Global authoritarianism is advancing rapidly

A foreign policy with democracy support at its core also positions the United States to compete with its chief adversaries, namely China. The Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin alike understand that other countries’ political systems affect their national security and have, therefore, been widely promoting their authoritarian model. The CCP is working to create a world safe for the communist party—one composed of authoritarian regimes—by exporting surveillance technology, autocratic governance practices, and other repression modalities. The CCP trains political parties in the global south to promote authoritarian solutions to governance challenges, coopting journalists and investments in the media sector to shape reporting on these issues.

The exporting of authoritarianism is neither limited to nor led exclusively by China. Two of the United States’ most significant allies—Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—are the leading wielders and exporters of digital authoritarianism in the Middle East, collaborating with China, Russia, and Israel to access surveillance tools such as NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to target people and governments across the globe. The UAE also takes top honors as one of the world’s leading money launderers, feeding the destabilizing behavior of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, enabling Russian autocrats to evade sanctions over the war in Ukraine, and being “grey listed” by the Financial Action Task Force for enabling foreign terrorist financing.

Authoritarian regimes across the globe are learning from one another, if not actively collaborating, to crush democratic movements at home and rewrite international norms to advance their interests. Russia has embodied the truism that “internal repression begets external aggression,” destroying all domestic opposition and independent media while interfering in elections across the globe, deploying Wagner mercenaries from Syria to the Sahel, and invading Ukraine. Meanwhile, Beijing and other autocracies are unabashedly trying to create a world safe for autocrats.