As Hemingway once wrote of bankruptcy, the collapse of autocratic regimes tends to happen gradually and then suddenly-slowly, and then all at once. A tyrant's followers remain loyal to him only as long as he can offer them protection from their compatriots' wrath. Doubts about President Bashar al-Assad surely grew slowly after his Russian backers began to transfer men and equipment to Ukraine, starting in 2022.
Then, after a well-organized, highly motivated set of armed opponents took the city of Aleppo on November 29, many of the regime's defenders abruptly stopped fighting. Assad vanished. The scenes that followed today in Damascus-the toppling of statues, the people taking selfies at the dictator's palace-are the same ones that will unfold in Caracas, Tehran, or Moscow on the day the soldiers of those regimes lose their faith in the leadership.
The similarities among these places are real because Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and, until now, Syria all belong to an informal network of autocracies. Russian troops and mercenaries have spent the past decade fighting in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Africa. Their collaboration undermines efforts toward democracy in multiple regions.
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