If we put „preventing democratization at home“ as the overarching goal of the regimes in Moscow and Beijing, everything Russia and China do abroad makes perfect sense. https://twitter.com/ulrichspeck/status/1280762404071235584

The alternative is to try to identify „interests“ (economic, power) — which are often suggested by analysts close to the regimes. Yet those interests in most cases don’t make sense as the alleged goals are not being achieved.

In the case of Russia: invading Ukraine has isolated Russia, interfering in US election made it an adversary to the US. Its interventions in Syria and Libya further alienats it from Europe, while at the same time it is being increasingly dominated in Eurasia by China.

In the case of China: Xi‘s project of tightening the grip at home and dominating abroad risks to reverse all the gains China has made in the last decades. It turns almost everybody against China and forces countries to de-invest.

Their behavior makes more sense if one assumes that they are driven by the fear of ruling elites to lose everything („colour revolution“). As they need „to make the world safe for autocracy“, they cannot live with the status quo of a dominant liberal order.

While both regimes where at the defensive for many years, afraid of the power of the democratic model, they feel that the west is losing — financial crisis, Euro crisis, Trump etc. They think it’s time now to go on the offensive in what they see as an existential struggle.

The west meanwhile, still heavily invested in the old paradigm of convergence (transformation of Russia and China into democracies or at least benevolent partners) is caught by surprise, only slowly rethinking its basic assumptions.

The west often fails to understand the systemic driver of this competition, instead tries to play down the conflict or justify aggression as normal behavior of great powers. Yet that doesn’t help. Time to accept the systemic conflict and push back in smart ways.