It’s also an impact filter---only safeguards to the spread of totalitarianism can solve.

Noah Taylor 23, peace researcher and facilitator. He is a lecturer in the MA program in Peace, Security, Development, and International Conflict Transformation at the University of Innsbruck and the Instituto Paz e Mente, Brazil, 3/22/23, Existential Risks In Peace and Conflict Studies, “Totalitarianism Risk and Peace”, pg 191-204, kcab

Almost tautologically, one of the safeguards against global totalitarianism is the existence of non-totalitarian countries. Historically when totalitarian regimes exist alongside more moderate ones, the comparison between the two systems motivates forces that cause regimes to fall. Caplan (2008) refers to this as the “totalitarian dilemma” where “as long as totalitarian states co-exist with non-totalitarian ones, they have to expose potential successors to demoralizing outside influences to avoid falling dangerously behind their rivals” (509). The converse of this relationship is also likely true that totalitarian states would become more politically stable if there were no other non-totalitarian states in the world.

In addition to ensuring alternatives to totalitarianism on the geopolitical stage, efforts to reduce poverty and inequality would likely create buffers to prevent populist movements from becoming totalitarian governments. Most, if not all, existential risks require large-scale international cooperation. Climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have already shown that current abilities for international cooperation are not as effective as will likely be needed to deal with an imminent threat to human extinction. Since one foreseeable way a totalitarian power could rise to global control would be through efforts to solve the global coordination problem, improving global governance systems is also a potential safeguard against pathways by which totalitarianism could rise.