The Year of the Autocrats

For leaders in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and Damascus, 2013 went splendidly. They had little to fear from the U.S. and the EU as the Western world is creating more trouble for itself than anyone else.

2013 was the year of the autocrats. The wave of democracy that some individuals were hoping to see from the Arab Spring is ebbing away. In Egypt, the army organized a coup — a counterrevolution — in order to elect their chosen president, an incompetent Islamist. In Syria, the dictator Bashar al-Assad withstood opposition. With the deployment of chemical weapons, he crossed the “red line” that U.S. President Barack Obama issued in a most pretentious manner. However, a military intervention went ahead when hundreds of citizens died from a release of poisonous gas. Assad pulled his head out of the noose by agreeing to destroy his arsenal of chemical weapons. This [move] has only sought to strengthen his position. It was also a good year for Assad’s allies. Iran’s regime, which was hard pressed by an economic crisis, was allowed to run wild following Hassan Rouhani’s election to president. Ahmadinejad’s successor made himself open to dialogue and achieved a lifting of sanctions through an interim agreement in the nuclear dispute.

Whether in Syria, Ukraine or on his native Russian soil, the leader of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, has had much success with his little games this year. He pushed back the protest movement in his own country. In the end, Putin was convinced that he had pardoned ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky as well as the punk brats from Pussy Riot just in time for the Olympic Games in Sochi. In the dispute with the EU about the Ukraine, Putin took home a clear victory. Quite simply, he made the best offer. A price discount on gas and billions of dollars’ worth of credit appeared much more attractive to Putin’s semi-autocratic colleagues in Kiev than an agreement with the EU. And the Russian rogue really hit a nerve with the U.S. when he accepted National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden into his country. The revelations about the NSA’s surveillance methods helped to further undermine American leadership. However, the West has weakened itself more than anyone else. With the budget dispute, the U.S. showed the world quite plainly how inefficient its political system actually is. Regarding its foreign policy, the superpower has retreated to hide behind its dithering president. Economically, the U.S. is doing well compared to the somewhat stagnant Europe.

However, China has caught up rapidly with a growth rate of around 8 percent. With economic power, its geopolitical ambitions are also increasing. In the East China Sea, the most powerful dictator in the world went on a collision course by constructing an air defense zone over a contentious group of islands. The Chinese are testing how far they can go.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan put in a guest appearance in the club of autocrats in 2013. The man who has energetically led Turkey into the 21st century has slipped into an authoritarian regime. In the summer, he suppressed protests from the secular middle class. Following the corruption affair, this unrest has now reached the innermost circle of power; his conservative camp is almost at breaking point. If Erdogan falters, he could pull the prosperous Turkey in the abyss as a result of his highly inflated self-esteem. And what will happen then?