but then does Putin win? – Corriere.it

Apparently they are right Vladimir Putin e Xi Jinping: the West seems to be in disarray.

In America Joe Biden he is also deserted by his own. One of the many signs: potential candidates for the presidential election of 2024 are starting to flourish even among Democrats, for example the governor of California Gavin Newsom began buying advertising space in Florida to attack the Republican who rules that state (Ron DeSantis), a skirmish between two aspirants for the White House. A majority of Democrats are hoping Biden will give up on running again. The leader of the oldest liberal democracy worn out for a thousand reasons, including the systematic war that opposes him to the Supreme Court (abortion, weapons, environment). There are four months left until the legislative elections of half term and yet every now and then there is the feeling that the Republicans have already regained the majority, such the spectacle of this administration’s powerlessness.

In the United Kingdom the end of Boris Johnson it means the departure of a leader who – despite a thousand errors and scandals – was a determined supporter of Ukraine.

In Paris Emmanuel Macron after the failure of his party he had to form a government that it does not have a parliamentary majority.

The Germania sails on sight with a clerk who appears to be missing in action. On the international scene the weight of Olaf Scholz evanescent, and a weak Germany can only reduce the influence of the European Union.

As if all this weren’t enough, in the quiet Japan he comes assassination of former premier Shinzo Abe. The event would be traumatizing everywhere, even more so in a country where very few weapons circulate and violence – political or delinquent – is among the lowest in the world.

Without dwelling on the tensions that the government majority is unloading on Mario Draghi, the picture seems disheartening for the democratic field, reassuring for the autocrats.

Everything that is happening seems to confirm the precarious health of the liberal democracies.

But a consolation can come from historical comparisons.

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Biden certainly not a newbie Franklin Delano Rooseveltfor the legendary FDR he was engaged for a long time in a dramatic tug-of-war against the Supreme Court. Constitutional judges rejected him or blocked many New Deal reforms as America plunged into the Great Depression. And when it came to going to war against Nazi-fascisms, Roosevelt had to contend with robust isolationist currents, overwhelmed only by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Boris Johnson does not come to the ankle of Winston Churchill. For the latter, shortly after participating in the allied victory over Hitler he was thanked by the British voters and sent home. Churchill in 1946 was the first in the world to sound the alarm on the Iron Curtain with which Stalin separated Central-Eastern Europe from us and placed it under the heel of theRed Army.

Stalin laughed seeing the British prime minister kicked out by his constituents. Laughs best who laughs last.

If we remain on the surface, democracies are chaos while authoritarian regimes have decision-making, continuity, tenacity and determination. The verdict of the storyat least in the last century, he was more lenient with democracies than with dictatorships.

This article is a preview of the Global newsletter, signed by Federico Rampini every Saturday and reserved for subscribers. To register: www.corriere.it/global

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