Strongmen? Us?

Don’t let their confidence fool you: Xi, Putin, and other authoritarians are increasingly vulnerable at home

- By Marc Champion. Photography by Mikhail Svetlov, Getty

China’s President Xi Jinping is cracking down on Big Tech, rattling sabers over Taiwan, and testing hypersonic missiles in space. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken on global financial markets and briefly threatened to throw out ambassadors from 10 countries. And in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin moved enough troops toward Ukraine to convince the U.S. that invasion could be imminent. Almost two years into a pandemic that left many democracies reeling, authoritarians around the globe are getting feisty.

But scratch through the rhetoric—sometimes triumphant, other times belligerent—and much of what these strongmen do also reveals their domestic vulnerability, because the pandemic has been tough on them, too. Many failed the Covid-19 response test at least as dismally as their counterparts in democratic countries. The resulting mix of insecurity at home and confidence abroad is a recipe for instability and risk.

At the start of the Covid crisis, authoritarian leaders as a group seemed better able to avoid the public and economic backlash suffered by many governments in developed democracies. That was true regardless of whether they, like Xi, imposed tough lockdowns and restrictions, or they, like Putin, downplayed the disease’s threat. (Remember the advice of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to fight Covid with vodka and tractor riding?)

Now, as the pandemic grinds on, that advantage is in doubt.