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For decades, American institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy have tried to teach the world about political liberty. But now the Americans themselves could do with some advice.
Analysts from places like Turkey and Russia have seen strongman rule established in their own countries and can see similar patterns playing out in Donald Trump’s America. Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center says the “conversations I hear among American liberals now remind me of intellectuals in Moscow just after Putin came to power. There is the same sense of bewilderment and deep concern.”
Gabuev’s advice is that Americans who want to defend democracy and the rule of law need to act fast. Every wrongful detention or ignored court ruling is a “trial balloon”. If there is no effective pushback, would-be authoritarians will go further and faster.
The White House has shrewdly started by targeting unpopular groups and non-citizens first — going after alleged Venezuelan gang members or foreign student activists. But illegal deportations are the kind of “trial balloons” Gabuev warns of. If they are not resisted, Trump is likely to move on to new targets.
Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a Turkish journalist currently at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says she recognises the urge for beleaguered American liberals “to turn inwards” but thinks that would be a mistake. As she recently wrote: “Dancing, travel, meditation, book clubs — it’s all fine.” But, in the end: “Nothing is more meaningful than being part of a struggle for democracy.”
That struggle is often difficult and frightening. The Indian academic Pratap Bhanu Mehta points out that a regime intent on eroding democracy sets out to “create a pervasive sense of fear”. Once people are scared about losing their jobs, their funding or their liberty, they are likely to take the path of least resistance by keeping their heads down. Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington notes that already “fear is cascading through US society as corporations, universities, law firms, media groups and others are scrambling to conform to [Trump’s] worldview, attitudes and even preferred language”.
Drawing on his experience of Narendra Modi’s India, Mehta writes that in a climate of fear: “Independent institutions subtly begin to adapt. Over time, even the best professionals see more downsides to resisting than upsides to taking a stand.” Any person or corporation that acts alone risks “exemplary targeting”.
He observes: “Collective action is genuinely difficult.” But it is also crucial. When individual law firms like Paul Weiss or Skadden Arps are targeted by Trump and buy off the administration rather than fight back collectively, they make it all but inevitable that the White House will repeat the tactic. In doing so, they undermine the rule of law on which legal firms depend.
Another reason for individual or corporate inaction is the hope that the new regime’s incompetence may cause it to fall apart of its own accord. It is true that many strongman leaders are economically illiterate. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey’s conviction that higher interest rates cause inflation contributed to prices spiralling out of control. Support for the Turkish opposition surged. But he has reacted by arresting Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul and the opposition’s star politician.
One lesson from Turkey is that the longer a strongman is in power, the harder it becomes to fight back. Erdoğan has run the country for more than 20 years, giving him ample opportunity to curb the media, the judiciary and the military.
Trump has yet to achieve Turkish levels of control over US institutions — and may find it harder to protect himself from the consequences of messing up the economy. But the US president is moving much faster to consolidate his power than Erdoğan did.
The White House strategy of proceeding at “muzzle velocity” is explicitly intended to sow confusion among its opponents. Americans are also on such unfamiliar political terrain that they have little experience to fall back on.
As well as emphasising the need for swift reactions and solidarity with those targeted by incipient authoritarianism, Gabuev and Aydıntaşbaş believe that the example of Russia and Turkey underlines the need for pro-democracy forces to build broad coalitions.
Gabuev says Moscow intellectuals were too slow to move out of their social bubble and listen to the concerns of people in Russia’s provincial towns. The same patterns played out in Turkey and India, where the liberal elites in the cities were derided and targeted by Erdoğan and Modi — and easily caricatured as being obsessed by their own concerns rather than the fate of ordinary citizens.
Reflecting on how the Turkish opposition finally gained momentum, Aydıntaşbaş observes that “charismatic leadership is a non-negotiable”. Cautious technocrats and machine politicians are not the people to lead a fight for democracy. The lesson for the US Democratic party establishment is clear. They might regard politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as on the far left of American politics. But if they emerge as the most charismatic leaders of the opposition to Trump, they should be embraced and pushed forward — not rejected.
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