European Democracy Is Going Backwards
And turmoil beckons.
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A decade or so ago, in a much quainter era, some observers were already raising concerns about “democratic backsliding” in Eastern Europe. As he himself explained in his famous speech on “illiberal democracy” in 2014, leaders such Viktor Orbán were seeking to entrench themselves in power, crack down on civil society, and reach out to autocracies around the globe.
Today, “backsliding” does not do justice to what has become a rapid, wholesale unraveling of the post-1989 political order in Europe. Ukraine, fighting for its survival in the most literal sense, is at the center of this battle, in which Russian revisionists are leveraging China’s industrial base, Iranian drones, and North Korean troops in their quest to destroy Ukraine as a European democracy.
If the full-scale invasion appeared as a massive blunder shortly after the initial setbacks encountered by the Russian invaders, the Kremlin is projecting much more confidence today. In Kazan, Putin recently hosted not only the leaders of India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and other nations—jointly accounting for well over a third of global GDP—but also the inexplicably obsequious secretary general of the United Nations, who helped lend a new imprimatur of legitimacy to an internationally indicted war criminal.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, recently joined Russia’s Sergey Lavrov and Syria’s Bassam Sabbagh at a security conference in Minsk while his boss, Mr. Orbán, rushed to congratulate the Georgian Dream in Tbilisi on winning what all fair-minded watchers concluded had been an unfree and unfair election. Meanwhile, Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico, appeared on a Russian propaganda show where he promised to take part in May 9 celebrations on the Red Square next year—just before jetting off to Beijing. In Moldova, the re-elected President Sandu might have succeeded, against a maelstrom of Russian manipulation, in embedding her nation’s path to the EU into the country’s constitution through a referendum. Yet she is also on track next year to lose the pro-European parliamentary majority that can underwrite the reforms that Moldova needs.
What autocratic, pro-Russian actors both within and outside the EU have come to realize is that penalties for bad behavior are at historic lows. Stealing an election, as Bidzina Ivanishvili has done in Georgia while being egged on by Mr. Orbán, barely raises an eyebrow in the West. There may be sanctions coming but the sad reality is that the United States and the EU have lost Georgia for the foreseeable future.
Countries within the EU and NATO are not immune to the rot—and it is not just the usual suspects. Following the recent Bulgarian election, the notoriously corrupt Boyko Borisov is poised to make a comeback as prime minister—though he sees the contours of his governing coalition as dependent on the outcome of the U.S. election. Presumably, a Trump victory will give him permission to ally with far-right, pro-Russian forces.
The Czech Republic, alongside Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states, may offer some consolation. Yet, Andrej Babiš—who has embraced Russian talking points about “peace” and whose rhetoric has targeted Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic—is polling at over 30 percent. Keeping him out of government following next year’s election is a tall order for the embattled governing coalition that has overseen a considerable increase in Czechs’ costs of living.
Of course, the United States does not control Eastern European politics—and neither does the EU and its institutions. Conversely, Russia is not all-powerful. It can exacerbate divisions and spread lies but it cannot elevate issues and candidates out of thin air and give them traction. Across the region, voters and political elites have agency and carry the bulk of responsibility for their choices.
However, it matters what the collective West does. Signals from Washington and Brussels, or their absence, shape the “permission structure,” constraints, and relative costs and benefits of actions by local leaders. Mr. Orbán and Fico have surely learned their lesson: there are no consequences for breaking with allies and explicitly backing the West’s adversaries. Ivanishvili, as well as Moldova’s pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor, have learned theirs too: if you successfully steal an election, there is not much that the West will do to you, either.
The resulting cacophony in Eastern Europe flies in the face of an emerging piece of conventional wisdom on the “realist” right in the United States: namely, the idea that if the United States does less, Europe will step up. It is true that some Europeans have indeed taken measures to contain a catastrophic outcome in Ukraine and to Trump-proof their own security against Russia’s aggression. Poland’s military has grown into a formidable fighting force that, jointly with the Nordic countries and Romania, might just be able to deter Russia from trying to pursue its imperialist agenda with brute force in countries to the west of Ukraine.
Yet Poland’s example is not necessarily representative of other countries of the region. Some, such as Hungary and Slovakia, see America’s absence and the EU’s fecklessness as a license to forge deeper ties with Russia and China. Serbia may seize the opportunity to destabilize its neighbors in a quasi-imperialist quest to undo the putative injustice that was the disintegration of former Yugoslavia. President Zelenskyy recently invoked the possibility of Ukraine’s reacquiring a nuclear deterrent as an alternative to the country joining NATO. While not realistic in the short term, nuclear proliferation is a perfectly plausible option in a Europe in which the United States decides to shoulder a much smaller burden of the continent’s security, while also losing the ambition to be a pro-active diplomatic player—which is not an entirely unfair characterization of the current situation.
If current trends continue or are accelerated by an explicitly isolationist U.S. president, everyone should brace for political turmoil and possibly war—rather than for a smooth transition in which a coherent European effort fills the void left by the United States. First and foremost, that is bad news for Europe; yet the United States would not be far behind on the list of victims. A chaotic, divided, and increasingly less democratic Europe would be of little use in helping to contain China. Conflicts would fuel migratory flows that would eventually make their way to the U.S. southern border. And the odds are, just like in the past, that the United States would join in the firefighting at a later stage when the costs of doing so are much higher than the costs of asserting leadership now. Here is to hoping that the future US president takes the task of stopping and reversing current European trends seriously before it is too late.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. He is on X at @DaliborRohac.
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Dalibor, thanks for the text. The situation is very bad at the moment and as you almost as a opposite case of post-1989-Cold War optimism. I think that one major problem, based on experiences even from Sweden as one of the oldest democracies in Europe, is that representative democracy and voting every four years is not enough. There is a real need of decentralisation of democracy in Europe as through civic society actions, initiatives, assemblies and other solutions. Especially in the case of refugees and immigration it has to be more handled through decentralised solutions and civic engagement.
Hear, hear.