(C) Freedom House
This story was originally published by Freedom House and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Facing a Year of Uncertainty, Democracies Should Seek Strength in Numbers [1]
[]
Date: 2025-09
A dizzying succession of major elections and military escalations over the past year have yielded an array of potential consequences for the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism in the year to come.
The most pressing threats to peace and freedom are simple to discern: wars are still raging in several parts of the world, and they have become increasingly connected, as different belligerents exchange resources and target common enemies. The conflicts are devastating in themselves, and if they end in victory for authoritarian powers, they could further imperil the democracies that remain.
In addition, roughly half of the world’s population went to the polls last year, and the results have generated further uncertainty. On the one hand, the widespread balloting demonstrated the staying power of basic democratic norms, often underscoring good electoral practices in established democracies. Even autocrats felt the need to mimic democracy by holding sham elections. On the other hand, the elections of 2024 delivered defeats to incumbent leaders on every continent and left many countries without a stable governing majority. Whether such turmoil is ultimately a catalyst for democratic progress or an opening for antidemocratic forces has yet to be determined.
In both the military and the political realms, the survival and success of democracy and its supporters will depend in large part on their ability to work together, offer mutual aid, and build the broadest possible coalitions based on shared interests and values.
A world of interlocking conflicts
Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 touched off a grinding war that has now drawn in numerous other countries. The United States and its allies from Europe to Asia have supplied Kyiv with funding and equipment, while the regimes of China, Iran, and North Korea have maintained a vital flow of goods, weapons, and personnel to prop up the Russian military machine.
At the same time, since Hamas’s October 2023 terrorist attack, Tehran and its proxies have been locked in a multifaceted contest with Israel that has affected the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. With its Russian patrons focused on Ukraine and its Iranian backers under intense pressure from the Israeli military, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad suddenly succumbed last month to an offensive by local rebel groups, including factions supported by the government of Turkey.
The fall of Assad in Syria could make it more difficult for Moscow to expand its new partnerships with military putschist regimes across the Sahel region of Africa, partly because Russian bases in Syria have served as an important logistical link, and partly because of the reputational damage caused by the swift ouster of a favored Russian client.
Other unresolved conflicts include the civil war in Myanmar, between a prodemocracy, multiethnic coalition and a faltering ethnonationalist military regime that has traditionally received weapons and training from China, Russia, and North Korea. Sudan’s horrific civil conflict, between the regular military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has attracted interest, influence efforts, exploitation, and interference from authoritarian powers such as Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Ethiopia.
In all of these cases, the world’s democracies have so far failed to coordinate and exert sufficient influence to ensure a lasting resolution that leads to greater freedom for the populations concerned.
Voting for change
As these wars unfolded last year, people in dozens of other countries were shaping their futures at the ballot box. Many observers have noted a pattern of anti-incumbent sentiment, with frustrated voters rejecting governing parties from across the political spectrum.
In some settings, elections weakened governing parties without outright replacing them. Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party lost its parliamentary majority and scrambled to assemble a broader coalition. South Africa’s African National Congress lost its majority for the first time in decades and reached out for new allies to remain in power. French President Emmanuel Macron called early parliamentary elections that resulted in victory for leftist and far-right forces, and no easy path to a majority coalition.
The results were more decisive in other countries, with opposition forces surging to power. The winners hailed from the political left, as in Sri Lanka and Senegal, and from the right, as in the United States.
Where citizens felt unable to freely change their government through elections, they frequently used street demonstrations to express dissent, with protest movements persisting despite significant repression in countries including Serbia, Georgia, Venezuela, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
To the extent that this churn occurs in full-fledged democracies, it could signal a crisis in democratic governments’ ability to address public grievances and raises concerns about their capacity to sustain coordinated foreign policies over time. But in another sense it demonstrates one of democracy’s greatest features: the opportunity to change leaders and policies without war or revolution, allowing for swift correction and adaptation to new circumstances.
The power of democratic solidarity
Foreign policy watchers are anxious to see how US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House will impact US relations with democracies and autocracies. Trump has expressed skepticism about the value of some existing alliances, spoken favorably about various autocrats, and discussed the imposition of tariffs on both allies and adversaries.
History shows that cooperation among democracies is an enormous source of strength, and the Trump administration will be most successful in protecting freedom and advancing US interests if it works closely with democratic partners. Democratically elected leaders are accustomed to building alliances based on common goals and beliefs as part of their domestic politics, meaning they are generally well equipped to do the same on a global level. Similarly, they understand the need to balance the will of the most powerful against the fundamental rights of the less powerful.
Democracies, especially when acting together, also have an unmatched ability to appeal directly to the citizens of authoritarian states and support their desire for greater freedom, inviting them into the larger democratic community. Authoritarian governments, by contrast, must resort to trickery, disinformation, violence, and corruption to influence democratic populations, which often proves counterproductive.
The repressive regimes in countries like China, Russia, or Iran have stepped up cooperation among themselves, and this is cause for serious concern. But the fate of Bashar al-Assad illustrates the brittleness of such dictators’ leagues: both Assad himself and his patrons in Moscow and Tehran were distracted by their separate interests and weakened by years of feckless, unpopular policies, without the benefit of democratic self-correction. In the end, Syrians simply refused to fight for a tyrannical leader whom they never chose.
While this year will no doubt be as full of surprises as the last, democracies and all those who seek to live in freedom should remain confident in one another and in the inherent advantages of democratic solidarity.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://freedomhouse.org/article/facing-year-uncertainty-democracies-should-seek-strength-numbers
Published and (C) by Freedom House
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/freedomhouse/
