USAID Chief: It's Time To Beat Autocrats Worldwide

Current US Agency for International Development (USAID) chief and former US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power says autocrats are finally getting a beating, and it is time for democrats to give them the rope they need to hang themselves.

Photo Insert: “After years of democratic backsliding, the world’s autocrats are finally on the defensive,” Samantha Power writes in a new essay for Foreign Affairs.

“After years of democratic backsliding, the world’s autocrats are finally on the defensive,” Samantha Power writes in a new essay for Foreign Affairs.

Russia’s disastrous war in Ukraine and China’s struggles with managing COVID-19 have demonstrated the shortcomings of these authoritarian states. Now, “the US and other democracies have a chance to regain their momentum—but only if we learn from the past and adapt our strategies.”

For decades, Power argues, “advocates of democracy have focused too narrowly on defending rights and freedoms, neglecting the pain and dangers of economic hardship and inequality.”

Meanwhile, antidemocratic forces have been able to exploit economic and social grievances to “gain a political foothold on every continent.”

She concluded: “To seize this moment and swing the pendulum of history back toward democratic rule, the US and its partners must focus on emerging threats to democracy, such as corruption, lack of economic mobility and new digital surveillance technologies.”

Only then, she argues, can Washington “demonstrate that democracies can deliver for their people.”

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