed admiration for long-ruling autocrats, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
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Press freedom advocates worry that Trump's comments have encouraged autocrats and others who seek to limit free speech.
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Foreign threats are also helpful, especially if the autocrats can claim they have allies lurking within the homeland.
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Algeria was relatively untouched when the 2011 "Arab Spring" uprisings swept away veteran autocrats in the Arab world.
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Alas, it is instead striking that many of the new breed of populist autocrats are lawyers by training.
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Algeria was relatively untouched when the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings swept away veteran autocrats in the Arab world.
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Will the would-be autocrats and new imperialists who saw such opportunities in Syria's tragedy let go now?
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The autocrats quickly realised the president wants a special rapport with them more than almost any policy outcome.
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To get rid of autocrats, we need to deal with the real problem: fake news of rising threat.
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And an invitation to autocrats w/o America's checks & balances to play the same game more dangerously. Leadership??
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"On stage, he acknowledged that big tech's products might be misused, even exploited, by autocrats," the worker wrote.
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Iranian theocrats hold on to power at home and defend autocrats like President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
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Autocrats in Asia, the Middle East and Africa have emulated Mr. Putin's draconian laws restricting civil society groups.
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Algeria was relatively unscathed by the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that toppled veteran autocrats across the Middle East.
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The damage inflicted by President Trump's naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.
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In addition, Trump has undercut the appeal of democracy while heartily embracing dictators and autocrats around the world.
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His "fake news," slogan has given ammunition to autocrats everywhere, who wish to dismiss information they deem unfavorable.
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"I disagree," Mr. Liu wrote on Weibo, a microblogging site, listing examples of power-hungry emperors and autocrats.
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In my index, which uses only polls independent of government control, there are just two — both elected autocrats.
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Driving the news: American firms' instinctive deference to Chinese autocrats was thrust into the national spotlight this week.
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Strongmen and autocrats everywhere — not least in Egypt and the Gulf states — are exulting at Mr. Trump's victory.
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Or we can voice our support for their efforts, which would help put the autocrats on the defensive.
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Furthermore, while Trump may have as many supporters as rising autocrats abroad, he faces much more determined resistance.
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"Shows @realDonaldTrump expects blind loyalty and subservience from everyone—qualities usually found in narcissistic, vengeful autocrats," he added.
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If the economy continues to deteriorate, we should expect him to do what autocrats do — seek more control.
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Like other autocrats, he is an opportunist, and will capitalize on opportunities to advance his agenda whenever possible.
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They fear he could use existing institutions to destroy our liberal democracy, just as autocrats have done abroad.
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Following Mr. Trump's example, many of the world's autocrats and dictators are taking a shine to it, too.
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He also believed that speaking out on human rights when meeting autocrats boosted campaigners, even when his lecturing grated.
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If you're wondering where foreign policy has gone wrong under Trump, look no further than his fawning over autocrats.
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Eight years after Tunisians toppled Mr Ben Ali, the surviving Arab autocrats think they have weathered the revolutionary storm.
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What explains the Washington consensus in favor of Wahhabist autocrats who often act counter to American values and interests?
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Many more now shun politics altogether, which from the autocrats' point of view is almost as happy a result.
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It leads to the election of autocrats who promise meager material goods wrapped in conservative social and cultural clichés.
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That's because autocrats excel at gradualism, increasing their hold on power bit by bit, until democracy becomes a mirage.
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By either expressing or ignoring human rights concerns, they send important signals to would-be autocrats and dissidents alike.
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An American president who praises and sometimes seems intent on emulating the autocrats of the world, starting with Putin.
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Trump attacked CNN International this week, joining autocrats, drug cartels and Islamic militants who also hate independent fact-finders.
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"Fake news," President Trump's battle cry, is now in heavy rotation with autocrats and dictators from Venezuela to Cambodia.
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They possess the power, savor the privileges and exercise the rights of unchallenged autocrats, free from any democratic constraints.
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In his end-of-life memoir, Mr. McCain scorned Mr. Trump's seeming admiration for autocrats and disdain for refugees.
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" In one of McCain's final public statements, he called out Trump's "naïveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats.
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Autocrats and proponents of non-democratic systems of governance simply do not want political competition and open election processes.
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Autocrats understand that supposedly independent institutions such as the courts and prosecutors are vital to locking in their power.
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On "Reliable," Bruni, Katie Rogers, and Bianna Golodryga discussed the coverage and Trump's praise for autocrats who oppose press freedom.
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When autocrats began falling during the Arab spring, Russia's interest in the region reawakened from a long post-Soviet lull.
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TUNISIA IS PERHAPS best known as the lone Arab-spring success story, a democracy in a region full of autocrats.
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Sadly for ambitious autocrats, the data suggest that China and the Middle East have already performed above their low potential.
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Hence, we often see would-be autocrats trying to pack the courts or intimidate judges into getting with the program.
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"Trump is deploying a strategy, used by autocrats, designed to completely disorient public perception," Podesta wrote in The Washington Post.
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Embracing autocrats is seen, as it always has been, as pragmatic and prudent, both for stability's sake and for capitalism's.
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The Hudson Institute and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies seem more than ever to be mouthpieces for Arab autocrats.
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The US has long debated how hard to prod the world's strongmen and autocrats, how to balance values with interests.
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Instead, it offers a warning that deteriorating social norms in virtually any community may increase the allure of autocrats' promises.
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That coup was a watershed moment for the region, snuffing out dreams of democracy while emboldening both autocrats and jihadists.
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America fears that China's autocrats have free access to copious data and can enlist local tech firms on national service.
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This is important because in the past, Middle East autocrats stayed in power through a combination of coercion and consent.
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General Salah occasionally slips into the familiar language of autocrats, slandering the opposition as "traitors" bent on undermining the state.
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It is not that people on Wall Street themselves are amoral or aren't often appalled by the excesses of autocrats.
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Its drafters, having lived under a succession of woeful autocrats, sensed that future leaders might be reluctant to retire gracefully.
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But Sanders has gone further than several of his rivals in defining his foreign policy in opposition to plundering autocrats.
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But right now, his relationship with one of the Middle East's most powerful autocrats could be Trump's biggest gamble yet.
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Not only do they sell access to these ad targeting tools to mainstream advertisers — to sell the usual products, like soap and diapers — they're also, he pointed out, taking dollars from "autocrats and would be autocrats and other social disruptors to spread propaganda and fake news to a variety of ends, none of them good".
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But petrodollars, vast arsenals and Mr Trump's blessing risk turning their descendants into vainglorious autocrats with talents for inflaming, not compromising.
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This week, the world's largest watercolor painting, the bedcover Rauschenberg stole, the language of autocrats, Crapumenta, Apple's new HQ, and more.
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Second, Kim is wary of eliminating the nuclear deterrent, which made autocrats Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi vulnerable to regime change.
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Since the greatest threat to autocrats was a coup, and most coups started in cities, leaders tried to buy off urbanites.
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Meanwhile, autocrats have sharpened their tools of repression in order to quash protests at home and stop those elsewhere from spreading.
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Frida Ghitis in Politico points to three recent events, which though far from decisive, made June a bad month for autocrats.
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"Trump was too busy embracing the autocrats whom he sees as friendly," Roth said in an interview before the report's launch.
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In particular, it will alienate nations devoted to stability and appeal to autocrats who share Trump's belief in personal deal-making.
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The deeper worry is for countries like Russia and Turkey, where autocrats use the techniques of post-truth to silence opponents.
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President Trump has built strong relationships with foreign leaders, or foreign autocrats have figured out how to flatter the president's ego.
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But we in Britain must not make Wodehouse's error, believing that a gift for repartee provides everlasting immunity to vicious autocrats.
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The old autocrats also had vast oil resources or aid from superpowers in the Cold War to buy off their people.
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Foreign autocrats at odds with U.S. policy, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, have for years financed their governments through oil.
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Since taking office, President Donald Trump has eagerly embraced foreign autocrats, portraying brutal dictators as allies to be courted and celebrated.
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Autocrats want to seem like men of the people, and so they allow themselves to go the way the wind blows.
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It is in fact the Trump administration's view that America's interests are aligned with the likes of autocrats like Viktor Orbán.
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But the puppets, handmade in South Africa, were not designed to sustain Nuba's heat, and the autocrats' heads began to melt.
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Mr. Ben Ali, 81, the first of the Arab autocrats to be ousted, enjoyed what critics called an obscenely opulent life.
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This deluge has a clear purpose, and one often used to autocrats: It forces the opposition to narrowly pick their battles.
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Hong Kong, Russia and Sudan are only three places where calls for democracy have roiled the status quo, challenging powerful autocrats.
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Modern-day dictators and autocrats impose their anti-liberal and antidemocratic rule by securing a majority of votes in general elections.
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As autocrats fell like dominoes, the Saudi royal family, along with the Arab world's other monarchies, realized they might be next.
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Unhindered by public opinion, laws and opposition political parties, Russia's autocrats have historically derived strength from territorial expansion and geopolitical aggrandizement.
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The alliance may seem natural to outsiders — two gulf autocrats with similar initials — but the bond papered over a historic rift.
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Yet he bet heavily on anti-Communist autocrats like the shah of Iran or Pakistan's Yahya Khan, equating ruthlessness with reliability.
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He spread Enlightenment ideas to the farthest outposts of Europe—and he sold them out to the autocrats who lived there.
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On the one hand, he deprecates the continuities between the twentieth-century cults and the more improvisatory autocrats of our day.
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Rich countries should make it harder for ex-spooks to pursue second careers as digital mercenaries in the service of autocrats.
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This revolution made a great impression on Osama bin Laden as it demonstrated that religious militants could overthrow Western-backed autocrats.
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And political opportunists and autocrats, who are a greater danger to our nation than any external enemy, would have no foothold.
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In so doing, he joined a long line of presidents who backed third world autocrats as bastions of modernity and stability.
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S. autocrats will present continuing challenges to U.S. interests, as U.S. adversaries and strategic competitors seek greater influence in the region.
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All over the globe, autocrats have learned that they will pay no serious diplomatic price for repressing or even killing reporters.
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Autocrats go to great lengths to avoid that shaming, because it tends to delegitimize them before their public and their peers.
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It's a classic tactic of autocrats, as people who have spent time in modern Russia, China or Venezuela can tell you.
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Armando Iannucci: I had been thinking of doing something about dictators, or autocrats, or, How does one person captivate a nation?
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In its early days the station distinguished itself with intrepid reporting, heated debates and unsparing coverage of autocrats, save its Qatari hosts.
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Surveying the world today, we see apprentice autocrats copying repressive tactics that had their tryouts in Venezuela or Russia fifteen years ago.
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To give a few examples: The pattern is clear: Court-packing is what autocrats do as they begin to consolidate their power.
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His programmes avowedly promote free media, fair elections and clean government, rather than opposition parties, but local autocrats often miss the distinction.
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Given my experience with autocrats and authoritarian overseas, it was my responsibility — if no one else would do it — to speak up.
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And in truth, neither is about to see brownshirts in the streets or the complete domination of government and society by autocrats.
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American officials hated its reporting of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Arab autocrats detested the voice it gave to their opponents.
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Beyond his fondness for autocrats, however, Mr Trump's policy in the region is a muddle, and his top diplomat offered little clarity.
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Yet the Brotherhood, a transnational movement that has spawned many other Islamist parties in the region, still inspires fear in Arab autocrats.
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Still, there are no catchy hashtags linking the protests in different countries, and sharper autocrats have turned social media to their advantage.
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If even its supporters, such as Mr Ramaphosa, do not speak up when an election is ostentatiously filched, autocrats everywhere are emboldened.
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A quarter of all his papal visits have been to Muslim-majority countries, but he has rarely spoken out against their autocrats.
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The Muslim Brotherhood movement led the Arab Spring protests in 2011 that toppled some autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa.
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But even China, especially now that its own economy has slowed, is not in the business of propping up bankrupt African autocrats.
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Trump is very much at home with autocrats, who, unlike democratic leaders, aren't constrained by popular opinion and the rule of law.
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The images of relentless demonstrations and entrenched autocrats being ejected one by one were gripping, as was the bewildering speed of events.
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And, looking further, to Russia or Turkey, it is a time, too, of wild-card autocrats maneuvering ruthlessly for power in perpetuity.
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It was during the Arab Spring that revolutionaries challenged autocrats in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya using Facebook to subvert repressive power structures.
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Mr. Sassou-Nguesso is not alone among African autocrats seeking lifetime rule through constitutional changes, rigged elections and crackdowns on political opposition.
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Many autocrats, for example, suppress the mechanisms that would allow them to find out the true thoughts and concerns of their citizens.
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The Davos crowd does not object to autocrats: Mr. Xi and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have received applause in previous years.
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It is a small democracy trying to uphold a set of liberal values against autocrats and religious fanatics sworn to its destruction.
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By now it's a commonplace that Trump seems far more comfortable with brutal autocrats than with the leaders of our democratic allies.
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It had formed there to greet one of Africa's longest-serving autocrats, Denis Sassou Nguesso, the president of the Republic of Congo.
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Like other autocrats, Putin has turned the judiciary and law enforcement into a tool for maximizing his power and grinding the opposition.
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The downside is that nations subject to the unchecked whims of autocrats are also vulnerable to wild growth swings — and long slumps.
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Autocrats of this sort understand no other language and recognize that sanctions take a very long time to work their intended effects.
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As a would-be autocrat he has empowered autocrats around the world, in Saudi Arabia, in China, in Russia, in the Philippines.
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In the last decade and a half, post-Communist autocrats like Vladimir V. Putin and Viktor Orban have adopted this cynical posture.
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Critics say the contest recalled the kind of vote that kept Arab autocrats in power for decades before the 2011 Arab Spring.
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Even his personal style — Mr. Trump's penthouse apartment is plated in gold — is reminiscent of pro-Kremlin autocrats like Chechnya's Ramzan Kadyrov.
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"I've seen this type of behavior and actions on the part of foreign tyrants ... and autocrats in my national security career," he said.
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But the group came under tremendous pressure after a 2013 coup in Egypt, backed by autocrats across the Middle East and north Africa.
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So it is more than ironic that The Economist would use this example to associate the Hungarian prime minister with autocrats dismantling democracy.
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His erratic decision-making and his chumminess with autocrats lead his allies to wonder if they can depend on him in a crisis.
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Unlike former autocrats in countries such as South Korea and Taiwan, most of the Middle Eastern ones have failed to create durable prosperity.
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On his first foreign trip, to Saudi Arabia, Mr Trump told a gathering of regional autocrats that he was "not here to lecture".
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TINY and turbulent, Kyrgyzstan likes to tout itself as a trailblazer for democracy in Central Asia, a region otherwise presided over by autocrats.
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Rather, elected autocrats boil the frog, capturing courts, cowing the media and weakening the parts of civil society that hold them to account.
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That's the argument of autocrats and executives who want to move fast and break things, but the results of those policies are clear.
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"President Trump's feteing of autocrats and dictators, including from the Oval Office, undermines the values for which America has always stood, " Price said.
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President Trump keeps longstanding allies such as Germany at arm's length, while expressing admiration for autocrats like Vladimir Putin who thwart democratic institutions.
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But the point is very clear: Trump's kleptocratic instincts are creating the same kinds of vulnerabilities to his regime that autocrats regularly face.
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Of the three thought "great" – the French, Russian and American – only the last has remained potent, its values still exported, disturbing for autocrats.
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One of his signature phrases—"fake news"—has been adopted by autocrats from Bashar al-Assad, of Syria, to Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela.
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If other autocrats see Riyadh emerge from this crisis largely unscathed, America's ability to promote human rights abroad will be left in tatters.
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It was instead a story we always see with autocrats, dictators and genocidaires: one of a powerful few backed by a malevolent many.
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The intent, no doubt, was to confront the terror-supporting autocrats with alacrity, rather than with what he saw as his predecessor's reticence.
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Mr. Assad's dark suits and calm tones have given him a public image more sophisticated than that of other Arab autocrats like Col.
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Everywhere, autocrats are pushing back against democrats, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is the de facto leader of this global movement.
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Wobbly Europe One half of the world's largest economies are led by populists or autocrats while the political mainstream leaders are under attack.
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He has cozied up to autocrats such as Saudi Arabia's King Salman, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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They also note their disagreement with Trump's favor toward "autocrats and dictators" like North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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"Yovanovitch said that such conduct "undermines the US, exposes our friends, and widens the playing field for autocrats like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.
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"The damage inflicted by President Trump's naïveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate," he said in a statement.
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Unlike other Central Asian states, which are run mostly by autocrats, Kyrgyzstan is a boisterous democracy that produces sometimes chaotic changes of leadership.
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We're covering rigorous new coronavirus restrictions in Spain, how the pandemic is creating an opening for autocrats, and an overnight van Gogh heist.
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But coups against autocrats have become less frequent for a reason: Governments today have better ways of detecting and thus thwarting potential coups.
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Autocrats would like the world to think that Covid-19 offers proof that theirs is the better system, the system of the future.
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This first English-language biography of Orban captures how he turned himself into one of the most successful populist autocrats of our times.
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The new-age autocrats had shown themselves to be particularly cunning in going after civil society as a means of consolidating their power.
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As the Watergate experience shows, those statutes also provide a bulwark against government would-be autocrats all the way up to the president.
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That's a deeply troubling message to send to the rest of the world, particularly autocrats who want to remain in power for years.
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The autocrats of modern terror seethe and plot in the shadows, and their control is limited to a handful of fellow child killers.
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Another account described anxiety among some of the president's closest advisers over concerns that Mr. Trump was granting personal favors to foreign autocrats.
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Far from the command-and-control autocrats of the past, these sprawling organizations require leaders who can attract, inspire and empower vast workforces.
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Autocrats must attack the truth, because, once unmoored from facts, followers have no choice but to accept what the Dear Leader tells them.
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Over the years, the United States has contributed to instability by supporting autocrats in civil wars and tolerating corruption that has bred criminality.
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Instead, he's overseen Venezuela's descent into economic catastrophe, lost swaths of Chávez's committed political base, and become one of Latin America's newest autocrats.
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He saw what that meant to fellow autocrats, Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi and their own regime&aposs security when they lacked that deterrent.
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But they do not stop his contempt for democratic norms—the serial lying, the cosying with dictators—from giving cover to would-be autocrats.
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During his father's rule, Gabon was a pillar of "La Francafrique", a web of influence that gave French companies favored access to African autocrats.
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America worries that the telecoms equipment-maker is a Trojan horse for China's spies and autocrats and poses a grave threat to Western interests.
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Comparative experience shows that would-be autocrats find it critical first to control the public narrative, often by directly attacking or intimidating the press.
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Conjuring or overemphasizing a national security threat creates a sense of crisis, allowing would-be autocrats to malign critics as weak-willed or unpatriotic.
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Autocrats everywhere have taken note of the successful new method, but so have citizens who don't want to let the process reach its conclusion.
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That's a lot of money that Americans gave to autocrats to help them violate basic human rights and spread religious intolerance around the planet.
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One popular mode compares him to all sorts of autocrats, ranging from Adolph Hitler to Benito Mussolini to Viktor Orbán to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
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To autocrats, neither photo opportunities with Western leaders, nor aspirational statements, and not even foreign investment are worth the immunity that nuclear weapons provide.
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Victor Orban in Hungary, Milos Zeman in the Czech Republic, and Matteo Salvini of Italy are the latest in a bumper crop of autocrats.
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Even while Trump lacks basic rapport with his fellow western democratic leaders, he has taken undeniable delight in sharing company with autocrats and strongmen.
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Unchecked autocrats turn on the weakest and most vulnerable as scapegoats, and lash out in foreign misadventures to divert attention from problems at home.
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Due to these tightening regulations, the sale of malware to autocrats is now more costly and more likely to be publicly-exposed than before.
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Then, Michelle, Ross and David debate whether American foreign policy under President Trump is emboldening autocrats, threatening liberal democracy and undermining the world order.
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President Trump keeps longstanding allies such as Germany at arm's length, while expressing admiration for autocrats like Vladimir V. Putin who thwart democratic institutions.
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Mr. Ben Ali was the first of the autocrats to be ousted in the uprisings that roiled the Middle East nearly nine years ago.
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The former law professor has defied conventional wisdom in many ways in a region mostly ruled by male autocrats and scions of political dynasties.
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It is no coincidence that court packing is employed by would be autocrats all over the world rather than by leaders of liberal democracies.
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But noninterference created a vacuum that autocrats like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey were happy to fill.
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The United States had supported the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and autocrats like him for decades, and had treated the Brotherhood as dangerous fanatics.
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And the great mistake that autocrats regularly make is thinking that they can thrive indefinitely by feeding just the first and not the second.
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And they're clamoring for noncorrupt institutions — a deep state — and the rule of law, not just the arbitrary rule of militias, thugs or autocrats.
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"My concern is I don't want any autocrats to look at what's happening here and apply it to their own countries," he told reporters.
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Jammeh is one of Africa's most capricious and ruthless autocrats who has resorted to torturing or killing perceived opponents, according to human rights groups.
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More recently by autocrats in foreign capitals who seek free markets in open democracies and civil society itself as a threat to their power.
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However, when his administration derides the asylum process as a loophole, he is using a rule by power principle — what monarchs and autocrats do.
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But in two remarkable statements on Thursday, Mr. Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, explicitly favored foreign autocrats over elected American leaders.
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Much has been made of the President's contempt for democratic norms, attacks on the press, attempts to stoke partisanship and willingness to support foreign autocrats.
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The Psalms and hymns of Geneva inspire Reformed Christians to sing today, while we still have a voice to confront autocrats and their wicked schemes.
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Nonetheless, his rhetoric has given succour to autocrats in other countries, who have passed laws outlawing "fake news" and quickly set about persecuting political opponents.
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Guillermo Vuletin of the World Bank argues that autocrats fall when economies slump, and the democrats who succeed them take credit for the inevitable recovery.
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To the contrary, Trump insists that the United States has no "right to lecture" autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin or Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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A central element of democratic backsliding worldwide has been attacks on a professional and independent civil service capable of correcting or embarrassing would-be autocrats.
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The autocrats who were toppled in the Arab Spring were all well past pension age, had been in charge for decades and presided over kleptocracies.
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Intel today released intelligent software that targets money-laundering — the methods that corrupt autocrats, narcotics traffickers, and sanctions-busters use to legitimize their illicit cash.
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Modern political economists are more likely to emphasize how potential clashes of interest between autocrats and their subjects can generate terrible outcomes and mutual distrust.
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Wanna-be autocrats Prime Ministers Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland and Viktor Orbán of Hungary defied EU democratic norms from within the union with nationalist agendas.
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The quarrel is the latest chapter in the battle of wills between political Islamists and traditional Arab autocrats which has buffeted Muslim societies for decades.
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Nonetheless, strengthening democracy across the globe will prove impossible if even the most established democracies today fall prey to the tactics of would-be autocrats.
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Nervous Autocrats Look Out Windows as Crowds Swell Five Strongmen, and the Fate of the Arab Spring "The Daily" podcast: A Dictator's Fall in Sudan
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In this vacuum — where there is no American agenda beyond winning commercial battles — China rises, impunity spreads, powerful actors multiply and autocrats have free rein.
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His national security adviser, John R. Bolton, brushed off questions on Thursday about why Mr. Maduro was worse than other autocrats Mr. Trump has befriended.
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So whereas in Hungary and Venezuela autocrats steamrolled weak oppositions, Trump faced pushback on multiple fronts, including, very importantly, the electoral front in November 2018.
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And we already see troubling signs that in pursuing this narrow focus on leftist autocrats, the Trump administration is embracing far-right-wing populist leaders.
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But his constantly reiterated contempt for media freedom reassures autocrats in other countries that he will not stop them from locking up their own critics.
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Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince bin Salman, Egypt's General al-Sisi, and the United Arab Emirates lead the informal alliance of relatively secular Sunni Muslim autocrats.
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Poland and Hungary are already ruled by populist autocrats who reject the kind of liberalism that Eastern European dissidents once struggled so hard to achieve.
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They worry that, in his campaign, Mr. Trump seemed to approve of the "strong" leadership of autocrats and favor a transactional approach to Mr. Putin.
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"I've seen this type of behavior and actions on the part of foreign tyrants and despots and autocrats in my national security career," he added.
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I worry that as this point of view becomes more accepted, the ground for autocrats and strongmen becomes more fertile, and our democracy more imperiled.
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But they can be fatal under would-be autocrats, for they provide a seemingly legitimate (and often popular) justification for concentrating power and eviscerating rights.
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Unwaveringly confident in its fellowship of nations, Interpol was slow to recognize an era in which autocrats and strongmen wield increasing power over international institutions.
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One often hears that in the Syrian war, there are no good guys -- that the choice is between autocrats and terrorists, between maniacs of different stripes.
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Arab autocrats offer stability, "but only by brutal suppression of dissidents, whose resentment ultimately helps breed more terrorists", says Mustafa Akyol of Wellesley College in America.
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But Gabbard's embrace of anti-Clinton conspiracies and foreign autocrats shows how a strain of left-wing analysis, applied sophomorically, can lead to pretty ugly places.
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That's very much in keeping with Trump's broader embrace of foreign autocrats ranging from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
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In Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and, most recently, the Maldives, democratic forces came to power in part out of revulsion over autocrats cosying up to China.
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It emboldens autocrats to behave worse, as in Saudi Arabia this week, where the crown prince's dramatic political purges met with Mr Trump's blessing (see article).
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The damage inflicted by President Trump's naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate ... The summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.
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His successor must find ways to explain to autocrats, who themselves rule opaquely, why more scrutiny of agreements will lead to their greater acceptance in Taiwan.
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After those meetings, White House officials said Trump would not let differences over human rights impede upon his efforts to strike deals with autocrats and dictators.
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This includes not conducting airstrikes, invading Iraq, furnishing repressive regimes with tear gas and deadly weapons, overlooking the jailing of dissidents and cozying up to autocrats.
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By undercutting it, and by his rhetorical support for autocrats, Trump is telling authoritarians and would-be strongmen that the U.S. won't stand in their way.
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As long as the American recipe for regime change results in extreme inequality, citizens will tend to freely choose autocrats making promises of prosperity for all.
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The global response to his passing — largely grief and appreciation from allies and democratic activists, mostly silence from adversaries and autocrats — said much about the man.
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Critics have said the vote appeared reminiscent of the same kind of elections that kept autocrats in power for decades before the Arab Spring of 2011.
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While he has not succeeded to anywhere near the degree that true autocrats in other countries have, his continuing attempts at disinformation are still deeply alarming.
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But in practice, he has displayed great weakness in dealing with other countries by fawning over autocrats like Mr. Xi and President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
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Maureen Dowd Opinion Columnist WASHINGTON — I am not going to write "a beautiful letter" to Premier Trump, the kind he likes to get from fellow autocrats.
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Though the Chiangs hated the Communists for ousting them from China, DPP loyalists consider them China incarnate: mainland-born autocrats who tried to crush Taiwanese culture.
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The trip came amidst increasing concerns about shoddy construction of infrastructure, rapidly rising levels of debt of African countries, and corrupt autocrats benefitting from foreign investment.
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And the voter outrage that fueled his comeback is a burst of hope in Southeast Asia, where democracy has ebbed in the face of populist autocrats.
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I asked a top adviser to Sanders about whether there are more details to add to Sanders' 2018 call to reverse the rising tide of autocrats.
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Ms. Tsai, a former law professor, has defied conventional wisdom in many ways in a region mostly ruled by male autocrats and scions of political dynasties.
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Unlike much of the Arab world, Iraq and Lebanon are not ruled by autocrats, and a change in government rarely spurs a shift in domestic policies.
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A century after that, a series of democratic revolutions across Europe struck many of the era's autocrats as the most important moment in all of history.
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Today's Christian nationalists talk a good game about respecting the Constitution and America's founders, but at bottom they sound as if they prefer autocrats to democrats.
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Manipulating and winning elections has become a kind of exploit in the rules of political legitimacy — a way for would-be autocrats to hack the system.
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"That should be the role of the United States, not to be the supplier of weapons to despots and autocrats all over the world," he said.
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In repeating the absurd Saudi claim that Khashoggi was an "enemy of the state", Mr Trump has given licence to autocrats everywhere to kill journalists and dissidents.
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According to Srdja Pavlovic, the Montenegrin academic who coined the term "stabilitocracy", Western countries ignore local autocrats' anti-democratic practices so long as they keep the peace.
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"The Russian position is that preserving what exists is the only way to avoid chaos," says Mr Lukyanov—even if existing leaders are "cannibals, murderers or autocrats".
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Sun's Leninist party organisation—never one of his hallowed principles—had a far more profound impact on the two autocrats, and still does on China's rulers today.
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The details vary from country to country, but it is striking how much the new autocrats have in common and how attentively they learn from each other.
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After decades of repression under Egyptian autocrats, the Muslim Brotherhood won election after a popular uprising toppled Mubarak in 2011, eventually propelling Mursi to power in 2012.
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"Manafort's problem, after all those years on the lam with thugs and autocrats, is that he can't recognize principle and integrity," Mr. Weaver wrote in an email.
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Just as the United States underpinned NATO's resolve to provide collective security against the Soviet Union, an American retreat today will allow autocrats and dictators to advance.
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As it is, however, they have seen their lives' prospects slip away from them as the victories of the Arab Spring crushed with Western support for autocrats.
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His bluster creates a generalized anxiety such that the President of the United States can appear to be scarcely more reliable than any of the world's autocrats.
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Macron has mockingly encouraged American climate scientists to move to France while also publicly lumping Trump in with autocrats like Putin and Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan.
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Immense excitement set in as emotionally gripped Arabs, ruthlessly oppressed by autocrats for decades, began to have hope that they may finally live in freedom and dignity.
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How dare McCain say I am a naïve egotist with a sympathy for autocrats who abjectly abased myself before a tyrant and failed to defend American values?
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It conforms to all we know about a president whose sympathies lie with the autocrats of the world, from Moscow to Manila, rather than with democratic leaders.
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That's the way of all autocrats; they eventually turn on everyone save perhaps their own relatives, because no one can live up to their demands for fealty.
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Certainly, it is similar to his refusal to condemn the tactics of autocrats like President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines or President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
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Political ruin is on the horizon and Trump — with his clear taste for autocrats and autocracy — will undermine American democracy if that will keep it at bay.
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Throughout his campaign, he made it clear that it was "radical Islamic terrorists," not secular autocrats like President Assad, who represented the great threat to national security.
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Yet when China's Communist Party gave the nod to Xi's term-free rule of the nation, with it came the dubious honor of admission to Autocrats Anonymous.
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The issue is not that Trump is morally equivalent to those autocrats, it's that he is giving them comfort and cover for their own often murderous actions.
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Mr. Trump signaled a return to a U.S. policy built on alliances with Arab autocrats, prioritizing trade over human rights concerns and further distancing Washington from Iran.
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In broad strokes: "No Knives in the Kitchens of This City," translated by Leri Price, is about a cultivated family under two successive autocrats who despise cultivation.
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Hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Middle East and in North Africa, sharing his rage and despair, rose up against an assortment of autocrats and kings.
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But rarely has the Trump administration offered such a striking display of embracing autocrats as friends and painting those at home with whom it disagrees as enemies.
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After decades of repression under Egyptian autocrats, the Brotherhood won a parliamentary election after a popular uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak and his military-backed establishment in 2011.
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It suggests that Saudi interference with foreign powers isn't just limited to funding rebels in conflicts like Syria or helping out fellow autocrats like the king of Jordan.
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This puts him of a like mind with, of all people, Ted Cruz — who has becoming the leading spokesperson in the GOP for cozying up to Arab autocrats.
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Barr denied a New York Times account of Bolton's book suggesting that Bolton raised concerns directly to Barr that Trump might be doing personal favors for foreign autocrats.
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Canvassers are also told to speak of his time as a "small-business owner" as the CEO of Insight TWI, which produces documentaries, primarily about corrupt foreign autocrats.
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They've also been at odds over Qatar's friendly relations with Iran and its backing of the Al Jazeera television channel, whose newscasts are often critical of Arab autocrats.
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But its role in spreading propaganda and fake news, as well as its relationship with the Cambodian government, shows how easily that neutrality can be exploited by autocrats.
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Some would-be autocrats cite China as evidence that authoritarianism promotes economic growth—though what they often mean is that they too want to be presidents for life.
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Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain accused Qatar of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that has been the greatest challenge to Arab autocrats.
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With his speech in Saudi Arabia, Trump was sending a message to a much smaller audience: the Saudi royal family and like-minded autocrats in the Middle East.
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President Trump has even praised autocrats, like North Korea's Kim Jong Un and Russia's Vladimir Putin, all over the world who oppose the fundamental rights that King defended.
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At the Metropolitan Museum, the Handel + Haydn Society transports the star-crossed autocrats of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" from mythical Carthage to an ancient Egyptian temple (March 30).
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But we have a President who's very fond of ties with the autocrats, who disdains our fellow-democracies, and he is just adding kindling to this global trend.
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If they ignore such concerns, autocrats know they won't face U.S. pressure to change and dissidents know they won't receive much tangible or moral support for their efforts.
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The phrase 'fake news' — granted legitimacy by an American president — is being used by autocrats to silence reporters, undermine political opponents, stave off media scrutiny and mislead citizens.
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The Group of 20 is a motley congregation under any circumstances, divided between liberal democratic leaders, who are greater in number, and autocrats, who often drive the agenda.
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We have seen this through even recent history: as would-be autocrats have torn multiple countries away from their democratic moorings, a primary target has been the judiciary.
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In many countries, like Russia at the start of the Vladimir Putin era, populist autocrats rise in the context of a major crisis that was mishandled by politicians.
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What these autocrats — first, Hafez al-Assad and then his son Bashar — value is conformity, docility and ultimately treachery; there are informers informing on informers informing on informers.
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While Trump cozies up to autocrats and strongmen like Putin, China's Xi Jinping, Kim, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and MBS, he has insulted leaders of American allies.
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"I've seen this type of behavior and actions on the part of foreign tyrants and despots and autocrats for many, many years," Brennan said Wednesday, calling into MSNBC.
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The prospect of having no bidders for future events—or of having a bidding contest between autocrats eager to host a vanity project—seems likelier than it once did.
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At the same time, hardliners and autocrats from the Philippines to Abu Dhabi have seen in Trump a leader whose brutal instincts they immediately recognize (and very much appreciate).
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The man who pledged to create a new Saudi Arabia may end up like so many Arab autocrats before him, putting his own position before that of his country.
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" The Arizona Republican said in a statement after the news conference: "The damage inflicted by President Trump's naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.
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Rather, according to Carlin, if you stop having fun and let the autocrats he rails against set up shop in your brain, you might as well be dead already.
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Would-be autocrats have a cheaper option to hand, one that is far less likely to catalyze opposition and resistance: the slow, insidious curtailment of democratic institutions and traditions.
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"Autocrats claim to have solutions -- they may not do, it may all be a fantasy, but they portray themselves as people of action and people with plans," Puddington said.
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In addition, Trump held official meetings with autocrats like Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Chinese President Xi Jinping without any public criticism of their egregious rights records.
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The AK party warmly embraced the region's newly emerging Islamists and suddenly turned a cold shoulder to the autocrats it had only recently wooed as customers for Turkish goods.
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Though the tournament was, for quite some time, hijacked by the continent's dictators and autocrats, the propaganda value of the Cup of Nations could nonetheless be used for good.
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This admiration for strong men is in keeping with Trump's disturbing authoritarian tendencies, including his habit of praising autocrats like Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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In such appeals to his political base, Trump replicates another technique of autocrats from the Philippines to Venezuela: empowering supporters who believe they are marginalized in their own culture.
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To deal with the rise of autocrats, we need to stop focusing on weeding out these particular personalities and address the deeper cultural roots of the desire for tightness.
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Once sanctions are enacted, foreign autocrats are often willing to absorb economic pain rather than capitulate, seeing what they're sanctioned for as more valuable than the cost of sanctions.
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The Founders were concerned about the equally tyrannical nature of individual autocrats and populist mobs, as both can deprive a nation and its people of their rights and liberties.
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Grillo said he fears political instability could increase due to a combination of growing self-doubt in the west, autocrats flexing their muscles elsewhere and the rise of populists.
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One way to fight this corruption, waste and mismanagement is to reveal just how much money the autocrats are making from their oil, gas, copper, gold and other resources.
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Other systems, relying on a room full of old, male, bureaucrats and autocrats and "technocrats," often get it very wrong and compound their mistakes with secrecy, repression and denial.
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The clause was designed in 1969 to prevent abusive governments from arbitrarily barring opposition candidates, not to impede constitutional re-election limits designed to prevent the rise of autocrats.
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He expresses admiration for autocrats like Kim Jong-un and Mr. Putin, while reserving his most acidic comments for democratic partners like Germany's Angela Merkel and Canada's Justin Trudeau.
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Research suggests that when people deeply distrust institutions, and particularly when they see their partisan opponents as dangerous threats, they become more willing to support autocrats as their leaders.
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Even when this information gets out, feeble or nonexistent checks and balances allow autocrats to govern unencumbered by the rule of law or any other form of public accountability.
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Foreign autocrats may rage against unflattering news reports, threaten to inflict financial harm on publications they dislike, talk about imprisoning journalists; American leaders aren't supposed to sound like that.
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The United States backed plenty of autocrats during the Cold War for strategic reasons but has never before had a president who was so obviously envious of such leaders.
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Similarly, it's a false choice to ask if the issue in Egypt is Trump's disdain for journalism or his curious affection for Arab autocrats — it seems to be both.
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The incident was reminiscent of the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouaziz eight years ago, which sparked revolutions that toppled autocrats in what came to be known as the Arab Spring.
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Donors and NGOs should redouble their efforts to support the rule of law and a free press, though autocrats will inevitably accuse those whom they help of being foreign agents.
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Be generous That said, even if you avoid mass oppression and strife, even the "best" autocrats trigger countless low-grade petty cruelties that ruin double handfuls of lives every day.
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The multinational human rights organization typically sends monitors to document elections, transitions of power and public unrest in countries around the globe riven by civil war or ruled by autocrats.
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Orban, who has clashed with Western allies over the rule of law and cozied up to autocrats while stifling dissent, has stayed in power against a weak and fragmented opposition.
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In the event of another Arab spring, autocrats would not be caught off guard again because they are now able to monitor protests and intervene when they consider it necessary.
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The botched refugee crisis, which gave a new lease on life to autocrats like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — which helped Brexit across the finish line, is not America's fault.
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He continues to stumble through his foreign policy—embracing autocrats, alienating allies and embarrassing Americans who understand that NATO has helped keep peace in Europe for more than 65 years.
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"You have a president so much like ours whose attacks against the press and women give permission to autocrats like ours to unleash the dark side of humanity," she said.
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Kim will join a stable of autocrats, including Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping, who have earned Trump's gushing praise -- to the consternation of some of America's oldest friends.
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Even though he was busy destroying postwar alliances and praising autocrats, it was nice to have President Trump away from the United States for a week, especially away from Twitter.
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The bad news is that the broader regional problems that created ISIS—sectarian strife, failures of governance, and despair over the permanent rule of autocrats—remain unchanged, if not worse.
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Autocrats of the region are banking on U.S. policymakers to allow the abuses to slide, rather than raising concerns about wrongful imprisonment and death of regional political activists and dissidents.
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And the United States needs to be a player at this global table or cede the leadership role to autocrats of two empires that barely share any of our values.
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The talk in 1990 of the inevitability of a world of liberal democracy turned to predictions of a world of autocrats buttressed by the surveillance states that technology has enabled.
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Trump is hardly the first U.S. president to make polite small talk with autocrats although he does seem to seek out and enjoy such encounters more than any recent predecessor.
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Trump's embrace of autocrats is particularly galling at a time when American democracy is faltering, but the US has a long history of working with dictators, writes Steven A. Cook.
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And in many other African countries, through new and less visible tactics, autocrats continue to suppress opposition and cling to power, often under the guise of some sort of election.
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In 2012, we called out institutions for having unpaid internships and have since covered the first of many protests against major museums and their questionable relationships with plutocrats and autocrats.
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If Saudi Arabia is allowed to get away with some lame story about the apparent murder of Mr. Khashoggi, the world's growing gang of autocrats will feel even less constraint.
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It's been great for mobilizing protesters into the square — and for autocrats to use facial recognition, cyberspying or data mining to more efficiently track, arrest and silence all of them.
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"The phrase 'fake news' — granted legitimacy by an American president — is being used by autocrats to silence reporters, undermine political opponents, stave off media scrutiny and mislead citizens," McCain wrote.
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His anger at NATO, awkwardness with allies and friendliness with autocrats have taken the U.S. from being an anchor of the international order to something more inward-looking and unpredictable.
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Mr. Saleh, considered one of the most cunning autocrats in the Arab world, stepped down in early 2012 after three decades of leading Yemen, the Middle East's most impoverished country.
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"You're basically giving the autocrats another weapon to restrict speech, and speech is pretty restricted in the region already," said Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
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And I am talking about the crushing of freedom that autocrats can now do so much more efficiently with cybertools, like facial recognition and big data, that favor centralized systems.
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For instance, the author had bemoaned the fact that "in public and in private," the president "shows a preference for autocrats and dictators" like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
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But it excludes other bloodthirsty autocrats, like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, the Saudi royal family and Vladimir Putin.
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As a candidate, Trump had expressed admiration for autocrats, attacked the free press, refused to disclose information his predecessors routinely had, and refused to divest himself of conflicts of interest.
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Specific leaks may take aim at powerful individuals, but in the longer term, kompromat serves the interests of the powerful, which is why it is often a tool of autocrats.
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For much of American history, politicians viewed secrecy and spying with disdain; these practices seemed suited for Old World autocrats and royal-court conspirators, not for citizens of a democracy.
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What, Flake wonders, would Goldwater have made of a Republican commander in chief who threatens to dismantle free trade agreements, undermines his own intelligence agencies and cozies up to autocrats?
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It was the latest example of a Trump remark about strongmen leaders - delivered in a deadpan style - to fall flat and fuel perceptions among his critics that the president admires autocrats.
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More important than the underlying conditions is the degree to which would-be autocrats learn from each other—how to spread fake news, squash pesky journalists and play the populist card.
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But their propping up of autocrats—China's support for Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, Russia's for Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the CAR—amounts to intervention of a particularly reactionary kind.
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But for voters in others countries, enticed by this global wave of alluring autocrats -- including the United States and Donald Trump -- the disturbing news from the Philippines is a cautionary tale.
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The process in Venezuela has its own local traits but it closely resembles what we've seen in other countries where autocrats have emerged from a democratic cocoon, only to crush it.
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When asked about the positive case for his foreign policy, they immediately point to how he underfunds the State Department, trashes allies, fetes autocrats, and lowers America's standing in the world.
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Instead, the last few months show just how easily restrictions on free speech can be flouted at home while being twisted to serve the ideological purposes of straight-up autocrats abroad.
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It's also rather obvious that it has mostly been used against people who criticize autocrats and dictators at a time when the German government is trying to make nice with them.
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While Trump's open praise for dictators is unusual and disconcerting, from a foreign-policy perspective, being nice to autocrats is one of the more normal things Trump has done as president.
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That checking was often achieved by corralling autocrats into the Western orbit, a maneuver fraught with moral hazard and willed blindness to the quotidian authoritarian customs of suppression, torture and assassinations.
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After making friends with autocrats around the world, Mr. Trump has drawn a red line with Nicolás Maduro, demanding that the iron-fisted president of Venezuela hand power to his opposition.
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There's been no pushback on any of this from Mr. Trump, who has shown great affection for autocrats, fawning over Mr. el-Sisi on his first White House visit, in 2017.
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Groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists have noted an uptick in foreign leaders, often autocrats and despots, using the phrase "fake news" to silence unflattering coverage and attack independent reporters.
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A common thread in Mr. Trump's approach to autocrats, Mr. Haass said, is that he views these relationships as having no history, no baggage that constrains how these leaders may act.
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It is also a term, however, used by autocrats like Presidents Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to reject interference by outside powers as they crush opposition.
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Stock markets enjoyed bull runs under autocrats who instituted high-growth policies, like Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Suharto of Indonesia and Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
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Mr. Trump's company, from which he hasn't divested his interest, has property in at least two countries led by autocrats with whom he's on especially friendly terms: Turkey and the Philippines.
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As more people acquired the right to vote, and as market mechanisms failed, empowering autocrats and accelerating international conflicts, The Economist was finally forced to compromise the purity of its principles.
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Every time civilian politicians bend laws to accommodate the uniformed autocrats, they undermine the trust of the people, damage the long-term prospects for democracy and further enhance the military's power.
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Spahn ruled out a coalition with the anti-immigration AfD, saying the CDU could not work together with a party he called anti-American and which he said idolizes Russian autocrats.
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In an interview with The Times in December, the prime minister appeared to share the delusion of autocrats everywhere that human rights concerns were peripheral to a developing country's economic growth.
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Dahl's adults are ignorant, lazy autocrats (several of his novels share this preoccupation, grimly inspired by his own experience at boarding school.) They try to change Matilda through mockery, bullying and intimidation.
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That was the case in the 1950s under the autocrats Getúlio Vargas in Brazil and Juan Perón in Argentina; and during the 2000s, when both countries adopted variants of left-wing populism.
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You can hear echoes of that in calls to "take back control", as well as in the mouths of autocrats who, summoning an angry nationalism, promise to hold back the cosmopolitan tide.
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The winners of the nationalist wave, as we have seen so far, are extremists, autocrats, and power-hungry politicians — and each give fuel to the separatists looking to break away from them.
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He relished provoking Vladimir Putin, reportedly calling him "Lilli-Putin", and was unabashed about his admiration for America, which in turn regarded him as a democratic beacon in a region of autocrats.
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But too often agencies and blue helmets (as in the headgear worn by peacekeepers) are lackeys of autocrats, forming "abusive" relationships with those in power, according to Richard Gowan of Columbia University.
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But one of the most practiced autocrats on the planet, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, has just offered up an object lesson in how to elevate mere one-man power to something higher.
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READ: Angola makes new steel from old guns We know that what we spend at the pump may end up going to the autocrats in places like Angola, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
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Or is Saudi Arabia, which has often supported Western-friendly autocrats over Islamists, merely a convenient scapegoat for extremism and terrorism with many complex causes — the United States's own actions among them?
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Instead, Cambodia has come to stand as the highest watermark for China's influence in Southeast Asia and as the stage for Mr. Hun Sen's evolution into one of Asia's most unstinting autocrats.
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I'd argue that what Mr. Trump is doing is less a throwback to the autocrats of the mid-20th century than a very modern consequence of how most of us operate now.
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It's going to create a mad scramble in which the winners are those willing to pollute, cheat, and curry political favor — just the sort of business environment wannabe autocrats like Trump enjoy.
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He bristles at constraints and expresses envy of autocrats like President Xi Jinping of China who do not have to deal with independent power centers like the Federal Reserve or the courts.
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Mr. Rubio said it was important for the United States to have the moral authority to criticize autocrats like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
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That would constitute a huge strategic victory for the axis of autocrats, demoralize pro-democracy forces in Syria and elsewhere and embolden Iran to intrigue against Iraq, Israel and moderate Arab countries.
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"It would send a terrible message to autocrats and dictators and enemies of the democracy and the free world," said one of the House managers, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York.
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The lack of FARA enforcement in the decades leading up to Trump's election, after all, allowed Manafort to gobble up piles of cash from the world's most heinous autocrats, and, eventually, Trump.
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He has undercut America's allies and embraced tyrants and autocrats, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, who before Trump took office invaded a nation friendly to America and seeking to break Moscow's shackles.
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The publisher has cited growing evidence that autocrats and other world leaders are emboldened by Mr. Trump's anti-press statements to crack down, sometimes violently, on independent journalists in their own countries.
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The president has a well-known soft spot for autocrats willing to hammer Islamist militants (resulting civilian casualties be damned) and has repeatedly expressed a desire to work more closely with Russia.
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Eight years after the Arab Spring forced out autocrats elsewhere in the region, it seemed to finally be Algeria's turn: An autocrat had been forced to cede some power by the street.
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Mr. Nazarbayev seems to have engineered a transition that other autocrats, like Russia's Vladimir Putin, are likely to closely follow as an alternative to dying in office, in exile or in prison.
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Implicit in the fury these points have generated is the dismal notion, beloved of autocrats, that to try to change the electorate's opinions through reasoned argument is to disregard its previous electoral judgments.
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Technologies that once seemed a friend of freedom, allowing dissidents in dictatorships to communicate and organise more easily, now look more Orwellian, letting autocrats watch people even more closely than the Stasi did.
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Autocrats round the world already combine online censorship with alternate histories to retain power—so what if such propaganda took on a distinctly American flavor, in the not-too-distant, combed-over future?
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But the kleptocratic model Baku has brought to bear—the sheen and the shell companies, the nepotism and hostility toward basic democratic norms—serves as an archetype to which all budding autocrats aspire.
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The collapse of state authorities and ensuing civil wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen have given wind to the autocrats' old claim that only they can preserve law and order in the region.
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"The Trump administration's America First policies, which will be on display during the president's trip to Asia, have only emboldened autocrats in Southeast Asia and in other parts of the world," echoed Kurlantzick.
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So it's striking that in our time, Pope Francis has emerged as a counterweight to authoritarian rule, a pope who has set the office he holds in symbolic opposition to would-be autocrats.
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"Trump's eagerness to win the favor of autocrats remains one of the most concerning aspects of his presidency," said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and communications director for Senator Marco Rubio's presidential bid.
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But for all his talk of America first, that's not a refuge that works very well for Trump, with his subservience to foreign autocrats and, most recently, his shameful betrayal of the Kurds.
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It's important to stress that what Mr. Trump is doing is no different from what various autocrats and haters around the world are doing with social media platforms to push their malevolent agendas.
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Putin meanwhile is one of the group of autocrats and global strongmen that Trump seems to admire -- an odd quirk in an American President who often appears tougher on allies than US foes.
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No worthy Palestinian government can emerge if the international community continues to indulge the corrupt, anti-Semitic autocrats of the Palestinian Authority or fails to condemn and sanction the despotic killers of Hamas.
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His vision for his country, opening it up, emancipating women and putting pride and nationalism ahead of religion won't silence all his critics but may offer the autocrats' club a slightly different playbook.
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The crisis is instead showcasing Trump's radical form of "America First" realpolitik, his promise not to infringe other nations' sovereignty with lectures on human rights and his trust in the word of autocrats.
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Yet his castigation of the Democratic senators in the room may well sound as a clarion call to the autocrats increasingly in Trump's orbit: "You all want power," Graham screamed at the Democrats.
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By the Obama years, a growing segment of the right came to perceive radical Islamic terrorism, white demographic decline and cultural pluralism as threats to Western civilization — and autocrats as its foremost defenders.
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Op-Ed Contributor For those who knew him, it is hard to believe that Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's longtime ruler and one of the most cunning autocrats of our time, is finally gone.
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Only a handful of true autocrats were ever likely to be among those eager to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the American president or celebrate what he called "a tremendous success" in Tuesday's vote.
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There are the threats to jail political opponents, the juvenile insults, the stomping all over the justice system, the impunity for crimes committed in plain view, the praise for human rights abuses and autocrats.
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As a political consultant, Manafort buffed the image of Yanukovych and autocrats across the world, including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
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Those who try to win through covert tactics should remember: The same cultural forces making it harder for autocrats to hide their secrets from transparency activists will make things just as difficult for us.
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Some veteran analysts who have spent their careers studying foreign dictators and autocrats have said they are troubled by Trump's style, saying his negativity, egotism and appeals to nationalism are hallmarks of autocratic regimes.
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NO ONE KNOWS why President Donald Trump is so fond of autocrats—including his "friend" Muhammad bin Salman, "highly respected" Viktor Orban, beloved Kim Jong Un and of course Vladimir "so highly respected" Putin.
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For the 2020 Democrats criticizing Trump's pandering to autocrats, his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and other arms control treaties, while calling for U.S. withdrawal from "endless wars" are all low-hanging fruit.
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While democratic leaders have to be mindful of public opinion when making investments in the Olympics, autocrats don't have to worry about that as much, so they have much more freedom to spend wildly.
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Bouteflika survived the 2011 "Arab Spring" uprisings by using vast oil and natural gas resources to boost state spending, pacifying Algerians who had similar frustrations to those in neighboring countries where autocrats were toppled.
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They share deep concern about the wider intent behind those phrases, seeing them as tools in a developing effort to reshape international norms on rights and make the world a safer place for autocrats.
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There are a lot of autocrats in the world who may or may not control natural resources and who have to be dealt with as a reality of the global system, and that's fine.
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When democracy is under siege, the belligerents are supposed to be dictators, oligarchs and autocrats; the people are supposed to be the guardians (if all goes well), or else the victims (if it doesn't).
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Mr. Trump has warmly embraced autocrats like King Salman of Saudi Arabia and praised the lethal antidrug campaign of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, in addition to embracing President Xi Jinping of China.
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Now that Mr. Trump has given his stamp of approval to autocrats and despots, from Vladimir V. Putin in Russia to Kim Jong-un in North Korea, the moral check on dictatorship has disappeared.
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He can elaborate on another bit of damaging goods from his book that has already been revealed: that in Bolton's view (he's not alone in this) Mr. Trump has seemed particularly complaisant toward autocrats.
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Flake rightly asks what Goldwater would have thought of a GOP president who threatens to dismantle free trade agreements, wars with some of his own intelligence and Cabinet agencies and cozies up to autocrats?
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In far-flung locales, from Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Venezuela and Algeria to Poland and Sudan, citizens have used nonviolent action to push back against corruption, cronyism and rigid laws and to overthrow ossified autocrats.
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After all, Trump has in the past not been deterred from sitting down with foreign autocrats even though they were accused, like the Saudis, of mounting assassination missions on the soil of American allies.
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The bottom line: The difference here is that few other ascendant autocrats value their relationship with Western business as highly as does MBS, meaning that this particular situation presented an unusually high degree of leverage.
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In December, he penned a piece for the New York Times describing Trump as an authoritarian threat to the Constitution: In our nation, power is shared, checked and balanced precisely to thwart would-be autocrats.
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Its policy of political "non-interference" lets it build ties with mortal enemies—Saudi Arabia and Iran, Israel and Syria—and makes it a useful hedge against America, which Arab autocrats fear will abandon them.
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If he is the rational actor we assess him to be, then Kim would be extremely wary of eliminating the deterrent he believes made fellow autocrats Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi vulnerable to regime change.
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These leaders will come and go, but as long as people feel afraid— whether of immigrants, natural disasters, civil war, or some other threat – they will vote for the tightness that autocrats promise to deliver.
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A few months ago, the world lost two long-serving autocrats in quick succession: Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who resigned on April 2, and Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir, who was deposed on April 11.
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All of this, along with Trump's demonstrated capacity to surprise allies, appease autocrats and make concessions to wily interlocuters, is why the Trump-Putin summit worries US friends in Europe and Trump's critics at home.
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As a result, external support for security states led by autocrats continues while the support — even if only rhetorical — for human security, such as the need to address widespread repression against political opponents, is negligible.
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But since then it has been hard to tell when Washington might favor democracy, as it purports to do in Iran, and when it will stick squarely with autocrats, like in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
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"I expected the regime to fall," Mansour said, recalling the early protests inspired by uprisings in North Africa which rapidly toppled autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt and then overthrew Libya's Muammar Gaddafi after Western intervention.
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Rejecting recent scholarship suggesting that leaders in Saigon may have had more legitimacy than often supposed, Hastings berates them as corrupt autocrats reliant on the United States and uninterested in the welfare of their people.
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This month, the national security adviser, John Bolton, gave what was billed as a major policy speech on Latin America policy that focused on tightening the screws on leftist autocrats in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
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In doing so, Turkey is turning away from potential partners in the West that still — at least for now — value democracy and human rights, and toward another world of autocrats, pseudo-monarchs and aspiring czars.
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Compared with other places where populist autocrats have taken power, the United States has a resistance with at least five important advantages it can exploit in its fight against Trumpism: THE OPPOSITION IS NOT CONFUSED.
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I guess you might have hoped that there would be some limits to what these apparatchiks would accept, that even they would draw the line at gross abuses of power and collusion with foreign autocrats.
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Defending pro-democracy activists, human rights monitors, and journalists wherever they are threatened could save the lives of those who could lead the region to a just and stable future, something autocrats can never achieve.
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The birthplace of the "Arab Spring", Tunisia is the only country to achieve a peaceful transition to democracy following the 2011 popular revolts that swept autocrats from power across North Africa and the Middle East.
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The rewards for Putin are Russian troops brought home, the hemorrhage of money to fund the war staunched and Russia's name as a reliable ally indelibly etched in the minds of dictators and autocrats worldwide.
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He did not address Trump directly, but warned of a "dangerous willingness to revert to political small-mindedness" in politics and said that "dangerous autocrats and demagogues" had tried to capitalize on people's fears throughout history.
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Just as liberal democracies and committee-based dictatorships like China might value stability and long-term alliances, autocrats are all about enhancing single rule, which means giving priority to one-to-one relationships with other states.
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"We're looking at a president who appears to align himself with autocrats, undermine the rule of law and is taking a step back from critical multilateral institutions," said Sarah Margon, Washington director of Human Rights Watch.
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Omar Bongo ruled Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009, establishing the country as a pillar of "Francafrique", a web of influence that gave companies from former colonial power France favored access to African autocrats.
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Matthew d'Ancona LONDON — There is a magnificent passage from P. G. Wodehouse's 1938 comic masterpiece "The Code of the Woosters" that is often cited as definitive evidence of Britain's exceptional immunity to demagogues, autocrats and Trumps.
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Stoking Fear Autocrats around the world have expertly capitalized on the primal tight-loose fault line: When we perceive threats (whether real, imagined, or manipulated), we crave social order – and the strongmen who can enforce it.
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Armenia should be an important focus for the Trump administration because it has long been a client state of Russia's and dominated by autocrats and elites who plundered the country's resources and preyed on its citizens.
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The comment appeared to upend decades of American foreign policy, which has been predicated on wielding America's outsized global influence as a force for elevating democratic governments that respect human rights and marginalizing dictators and autocrats.
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During his father's rule, Gabon was a pillar of "La Francafrique", an intricate, shadowy web of diplomacy, commerce and French military might that kept African autocrats in power and gave French companies privileged access to them.
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That is what soccer has become: an entertainment complex squabbled over by fiefs and autocrats, a way of exerting soft power and measuring importance that is worth almost any price, a circus paid for in bread.
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And changes to the Chinese Constitution that allow President Xi Jinping to govern indefinitely could usher him into a global club of autocrats alongside leaders like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Vladimir Putin of Russia.
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At the same time, the unemployed in Gaza last week began a "revolt of the hungry" against Hamas's economic mismanagement, and similar street protests erupted in Algeria and Sudan, aimed at their failing, long-entrenched autocrats.
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Letter To the Editor: Re "Arms Deals Won't Bring Peace," by Mohammad Javad Zarif (Op-Ed, May 26): Foreign Minister Zarif's effort at deflection portrays Iran as a beacon of democracy in a region of autocrats.
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Like other aspiring autocrats, such as Hungary's Viktor Orbán or Poland's Jarosław Kaczyński, Trump seeks to delegitimize his opposition as "enemies of the people" in order to mobilize his base and maintain a stranglehold on power.
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"His belief that allies weaken the U.S., rather than strengthen it, is one of his greatest failings, while he will continue to embrace autocrats, rather than our true friends, like Macron and Merkel," Mr. Burns said.
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He has spoken of a nefarious "deep state" undermining his presidency, a judiciary that puts the country in "peril" and a news media that is "the enemy of the people," a phrase historically used by autocrats.
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That requires a cool, measured response that will continue to sap the Iranian regime's resources while avoiding a feel-good military strike that could inadvertently strengthen Iran's autocrats at home and shore up their support globally.
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To them, the "illiberal" autocrats across the Atlantic are fast becoming the new standard-bearers in a global battle for traditional values, an antidote to what they see as rising decadence and moral relativism in the West.
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Autocrats and dictators must have short memories, because Mr Trump's appeal to fight extremism, which he now says is "not a battle between different faiths", but "between good and evil", seemed to go down well in Riyadh.
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"We have to show that we won't make concessions, even symbolic ones," Macron told a French newspaper, before comparing Trump's leadership style to that of two autocrats, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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"Arab Spring" protests sweeping the region had already dislodged autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt, and would later claim the long-term rulers of Libya and Yemen, two other countries still embroiled in civil wars six years on.
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Now, thanks to technological innovations—such as horizontal drilling, subsurface modeling, and hydraulic fracturing—we're more energy secure than we've been in decades and global energy markets are no longer so easily manipulated by cartels and autocrats.
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The Trump administration is set to release the list on Monday in a report that — to the surprise of many — serves as a new tool to punish wealthy backers of the world's autocrats, simply by naming them.
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His susceptibility to fanfare and flattery leads him to mistake after mistake, especially when it comes to despots like Kim Jong-un of North Korea and Vladimir Putin of Russia, autocrats he admires and longs to emulate.
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As made evident by his slavering over such brutal autocrats as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, Mr. Trump believes that effective leadership is all about crushing anyone who stands in your way, collateral damage be damned.
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In the past, such autocrats would at least have had to contend with American censure — with the notable exception of some of the brutes on our side during the Cold War, like Suharto in Indonesia or Gen.
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Mr. Trump's slashing criticism of the media has been denounced by news outlets and press advocates, in particular for the ways that autocrats around the world have invoked his remarks to justify cracking down on independent journalists.
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But even what we do know — his admitted solicitation of foreign help in digging up dirt on political rivals, his praise for brutal autocrats — would have had Republicans howling about treason if a Democrat had done it.
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It is against this confrontational domestic backdrop that Trump will be consorting with autocrats and democrats on his first foreign trip (to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Belgium, the Vatican and Italy), without the world knowing which he favors.
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The Strongman: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Like a number of autocrats frozen out of the Obama White House, Erdogan has enjoyed a warmer welcome under Trump, including a friendly visit to the White House in May.
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We have observed this in countries such as Hungary and Cambodia, where U.S. pressure continues to check the impulses of authoritarian governments despite the efforts of autocrats in both countries to cozy up to the Trump administration.
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In the name of standing up against the supposed anti-African bias of the court, South Africa has aligned itself with the autocrats of the continent and given succour to those who have committed appalling human-rights abuses.
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It's been markedly easier for autocrats, notably the president of China and the king of Saudi Arabia, because they can ignore his buffoonery and instead appeal to his pride (with flattery) or to his avarice (with business deals).
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If the international community continues to stand back and ignore his crimes, they are sending a message to despots and autocrats the world over: not only will brutal regimes be tolerated, but their perpetrators may even be celebrated.
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"The cost of allying with autocrats like Erdogan and Putin has never been clearer, especially when American troops are caught in the crossfire," Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University specializing in authoritarianism, previously told Insider.
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Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, has conducted in-depth studies of fascism and says that the idea of victimhood is an essential component of the methodology of many autocrats.
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Mr. Modi is part of a class of "populist, electable, narcissistic right-wing autocrats whose appeal is that they pander to majoritarian anger," said Kanti Prasad Bajpai, a professor of Asian studies at the National University of Singapore.
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And for those outside the courtroom it is turning into an implicit indictment of the sleaze and greed swilling around Washington itself and the culture of influence peddlers who cut multimillion-dollar contracts to counsel shady foreign autocrats.
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Besides Big Oil, those most eager to repeal Cardin-Lugar are the autocrats, in places like Russia, Iran or Venezuela, with oil wells, gas fields or copper mines who want to keep the money secret from their citizens.
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Like the Afghan jihad before them, however, the movements of the Arab Spring disappointed him as they collapsed into violence and as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates used their wealth to crush opposition and bolster autocrats.
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It will still disgust many Hong Kongers, for the city's political culture—as millions of marchers have made clear—includes a respect for individual rights and accountable government wholly alien to the bossy, collectivist, croneyish autocrats in Beijing.
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Mr. Trump's shift on Cuba, ostensibly on human rights grounds, is an aberration for an administration that coddles brutal autocrats abroad and contradicts the foreign policy philosophy Secretary of State Rex Tillerson outlined during a recent Senate hearing.
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The Ennahda Islamist party and secular Nidaa Tounes agreed in 2014 on a constitution granting far-reaching political rights, limiting the role of religion and holding free elections, which stands out in a region often run by autocrats.
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"The phrase "fake news" — granted legitimacy by an American president — is being used by autocrats to silence reporters, undermine political opponents, stave off media scrutiny and mislead citizens," McCain wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
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"Manipulating and winning elections has become a kind of exploit in the rules of political legitimacy — a way for would-be autocrats to hack the system," writes Amanda Taub in this sharp examination of a disturbing global trend.
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President Trump's near-daily attacks on the press, and his use of the loaded term "enemy of the people," gives succor to autocrats like Mr. el-Sisi who view the free press as an irritant to be quashed.
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That's also why its relevant that Trump's favorite phrase for the news media -- "Fake News" -- has been adopted by autocrats around the world, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Syrian President Bashar al- Assad and Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte.
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But even if Mr. Xi were open to a Chinese role in taking down the North Korean state — and on balance, autocrats are not risk-takers — there are forces at home tying his hands for the immediate future.
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But lauding autocrats, rebuffing refugees and downgrading human rights — as much as reports that Mr. Trump revealed highly classified intelligence to the Russians — also has a much more direct, palpable and unmistakably negative impact on our national security.
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There are many reasons to expect that this new age of deglobalization will last, as the postwar order is under assault from both popular autocrats in emerging powers like Russia and China, and populist candidates in Western democracies.
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" He said Mr. Trump was "sending a message to dictators around the world that he believes autocrats when they lie or when they cover up, or when they justify policies that result in the deaths of human beings.
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That order is now being challenged -- first by violent fanatics who claim to speak for Islam; more recently by autocrats in foreign capitals who see free markets, open democracies, and civil society itself as a threat to their power.
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That order is now being challenged - first by violent fanatics who claim to speak for Islam; more recently by autocrats in foreign capitals who see free markets, open democracies, and civil society itself as a threat to their power.
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There is a growing and widespread appreciation that the intermedia increasingly operate their companies like kings without any accountability — autocrats that apparently consider themselves special, above the rules and outside the law, because consumers so broadly love their products.
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Rather, it is following a much more dangerous course: eschewing diplomacy, forswearing ideals of democracy and human rights, disdaining its own allies, and cozying up to autocrats—all while trying to retain its hegemonic power through military might alone.
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In recent months, though, as Ortega has tried to regain control, he has adopted a strategy employed by autocrats in Turkey, Egypt, Venezuela, and elsewhere: condemn your political opponents as traitors, incite mobs to violence, and then deny responsibility.
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"You're basically giving the autocrats another weapon to restrict speech, and speech is pretty restricted in the region already," said Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in an interview quoted in the New York Times.
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Last week's cover of Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, shows a smug President Trump — backed by Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan — and proclaims "Das Zeitalter der Autokraten," the age of the autocrats.
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As Putin and other modern autocrats have realized, in the modern media environment — a chaotic Wild West where traditional gatekeepers are in decline — it is not necessary for a repressive regime to construct its own coherent account of events.
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This is one reason that when autocrats, especially long-serving ones, exit the stage, they often do so under duress or by force: Think of Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya in 2011 or, more recently, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
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Mr. Trump seems so enamored with autocrats and strongmen that he wants the United States to imitate governments like China and the Philippines by executing drug dealers, claiming such countries "don't have a drug problem" because of their brutality.
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If his goals required cozying up to autocrats believed to have blood on their hands, like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia or President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that did not bother him in the least.
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He also enriched himself by working for some of the world's most notorious thugs and autocrats, including Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Jonas Savimbi in Angola and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo).
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In other countries, like Venezuela after the ascent of Hugo Chávez, the rise of populist autocrats makes some people feel at first that things won't be so bad after all — they give the leader the benefit of the doubt.
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Can a nation merit that label by aligning itself with dictators and autocrats, ignoring human rights, declaring open season on the environment, and disdaining the use of diplomacy at a time when virtually every serious problem requires international cooperation?
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He already takes considerable heat for his unaccountable warmth toward Russia's Vladimir Putin as well as North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Proven poor judgment on bin Salman would open his amiable antics with those autocrats to even more scrutiny.
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During much of the Cold War, Washington repeatedly intervened in the domestic situation of Guatemala to empower autocrats and human rights abusers, resulting in disastrous consequences not only for Guatemalans, but also for the interests of the United States.
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Young people have been far too passive about the degree to which their lives are being controlled by commissars of social engineering who pay lip service to liberalism but who are at root Stalinist autocrats who despise and suppress individualism.
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At the summit he harangued democratic allies, with whom America has upheld the international order for the past 70 years—after having just celebrated autocrats, such as Egypt's Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, on his visit to Saudi Arabia (see article).
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Trump's Putin fandom is one of the most singularly enraging facts about his campaign for dedicated neocons, who view Putin as an autocrat who the US should meet with suspicion and military strength, not unlike the autocrats who rule Iran.
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Muslims humiliated by colonialism and the failures of socialism and nationalism, under which home-grown autocrats tried to co-opt Islam for their own benefit, longed for an alternative that made sense in a world of nation-states and elections.
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Mr. Sharro's illustrations suggested that the West should avoid conducting airstrikes, invading Iraq, furnishing repressive regimes with tear gas and deadly weapons, overlooking the jailing of dissidents and cozying up to autocrats like President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.
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Protests have so far been small but, mindful of popular anger that swept away several Arab autocrats in 193, the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been quick to silence media criticism over its handling of the crisis.
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In March 2011, "Arab Spring" protests sweeping the region had already dislodged autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt, and would later claim the long-term rulers of Libya and Yemen, two other countries still embroiled in civil wars six years on.
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This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and "weaponizing" the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to permanently disadvantage their rivals.
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Over the course of eight tweets, Waters hit Trump over his relationship with autocrats like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and cited examples she said are evidence of the president obstructing justice.
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It would be nice to believe that, out of the sheer horror of the Khashoggi case, some good will emerge: that it will change the way the world now deals with Mohammad bin Salman and other autocrats in the region.
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" For Miliband, the notion of "the West" is a recoverable one, even more so now "in a world where you can make a reasonable argument that autocracy is on the march and the autocrats look strategic, long-term, and almost pragmatic.
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"The allegations that are made, so far we don't know yet, are not inconsistent with the way the kingdom would act, and so I'm very worried that the president seems to have a love affair with autocrats," Biden told CBS.
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In years past, seasoned diplomats and career government officials might have been able to use America's political and economic influence to pressure European autocrats to conform to an American worldview that, however inconsistently applied, included lifting up democratic values and institutions.
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Days after his summit meeting with Vladimir Putin, no one knows what the two autocrats agreed to, or even talked about -- not the President's top aides, nor the Pentagon, nor security establishment or Congress, never mind the rest of us.
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This second variety of president focused on the short- or medium- term, tolerating unsavory autocrats to maintain stability and U.S. interests — rather than prioritizing democracy and shared prosperity globally to serve long-term stability and interests like the best kind do.
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But so far, neither Democrats nor prosecutors have woven the various threads of presidential wrongdoing into a coherent picture, showing how Trump's shady business practices, opaque finances, vulnerability to blackmail, abuses of power and subservience to foreign autocrats all intersect.
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The Joint List's gains lie partly with the appeal of its leader, Ayman Odeh, a charismatic lawyer whose eloquence and approachability make him a marked contrast with the stodgy autocrats in the West Bank and the radical Islamists in Gaza.
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Mr. Trump, he said, often seems more interested in pleasing autocrats like Kim Jong-un of North Korea and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey than in organizing any kind of coherent policymaking process to consider the pros and cons.
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This will allow the Damascene dictator to consolidate his grip on the country he has brutalized for nearly 20 years — demonstrating to autocrats everywhere that using sarin gas, barrel bombs, hunger blockades, and every other barbaric method against defenseless civilians pays.
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Another is the extent to which Mr. Trump's foreign policy has been guided by favoritism toward the leaders of other countries (several of them autocrats) where his private company has been able to do business, putting up hotels and such.
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" In his new book he calls out Trump by name, saying that the president's cries of "fake news" are "copied by autocrats who want to discredit and control a free press" and that his lack of empathy for refugees is "appalling.
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Trump's failure to persuade anyone of the urgency of attacking Iran — of the urgency of much of anything — is also a reminder of why the autocrats, from Beijing to Ankara, have moved to censor or even shut down the open internet.
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The narrative of Trump as betrayer of America: There has been abundant evidence all along that Trump's team colluded with Russia in 2016, and that Trump in office has been all too happy to carry water for brutal foreign autocrats.
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But while sound on their merits, his tweets' weakness is that they come from him: an "America First" myope, a sell-out to autocrats he favors, a narcissist who appears to be focused only on what's in it for him.
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DAKAR (Reuters) - In the heyday of former President Omar Bongo, Gabon and its oil wealth were a central pillar of "La Francafrique", a shadowy network that enabled France's troops to defend African autocrats in exchange for juicy contracts for French companies.
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There are signs that political pressure is beginning to tell, and that a President who has shown little concern for press freedom and repeatedly courted autocrats accused of gross human rights abuses, is becoming uncomfortable with repeated questioning on the issue.
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Through the development of a crypto-fascist ideology that combines ferocious ethnic chauvinism and revanchism, economic corporatism, a dash of religious traditionalism, and a personality cult, he is the model for aspiring autocrats everywhere, from Hungary to Turkey to the Philippines.
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CAIRO — In a fiery speech at the American University in Cairo last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sided with the autocrats who dominate the Middle East and played down the Arab Spring protests that upended the region in 2011.
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Coming out against free trade and open borders, defending entitlements, attacking veterans, cozying up to foreign autocrats, indulging in openly racist and xenophobic rhetoric: none of these things have hurt Trump with the vast majority of Republican voters and politicians.
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At a time when would-be autocrats around the world are doing what they can to stay on the throne, the reigning master of their breed, Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, unexpectedly announced his retirement as president after a mere 30 years.
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Sanders's Democratic Socialism seems like a worthwhile antidote to a radically broken system, and these young people, many of whom were born after the fall of the Soviet Union, associate "socialism" more with prosperous Scandinavian countries than with autocrats who assassinated political opponents.
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After a foreign trip in which Trump once cozied up to autocrats like Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping, his July Fourth parade may set off sinister echoes and raise questions about the optics of military might on the capital's streets.
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Some say they are working from home in anticipation of arrests as the noose tightens on non-governmental organizations that have faced growing pressure since the burst of activism that accompanied the Arab Spring uprisings that toppled autocrats from Tunisia to Yemen.
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One might question the wisdom, if you're Sean Spicer, of drawing such an enthusiastic parallel between the Trump campaign and a football team quarterbacked by a known cheater and owned by a man who loses very expensive diamond-encrusted rings to Russian autocrats.
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The classic defense of dictatorship is that without the messy constraints of free elections, free press, and free protests, autocrats can quickly tear down old cities to build efficient new ones, dam rivers to provide electricity, and lift millions out of poverty.
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Trump's successors will have to contend with his precedent and may be pushed to personally intervene with autocrats who will hold out for a meeting with the American President (that they will use to bolster their power at home) before serious negotiations begin.
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If the administration maintains its current course, the U.S. will further embolden autocrats and undermine a lot of brave people working — frequently in unglamorous, challenging and maybe even dangerous conditions — to ensure that the tyranny that reigns today comes with an expiration date.
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From central Africa to the Himalayan mountains, the first-person shooter series Far Cry has always been about vicious guerrilla warfare in undemocratic countries ruled by murderous autocrats, so it's only natural that Far Cry 5 brings the series to modern-day America.
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It was also sad to see Trump repeatedly plug "sovereignty," which tends to be the favored word of governments like Russia (even as it invades Ukraine and interferes in the U.S. election) and China (as it supports corrupt autocrats from Zimbabwe to Myanmar).
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The first app, Facebook, turned into a huge and unmanageable behemoth that swallowed the media industry, was exploited by hostile foreign actors, empowered autocrats, created the conditions for a global fake news epidemic and ultimately became a giant headache for its creators.
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In a way it's appropriate that Trump got the backing of liver auguries, a system born of the paranoia of ancient autocrats who drew what they believed were intelligent but were actually spurious and ignorant conclusions from the world and acted accordingly.
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"President Trump has placed himself on the wrong side: with the autocrats, the corrupt, and the anti-Americans, who look to Vladimir Putin as a natural ally," said Daniel Fried, a former career diplomat who oversaw sanctions on Russia after its Ukraine intervention.
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" The official also said Mr. Trump "shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
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At a time when many democracies feel caught between the rising influence of autocrats and demagogues on one side, and the public's loss of faith in democratic ideals on the other, Hong Kong's struggle is reigniting faith and interest in citizen politics.
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Less than a decade ago, as popular uprisings swept the Middle East, Western leaders cautiously heralded the advance of the region's democrats; as the uprisings faltered, it did not take long for developed powers to renew their embrace of the region's autocrats.
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The political landscape has changed drastically since that 2014 anniversary, with many right-wing leaders in Europe mimicking the tactics and rhetoric of the war's worst legacy -- dictators -- and America now governed by a President who has repeatedly shown he admires autocrats.
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At a time when journalists around the world are being killed and imprisoned in record numbers, Mr. Trump's relentless tirades against "fake news" are emboldening autocrats and depriving threatened and endangered journalists of one of their strongest supporters — the United States government.
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Mr. Trump's open admiration for a parade of autocrats — from the Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte to Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Russia's President Vladimir Putin — has driven home that point, as has the president's recent trip to the Middle East.
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He had sat with presidents and autocrats, been ripped apart by legislators, amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune, started a family, and was financing, through an enterprise led by his wife, an effort to cure all diseases by the end of the century.
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Tonight my colleagues reported a new revelation from Mr. Bolton's book: He had concerns that Mr. Trump was effectively granting personal favors to autocrats in federal investigations, which Mr. Bolton said he had revealed privately to Attorney General William Barr last year.
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One of the depressing aspects of the rise of authoritarian parties like Hungary's Fidesz and Poland's Law and Justice has been the fecklessness of their opposition — disunited, disorganized, unable to make an effective challenge even to unpopular autocrats as they consolidated their power.
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Though he was a president-for-life like other Arab autocrats, Bourguiba was unique in other ways: He kept his army very small and did not waste four decades trying to destroy Israel; he was actually a lonely voice calling for coexistence.
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On display throughout the Russian Federation, it glorifies Russian autocrats, including Ivan the Terrible and Stalin, as great leaders, while vilifying as Western agents the Decembrists, a group of young Russian officers who sought to introduce reforms and a constitution in 1825.
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Not for the first time, the president mused about using the power of the federal government to crack down on television programs that make fun of him — the kind of threat usually wielded by autocrats in countries where there is no independent media.
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"His attacks on the judiciary and the press, his resistance to anticorruption safeguards, and his unfounded claims of voting fraud by the opposition are all familiar tactics to foreign autocrats and populist demagogues who seek to subvert checks on their power," Abramowitz writes.
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Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads ISTANBUL — None of the footage in Adrian Paci's new film "Interregnum" (2017) is of the autocrats themselves, instead the Albanian-born artist focuses on footage of crowds that come together to publicly mourn the dictators of the 20th century.
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"That's why, in my book, I suggest that the next president will convene all democratic leaders from the whole world to establish an alliance for freedom that can counter the still more aggressive autocrats like Mr. Putin," said Rasmussen, a former prime minister of Denmark.
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On each table is a menu where every item is named after world dictators and politicians, though the poutine alone lays claim to the autocrats: "The Vladimir" is fries smothered in beet confit, smoked meat, onion, veal stock gravy, white wine, and Russian dressing.
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Male rulers and autocrats in the region have figured out that branding themselves champions of women's rights is a winning P.R. move in the West — but even "enlightened" rulers are unlikely to undermine a religious discourse from which they derive much of their own legitimacy.
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This can be seen in Putin's adventurism in Crimea and Duterte's attempts to use Russia and China as counterweights to the Philippines's traditional alliance with the U.S. Under Trump, America could forge ties with these autocrats while its relationship frays with China, Germany, and England.
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Still, whatever their strengths and weaknesses, these past presidents worked within a structure of longstanding alliances and, in varying degrees, espoused support for democratic values, including the rule of law and human rights, all the while trying to nudge the autocrats along a similar path.
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Many in this country of 16 million people have known no president other than the 93-year-old Mr. Mugabe, a onetime leader of the country's anticolonial struggle who traded the liberator's mantle for the iron fist as one of Africa's most enduring autocrats.
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He did so sailing with the prevailing political winds blowing in much of the world, as autocrats in Russia and China set the pace of geopolitical competition, and President Trump acts as a one-man stress test on America's system of checks and balances.
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Against that, it is good to know that an American judge is prepared to let Mr. al-Assad, and thereby all autocrats who seek to silence free speech, know that their actions have a heavy cost, to their people and, one hopes, to themselves.
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If only to accentuate the ridiculousness of Trump's desperate PR tour, he posed with two of the region's leading autocrats at the opening of the new Global Centre for Combating Extremist Ideology: King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
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But they know that grassroots conservatives see much to like in a Russian-style approach to fighting Islamic terrorism, if that means an unsqueamish willingness to back secular autocrats in the Middle East, and attack targets in Syria with ruthless indifference as to who is underneath.
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The president doesn't face an oversight agenda when it comes to in-the-moment foreign policy, where he can rely on the personal, transactional style that he's favored throughout his business career to grab headlines with autocrats like North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
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Here's a breakdown from the BBC on what the documents contain: Information from the documents reveal business dealings of some of the world's most notorious dictators, autocrats, and authoritarians including former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Libya's toppled dictator, Muammar Gaddafi and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad.
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" "We've heard it said before and we've heard it discussed before about how tyrants and autocrats and, yes, fascists, communists, others, have used the language of dehumanization to justify, well, a movement away from democracy and a movement away from decent standards," Scarborough said on "Morning Joe.
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American power For now, the desire to project American power -- in a way that sends a clear message to autocrats like President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chinese President Xi Jinping -- whom Trump admires -- won out over the President's antipathy to entanglements in a troubled region.
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By cheering the GOP's embrace of autocrats—and packaging it in familiar conspiracy theories that cast Soros and other liberal donors as shadowy puppet-masters plotting against well-meaning, patriotic conservatives—they have helped convince the Republican base of the acceptability of these far-right ideas.
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"One party is the puppet of the public unions and wants government to run everything, and the other party is the puppet of the religious autocrats who want us all to act in a certain manner," said Tim Draper, a venture capitalist and a Common Sense supporter.
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Not only are the relations with Saudi Arabia at stake, but so is the credibility of the American president in his dealings with the growing band of autocrats around the world who have been encouraged by his tolerance for their misdeeds and acceptance of their excuses.
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What these three leaders have in common is that they are autocrats, whom Mr. Trump admires and believes he can win over with a brand of personal diplomacy that dispenses with briefing papers or talking points and relies instead on a combination of flattery, cajolery and improvisation.
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Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
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Now that the 2015 nuclear agreement has been formally abandoned by both the United States and Iran, and an assertive new generation of autocrats is taking over the Arabian Peninsula, it is far from clear whether the Omani sultan's singular brand of cosmopolitan despotism can survive him.
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Trump's militaristic rhetoric and decision to gut his own State Department, his attacks on the press, downplaying of human rights and cozying up to autocrats raised doubts about whether he subscribed not just to Western values, but also to the fundamental principles on which America is built.
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To some, it suggests Mr. Trump is set to take an approach in the Middle East that will not just tolerate strongmen and monarchs but also actively seek to embrace them — a throwback that evokes American alignment with autocrats like the shah of Iran in decades past.
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Its failure to show the way in cutting emissions has only reinforced an argument which, increasingly, Asian environmentalists as well as self-serving autocrats make: that a crisis as severe (if man-made) as rising temperatures can be mitigated only by the firm smack of authoritarian rule.
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The Russian president favors a retreating United States that has abandoned its values, granting open season to autocrats — an America for which human rights, a rules-based international order, the rule of law itself, and the dignity of the free citizen in a democracy have been nullified.
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No American president before the end of the Cold War would have found it strange or dissonant to take an interventionist and self-righteous line where Latin America was concerned, while accepting deals with bad actors and wooing autocrats in more far-flung and global theaters.
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But those tensions exploded into the open after Mr. Pompeo's speech, in which he criticized President Barack Obama's Middle East policies, emphasized his own Christian beliefs and offered warm support to harsh autocrats like President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt who are loyal to Washington.
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His story involves elites (and he includes President George W. Bush in this group) who naively toppled autocrats—"foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with," as he puts it—when they should have been hunting down terrorists with pitiless, single-minded violence.
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His story involves naïve, chump-like leaders who foolishly toppled foreign autocrats—"foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with," as he puts it—instead of applying brutal, unsqueamish violence to the single task of eradicating Islamic State (IS) and other fanatical extremists.
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Writers like Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker and Robert Kagan in The Washington Post have answered "yes," citing as evidence Trump's ethnic demagoguery, his scorn for and ignorance of the existing democratic system, his indulgence in conspiracy thinking, and his open admiration of autocrats like Vladimir Putin.
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He shook his head in disbelief when Kaine faithfully recited Trump's litany of offenses—his racist and sexist attacks on political and legal enemies, his affinity for autocrats and dictators, his promises to deport all immigrants and ban Muslim travel and immigration—as if Kaine had just invented them.
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Ironically, it appears increasingly as though Trump is more comfortable and less threatened when dealing with autocrats or dictators: Welcome Putin back to the G-8; jet halfway around the world to spend some quality time with Kim Jong Un, a leader ruthless to all, even his own family.
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"The American people are fed a daily diet of nonsense-talk and lies… Nobody should underestimate the threat posed by a political party where conservatism is now defined by absolute obedience to a leader with autocratic tendencies who fetishizes dictators and autocrats all over the world," he said.
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But his lecture had concluded on a downbeat note, for liberal democracy now finds its star fading, dimmed by challengers from various corners: by ethno-nationalist pseudo-populism and illiberal autocrats in countries such as Hungary and Brazil, by authoritarian capitalism offering economic growth without political freedom in China.
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When his Democratic rival, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, delivered a scorching rebuke of Mr. Trump's affection for autocrats like Vladimir V. Putin and Saddam Hussein, both of whom he has praised, Mr. Pence, the governor of Indiana, looked over, weighed the message and promptly changed the subject.
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The president has hosted or praised autocrats from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Philippines and Kazakhstan, "fell in love" with North Korea's Kim Jong-un and upended his entire Syria policy after a phone call with Turkey's iron-fisted leader, triggering the resignation in protest of his own defense secretary.
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In using the headline address of his first foreign trip as president to declare his commitment to Sunni Arab nations, Mr. Trump signaled a return to an American policy built on alliances with Arab autocrats, regardless of their human rights records or policies that sometimes undermine American interests.
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About a year and a half ago, the former British prime minister Tony Blair made a penetrating, if bleak, observation about the West's 21st-century attempts to deal with the Arab world and the miseries that keep bursting out from its ceaseless contest between corrupt autocrats and Islamist zealots.
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Almost 50 years later, Ms. Schwarzer, Germany's best-known feminist, is still fighting, but time has not much changed the targets: white men, autocrats and anyone else who wants to decide for a woman what she does with her body, from abortion to shrouding herself in a burqa.
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The leverage NATO gives Mr. Trump at the Putin summit will be wasted, however, if the message from Brussels mirrors the president's presentation at the Group of 7 meeting last month: Allies are feckless free-riders, America doesn't need them and it's the planet's autocrats who deserve our respect.
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It has led us to ally with evil regimes, to empower autocrats, to bully vulnerable populations, to start unjust and pointless wars, to foul our land, water, and air, and to bloat the size of our military beyond all reason — all while we neglect the needs of US citizens at home.
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By beefing up their boards, companies can make sure that operational managers are insulated from the short-term demands that some stockmarket investors make, as even autocrats such as Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, and Warren Buffett have recognised by backing a new code for how American boards should be run.
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DIANE STEWARTStow, Massachusetts In "How to Dismantle a Democracy", a video posted recently to the Facebook page of The Economist, the producers claim that "Prime Minister Viktor Orban warns that Muslim migrants will destroy Hungary" and implies that the prime minister belongs to a group of autocrats who are undermining democracy.
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He condemned Mr Maduro for locking up opponents, impoverishing his people and stifling the free press—with no hint of a blush or recollection that in other parts of the world Mr Trump has praised other strongmen and autocrats, from Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines to Vladimir Putin in Russia.
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Lizzie Plaugic: Another week has passed in Paradise, and it's now clear that the rules on Bachelor in Paradise are an ever-morphing set of arbitrary schemes and non-coincidental coincidences constructed by shameless autocrats whose governing power extends only to this small group of people at a resort in Mexico.
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But when Election Day looms far in the distance, it's important to maintain the pressure, to call out the lies, to counter the propaganda, the corruption, the violation of the country's moral ideals, and the steady erosion of democratic values that have become the calling cards of modern-day autocrats.
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I find him very scary because of his seeming appeal to people, if only to various autocrats around the world; his ability to get attention for himself (and, admittedly, I'm part of it); the idea that he can just say all of these things and be taken seriously, even halfway seriously.
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In their chilling recent book "How Democracies Die," the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argued that the main threat to democracy today lurks within: from elected autocrats like Viktor Orban in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, who hijack the courts, stifle opposition parties and muzzle the press.
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Desperately needed infrastructure investment has been woefully inadequate; many educated Russians have left the country in an ongoing brain drain; and Putin's international aggressions—undermining Western democracies, invading Ukraine, and assassinating critics at home and abroad—have left Moscow with few allies, besides those other states run by murderous autocrats.
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It was a sad moment to see the American President fit right in between other autocrats and wannabe strong men, from Brazil's Bolsonaro to Egypt's Sisi to Turkey's Erdogan, all of whom took the stage this morning and all of whom have trampled the civil rights and freedoms of their citizenry.
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Start with Mr. Trump's embrace of autocrats from Russia's Vladimir Putin, blamed for the deaths of journalists and political opponents; Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has jailed thousands of dissidents; and the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte, who has killed thousands of Filipinos in a murderous crackdown on drug addicts and dealers.
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I am reminded of these recruits, and many others like them, when I hear the Trump administration lavish praise on autocrats, when it tries to close our borders to refugees from war-torn countries and when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson proclaims that the United States must de-emphasize human rights.
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Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a firebrand leftist who's been the target of multiple comparisons to Latin American autocrats like Hugo Chavez, has taken a hard line against the Trump administration, filing a complaint against its immigration policies with the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in March.
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Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," written with Russia specialist Clifford G. Gaddy, Hill examines Putin's success in spreading distrust among political elites (the divide-and-rule strategy many autocrats use) and in bonding them to him through illegal activity by creating a system of "mutually assured incrimination to ensure loyalty.
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The past two years have been plenty dark, with a long list of self-inflicted wounds: tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, pulling out of the Paris climate accord, walking away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, separating children from their parents at the border, insulting allies while embracing autocrats.
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The annual Manhattan conference hosted for a decade by the Clinton Global Initiative became a kind of shorthand for what some hated about the Clintons: a mix of worthy and venal motives, a slosh of money and shady rich people around their world, and flashy and enduring relationships with autocrats in the Gulf.
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By confining his study largely to the Julio-Claudians (as the dynasty of Augustus is conventionally known), Mr. Holland gets to tell the story of Rome through a series of portraits of some of its most notorious emperors, immortalized in seminal works by Tacitus and Suetonius as larger-than-life autocrats and monsters.
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" The problem: "The Human Rights Foundation, a nonprofit that tracks closed societies, says countries in Africa that it considers democratic — 14 in all — are outnumbered by 19 full dictatorships and another 19 it calls 'competitive authoritarian regimes,' in which autocrats allow elections to be held while engaging in serious anti-democratic abuses.
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" In our nation, power is shared, he says, checked and balanced precisely to thwart would-be autocrats: "But as we become desensitized to the notion that Mr. Trump is the ultimate authority, we may attribute less importance to the laws, norms and principles that uphold our system of government, which protects our rights.
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A year later, Jamal's remains are yet to be found, but the Saudi message, spoken on behalf of autocrats across the region, has been heard clearly: If you do not say what we would have you say, your death will be brutal, your body will vanish and you will never even be buried.
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As the 2018 election demonstrated, Trump's personally chaotic approach to governance, his record of undermining relations with allies and strengthening ties to autocrats; his use of trade policy to heighten market insecurity; his aggression, his recklessness, his incessant lying; and his sneering contemptuous, bullying style, together worked against him and the Republican Party.
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He's brought bigotry and racism to the fore; demonstrated contempt for the national interest; undermined our elections and shredded our social fabric; sabotaged our standing in the world, politicized the military and embraced autocrats; and his callous and inhumane treatment of children and the vulnerable will be a stain on America for decades.
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Ousted autocrats have been replaced by leaders who also failed to create jobs, and eradicate poverty and corruption More than one in four people below the age of 30 in Algeria are unemployed - a central grievance of protesters who want the economy liberalized and diversified to reduce reliance on oil and gas.
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Yet Trump has bonded with Xi personally, drawn to strongman qualities that have seen him melt in the company of autocrats such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Trump said earlier this year that he told Xi during a state visit to China in 2017 that his power was regal.
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"At a time when autocrats, demagogues, criminals, dodgy businessmen, and other shady characters are seeking to enrich and empower themselves at the expense of society, it is more important than ever that journalists can remain the world's independent eyes and ears, and root out corruption and wrongdoing," said Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ.
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Despite differences, there's plenty that links the denizens of the new East bloc: heavy-handed state security, rejection of migration and refugees, Islamophobia, fondness for big militaries and fortified borders, tampering with independent courts and media, and friendliness toward like-minded autocrats in power in Russia but also in Turkey, Israel and the United States.
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To sense animus to America's vice president in this temple to Western unity is to measure how effectively Trump has taken a sledgehammer to America's European alliances — abandoning shared strategy (on Iran, climate change, trade, Israel-Palestine, etc.), and making a mockery of shared values through his embrace of autocrats from Pyongyang to Riyadh.
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Should the United States and more than 50 countries aligned with it fail to coax Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro from power, look no further than Russia and China acting increasingly in common purpose with other autocrats to defend their economic interests and prevent Washington from achieving its aims to promote democratic change, even in its own hemisphere.
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His critics condemn his strongman tendencies and his closeness to autocrats like Xi, Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. However, his record also includes supporting efforts to democratically replace Venezuelan dictator Maduro, his targeting of the unfair trade practices spawned by Chinese state leaders and his opposition to Iran's mullahs and their Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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As we have seen from autocrats -- from Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela to Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and others currently in different stages of this process -- the secret is manipulating the democratic norms, wearing them down to a thin shell, a cosmetic shield that contains only the wrecked remnants of democracy.
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Vicious violence by criminals and radical extremists has taken the lives of many in Europe in far greater numbers --and even more, when we consider the carnages that unfold on a daily basis in parts of the Arab world at the hands of brutal autocrats like the Assad regime, or radical extremists like ISIS and their ilk.
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For all the strategic success Mr. Putin has had — including diminishing NATO and the European Union by bolstering populist governments in Europe as well as Middle East autocrats — he has failed to persuade or pressure the West to lift successive waves of American and European economic sanctions imposed on Russia since its 2.53 annexation of Crimea.
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The question is made all the more pressing in view of Mr. Trump's enthusiastic embrace of countless autocrats, among them Vladimir Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia, where he just paid a deferential visit and assured Sunni Arab leaders that "we are not here to lecture" despite their abominable records on human rights.
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Kingsley and Seward's concerns are reflective of several Africans voices I have listened to over these first six months of the Trump presidency, as Africa's 6900 billion people await an indication of the new administration's Africa policy, and watch, warily, as the U.S. president appears to give autocrats a boost in other parts of the world.
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Such calls are well and good, wrote Cheney-Rice, but they wildly understate the challenge: … racism has been fundamental to American conservatism, and the G.O.P. in particular, since the mid-20th century realignment of the parties — even as its purportedly defining tenets have proven to be negotiable, from small government to antagonism toward autocrats to reduced deficit spending.
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Such calls are well and good, wrote Cheney-Rice, but they wildly understate the challenge: … racism has been fundamental to American conservatism, and the G.O.P. in particular, since the mid-20th century realignment of the parties — even as its purportedly defining tenets have proven to be negotiable, from small government to antagonism toward autocrats to reduced deficit spending.
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You can look at most every place where Trump has made a lasting impact on United States foreign policy and find Pompeo not far away: withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal; imposing sanctions against the governments of Iran and Venezuela; offering kind words for autocrats in Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
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Her work not only provides a look at how two of the most monstrous regimes in history came to power in the 20th century, but a more universal sort of anatomy of what Margaret Atwood has called the "danger flags" that make people susceptible to demagoguery and propaganda, and nations easy prey for would-be autocrats.
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"We will be sure to help our Saudi friends get a good deal from our great American defence companies," Mr Trump beamed, in almost the same breath as he promised not to "lecture" the 50 or so Arab monarchs and autocrats gathered to hear him on how they govern: a none-too-subtle promise to put interests ahead of values or human rights.
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If Trump listens carefully to these New Years' messages from democrats as well as autocrats, and is able to make informed decisions that may help form stronger alliances -- while seizing opportunities to stand strong against threats to American interests -- he may perhaps find a path out of the wilderness into which he has plunged his presidency and the American people.
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The meeting comes at an auspicious moment: with the US President who says he's the world's best dealmaker but seeks a legacy-defining achievement, a popular South Korean President Moon Jae-in who has made dialogue across the DMZ his life's work, and Kim, who hopes to avoid the grizzly fate of toppled autocrats and to enshrine his rule for decades.
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Throughout his tenure, President Obama downplayed human rights concerns, and now President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE has gone still further — cozying up to the world's leading autocrats while chastising America's closest democratic allies.
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Mr. Trump has alienated voters from several wings of the party: mainstream Christian activists, who view his angry outlook as antithetical to their faith; centrists, who see him as the most divisive politician in a generation; and national security experts, who have recoiled from his praise for autocrats like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and believe he should not control nuclear weapons.
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Although I have no power to intervene as either a diplomat or a soldier on behalf of the refugees currently waiting to be granted asylum on the U.S.-Mexico border, what I can point out is that geographies of fear––and the use of walls or gates to address them––are an synthetic and archaic trope often employed by autocrats.
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To have Donald Trump — the bone-spur evader of the Vietnam draft, the coddler of autocrats, the would-be destroyer of the European Union, the pay-up-now denigrator of NATO, the apologist for the white supremacists of Charlottesville — commemorate the boys from Kansas City and St. Paul who gave their lives for freedom is to understand the word impostor.
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She already let the cat out of the bag this weekend in a Guardian op-ed... Titled "Donald trump has destroyed American leadership, I'll restore it." the op-ed whined about how Trump alienated the NATO alliance, it bashes him for meeting with so-called autocrats from Moscow and Pyongyang, and questioning international agreements that the U.S. is party to.
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" When asked by a reporter about Otto Warmbier, the American student imprisoned in North Korea who died of brain damage after being returned home in a coma in 2017, Mr. Trump answered with a comment that echoes what he has said in relation to other autocrats: "He tells me that he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word.
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That's what scares the Europeans as they witness what David Ignatius has called the "iron whim" of the Oval Office, which is the president's apparent indifference to history and consequence, and his seeming comfort with autocrats and discomfort with (and bordering on contempt for) democratically elected leaders, such as regularly referring to Canada's prime minister as "Justin" or taunting the German chancellor even as her coalition teeters.
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For instance, Biden has blasted Trump's "need to coddle autocrats and dictators from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong Un." He's also criticized the president's decision to stand by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the aftermath of the gruesome murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi — which the CIA has concluded was personally ordered by the crown prince himself.
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Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads In a season of endless destruction — of political institutions by democracy-crushing autocrats, of the natural environment by corporations and consumers alike, of precious human lives by gun-worshipping fanatics, and of hope by these and other forces too complex to control — art, music, poetry, and the Muses' other gifts should provide some kind of reassurance, refuge, or balm.
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So Syria poses growing dangers to the West: that anti-aircraft missiles will proliferate, allowing jihadists to use them on Western planes; that countries such as Lebanon and Jordan will falter; that another flood of refugees will destabilise the European Union; that NATO could stumble into a war with Russia; that Mr Putin will be spurred to challenge the West elsewhere; and that he will inspire autocrats everywhere.
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They saw that the aim of the Qatari experiment — from the U.S. universities housed on the Qatar Foundation's Education City campus to its invention of a pan-regional investigative journalism tradition at Al Jazeera — has been to create people-power: training millions at home and across the region to think, debate and challenge the status quo of autocrats who buy American friends while supporting repression and extremism at home.
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The astonishing week in Europe was the culmination of a four-month period in which the President imposed tariffs on allies by calling them "national security" threats, pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, which they had jointly negotiated with the United States, and held affectionate summits with two of the world's most powerful autocrats, Putin and Kim Jong Un, while casting aspersions on America's most constant allies.
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" But Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, surely alluded to some of the autocrats Mr. Trump admires when he said in an address to the Human Rights Council that Ms. Haley attended, "When thuglike leaders ride to power, democratically or otherwise, and openly defy not only their own laws and constitutions but also their obligations under international law, where is their shame?
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And most worrying to me is that they're exporting this digital autocracy, and so they're not only using technology to keep their own population more firmly constrained, but they're helping other autocratic regimes around the country, around the world, doing the same thing, and this points up frankly the broadest concern I have, which is the rise of authoritarianism, at a time when our president is making common cause with the autocrats.
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Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE's transactional tendencies, proclivity for autocrats and superficial grasp of world affairs means that there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about American foreign policy in the coming years.
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Whether it's his abandonment of the Kurds in Syria, his antagonism of America's allies, his coddling of hostile autocrats, his disdain for multilateral agreements or his manipulation of America's Ukraine policy for his own political gain — a move that led to his becoming the third president ever impeached — this president has given Americans reason to abandon their complacency on foreign affairs and increase their concern about Mr. Trump's frightening style of leadership.
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Additional Reading • Pompeo Speech Lays Out Vision for Mideast, Taking Shots at Obama • Trump and Pompeo Embrace Autocrats and Disparage Opponents at Home • As U.S. Exits Syria, Mideast Faces a Post-American Era • Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former personal lawyer, who implicated him in a hush-money scheme, will appear before Congress next month to give what he called "a full and credible account" of his work on behalf of Mr. Trump.
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They have high market shares and concentrated ownership so that tycoons mainly benefit from their growth, cause addiction, censor free speech, do not censor free speech, are infiltrated by Russian spies, suck up to Chinese autocrats, do not pay customers for their data, give private data to third parties, refuse to give data to third parties, don't invest much, bully their critics, underpay workers, poach too many experts from universities, pay too little tax and corrupt politics.
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Populists may be authoritarians, ethnonationalists, nativists, leftists, rightists, xenophobes, proto-Fascists, Fascists, autocrats, losers from globalization, moneyed provocateurs, conservatives, socialists, and just plain unhappy or frustrated or bored people — anyone, from the crazed to the rational, from the racist to the tolerant, energized by social media to declare the liberal democratic rules-based consensus that has broadly prevailed since the end of the Cold War is not for them for the simple reason that it has not delivered for them, whether economically or socially or culturally.
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Turgenev's book did much to stoke the fast-growing criticism of serfdom, which was abolished nine years later, in 1861, by the progressive Czar Alexander II. He was assassinated 20 years later, his death witnessed by his son and grandson, who would become the next two czars, Alexander III and Nicholas II. It is not unreasonable to imagine that his assassination was instrumental in turning both of them into reactionary, anti-liberal autocrats, so opposed to any sort of reform and so intent on gagging all opposition that eventually revolution became inevitable.
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Trump's announcements of affection for autocrats—his declarations of "love" for North Korean leader Kim Jong-unKim Jong UnAir Force general: North Korea 'Christmas gift' could be long-range missile test Trump says he'll be 'disappointed' if North Korea has something 'in the works' on nuclear program Trump should return to what worked on North Korea, and in the Cold War MORE, for example, and boasts of a "great relationship" with the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte or a "long" friendship with Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan—have clouded this issue.
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Former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenHarry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Warren offers plan to repeal 1994 crime law authored by Biden Panel: Jill Biden's campaign message MORE slammed President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE on Wednesday, saying that he "seems to have a love affair with autocrats" and expressing concerns about Trump's tepid response thus far to the disappearance of Saudi-born journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
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What are the unintended consequences of a U.S. president simultaneously starting trade wars with China, the European Union and Canada, putting Russia first over America first, preferring Putin and other autocrats over our traditional democratic allies, slashing corporate taxes and supercharging the national debt — without any compensating tax increases or spending cuts, thereby putting pressure on interest rates and the trade deficit — ignoring climate change and eliminating all restraints on the exploitation of fossil fuels, breaking the Iran nuclear deal and now threatening war with Iran, limiting immigration into our already tight labor markets, steadily eroding Obamacare and violating so many norms of how a president should behave toward his staff, allies and Americans not from his own party?
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