Vladimir Putin announced on Friday that he will run for president in the March 2024 election. If he wins—and it is almost certain he will—the 71-year-old Russian leader will begin his fifth term in May. This has already happened in China. Xi Jinping broke Communist Party guidelines last year when, at the 20th National Congress, he obtained his third five-year term as general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission. He also obtained a third five-year term as state president this March at the annual National People's Congress. President Joe Biden has repeatedly—and correctly—called Xi a "dictator."
Both Russia and China are now ruled by strongmen, an ominous repeat of the Stalin-Mao era. There have been times after the Cold War when the two countries flirted with more open politics, but their political systems inherently idealize domination, struggle, and violence. Now, at the same time both are descending into dictatorship.
Why should Americans care about Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping seeking total control? Because as they tighten their grip, there can be no good results for the world.
History provides great cause for concern. Before World War II, Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy made themselves dictators. Japan to some extent followed this pattern as well, although Prime Minister Hideki Tojo never held full dictatorial power. In the Soviet Union, Stalin took over in 1922 and consolidated his rule, turning the "dictatorship of the proletariat" into a dictatorship of one brutal figure.
These four men were responsible for starting history's most destructive war. The USSR joined Germany with the inking of the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In the following year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact. The Axis was born.
Will dictators Putin and Xi cement their relationship? On February 4, 2022, when Putin was in Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, they issued a 5,300-word joint statement declaring their "no-limits" partnership. Twenty days later, Russia's forces rolled into Ukraine. China had obviously greenlighted the invasion.
Since then, China has supported the war effort. Beijing effectively finances Russia with elevated commodity purchases, offers financial services to sanctioned Russian banks and institutions, puts diplomats in service of Moscow, and amplifies Kremlin war disinformation.
Moreover, China has crossed the Biden Administration's "red line" by been supplying lethal assistance. For instance, during the beginning of the war, China fed location data, obtained from the Chinese-made drones that Ukraine had been operating, to Russia so that it could take out the drone operators.
Beijing has also been selling drones to Russia and supplying urgently needed items, like ammunition. In November of last year, Defense Express, a Ukrainian site, reported that almost daily an An-124 cargo plane ferried military items from China's Zhengzhou to Russia.
Xi Jinping made it clear on March 22 how he views the partnership with Russia. "Change is coming that hasn't happened in 100 years," the Chinese dictator said while bidding farewell to the Russian one in Moscow at the end of their 40th in-person meeting. "And we are driving this change together."
Turmoil, thanks to these dictators, is spreading. China and Russia are fueling North African insurgencies that are starting to look like wars, and China gave the theocratic Iran the resources and weapons that enabled the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Since then, Beijing has provided diplomatic and propaganda support to Tehran and its terrorist proxies.
And that brings us back to Putin. The Russian leader, who has been in power since the last day of 1999, has said that the war in Ukraine forced him to run again. "I will not hide that I have had different thoughts at different times, but it is now time to make a decision," he declared on television, as he announced his bid for another term. "I understand that there is no other way."
The United States might even help elect him. There is now war fatigue in America, with many calling for an end to support of Ukraine. If the U.S. were to abandon Kyiv, Putin's road to annexing the remainder of that former Soviet state would be wide open.
At the moment, opinion polls in Russia show that Putin's popularity is over 70 percent, though these surveys of course are not independent of the Kremlin. A win in Ukraine—or even an appearance of winning—would certainly result in a genuine boost in popularity and assure him of success in the March elections.
A win in March would also embolden Putin to further assault the international system. He did not stop after breaking apart Georgia in 2008 or annexing Crimea in 2014. A success in the ongoing war will certainly encourage him to go after NATO members that he now thinks should be part of Russia. His goal, after all, is to reconstitute the Russian empire at its greatest extent.
Many in the West say that Putin would not dare attack a NATO country, yet the failure of the West to defend Ukraine, a country supposedly protected by the guarantees of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, could convince Putin that he does not have to worry about the trans-Atlantic alliance or its most important member, the United States of America.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and the recently released China Is Going to War. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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