“Stop the world I want to get off’ – it’s the title of a 1961 musical – and it’s what I’d like to do sometimes.
In the last century from Albania to Zimbabwe there were totalitarian rulers who could get away with it. Now the world has become a dangerous place – climate change, of course – but regimes that are threatened by their people who now know what’s happening in their own countries and in other countries. It is a very unstable model. As you know the OSCE, largely influenced and funded by the USA, has imposed a democratic template on countries in the Former Soviet Union. A good idea at the time, perhaps, but it has squeezed Russia. Similarly China has political leaders with good intentions to pull a poor rural economy into a richer urban economy (hukou), with considerable success but their citizens are not satisfied with a secretive and autocratic regime.
Don’t be too downhearted. India has transitioned to democracy. Of course this has delayed economic success on a scale a controlled economy could impose. The rulers of Russia and China are backed into an awkward corner, don’t even mention North Korea the 21st century Albania. ‘Twas ever thus – look back for more than 2,000 years and there were invaders and invadees. I admire Peter the Great – he defeated Charles XII of Sweden at Poltava in 1709 – a victory that unfortunately sowed the seeds of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Charles XII ended up licking his wounds in Moldova after his land grab was foiled. The lesson I read from history is that charismatic leaders attempting ambitious expansionism never win in the long term; Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler.
An encouraging development in geopolitical evolution seems to be the emergence of proxy wars confined to one smallish location whether in Africa, Korea, Vietnam, Syria or Gaza. Brutal wars certainly but so far they haven’t escalated into wider regional and international conflicts.