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Source: Getty
For a long time, the rise of communism across Eurasia had stimulated democratic achievements and economic performance in the non-communist nations. Successful authoritarians can play a similar role now—if Eurasia’s democracies are able and willing to take up the challenge.
From July 1, 2013, Lithuania holds a rotating six-month presidency of the European Union. This week, a final decision is expected on Latvia joining the Eurozone. At the same time, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus are seeking to create a Eurasian Union. Azerbaijan, where a decade ago son succeeded father as the country’s president and where his wife is a potential successor while the children are still too young, sits next to Georgia, which is in the process of managing its first constitutional power transition since independence. Today’s students may know it for a fact, but still can hardly imagine that only a quarter of a century ago Estonia and Turkmenistan were part of a single, tightly unified country.
Democratization of the Soviet Union and then Eastern Europe which began in the late 1980s has produced, by now, not only strikingly different political regimes in the formerly communist-ruled nations, but a number of new geopolitical combinations and dividing lines. The three Baltic democracies which have emerged from the former Soviet Union have all acceded to the European Union and NATO. The three states still ruled in an authoritarian manner, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, are in the process of forming a common economic space and tightening their military alliance. The three countries lying between the EU and the Eurasian Customs Union: Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, are also half way between them in terms of their politics.
This is all a far cry from both the more optimistic expectations and the dire predictions of the early 1990s. Democracy, true, has made important gains across Eurasia. In Central and South-Eastern Europe, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Mongolia democracy has become institutionalized. Turkey’s protest movement suggests a demand for a more perfect democracy. Myanmar is opening up, and Pakistan has just gone through a democratic change of government. On the other side of the ledger is authoritarianism which has not only become more entrenched, but which is also performing economically and is touting meritocracy as an alternative to democracy. China, of course, is a trend-setter here, but Singapore is a showcase model. Their successes contrast sharply with the dismal records of Western democratic polities and economies over the past five years.
For the first time in a quarter-century, there is real competition again. Europe’s democracies, Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan et al. have no choice but to demonstrate that their capacity to build more successful and happier societies is not a thing of the past. For a long time, the rise of communism across Eurasia had stimulated democratic achievements and economic performance in the non-communist nations. Successful authoritarians can play a similar role now—if Eurasia’s democracies are able and willing to take up the challenge.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
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