COMMENT | Democracy and decency

COMMENT | We have long been dangerously slow to recogniSe, let alone resist, the undermining of liberal democracies by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s post-KGB thugocracy and China’s more economically successful version of aggressive Leninism.

I saw the Russian side of the problem up close when I was the European Union’s commissioner for external affairs from 1999 to 2004. Too many European countries, led by Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy, thought that they could do business with Putin, and perhaps even turn him into a geostrategic ally. Meanwhile, Putin was presiding over a regime that sought to overturn the post-World War II international order and to fracture both the EU and the transatlantic alliance. Putin’s regime bullied neighbours, invaded other countries and murdered its critics even on foreign soil.

Moreover, Putin and his cronies understood very clearly liberal capitalism’s weak spot: the greed of those who were usually already rich. Just consider how much of London ...