Rise of New Dictatorships

In the recent decades a number of dictatorships have collapsed such as Gadhafi’s Libya and Ceaușesacu’s Romania and the Falange (fascist) regime in Spain. Long gone are the dictatorships of Park Chung-Hee’s South Korea and the great Authoritarian monarchies of Europe. New dictators have joined the forefront, for example Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Nicolás Maduro’s Autocratic Venezuela and Al Assad’s iron fist in Syria.

Recently Xi Jinping of China revised the constitution to potentially stay in power for life. A lawyer was arrest after criticising the policy change which leads to suggesting a tighter grip around Chinese media or the so-called “great firewall of China”. It is a matter of time before China converts back to an absolute dictatorship like they used to be. Officials have stated that “Removing term limits does not mean that Xi will necessarily stay in for a third term”.

North Korea is one of the last cold war era dictatorships and has seen economic stagnation and has been trying to create ICBM’s (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile’s). Due to being a closed country and having plenty of enemies (such as NATO), North Korea has very few allies including China and Russia. What do all these counties have common? They were allies in the cold war and are already established or up and coming dictatorships. The reason North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-Un, is regarded as new is because he came to power in 2011 and is in the news more frequently due to his well-publicised disagreements with Trump. This because he seems to enjoy flexing his new-found nuclear power. An example of this was a threat of the nuclear destruction of Guam, an American military base.

Russia or the Russian Federation was formed shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 with Boris Yeltsin as President (1991 -1999). In 2000 Putin came to power up until 2008 when he became Prime Minister (2008-2012) and again President in 2012-now. This hot seating by Putin  has lead him to have direct and indirect power at any given moment, because of this he has been leader for 18 years (as of 2018). Under Putin, Russia has become increasingly centralised around United Russia (the Ruling Party), opposition such as Alexei Navalny’s Progress Party has been suppressed by the government including the arrest of Navalny himself. During Putin’s leadership many people have been allegedly assassinated such as Boris Nemtsov on the Bol’shoy Moskvoretesky Bridge, Moscow. 

In conclusion Dictatorships seem to be returning to the political scene and some of the major countries of the world are turning authoritarian.  The real question is, how long will they last? I predict that we will we see a rapid development in the number of dictatorships around the world or they will just fizzle out and be a subject in the history books. It really depends on how long the people are willing to have them in power and/or remove them from said power.

Leon