Democracy vs. autocracy, which will win?

President of the United States Joe Biden makes a declaration of intent in the announcement of his first tour of Europe, which he himself has editorialised in an article published in the Washington Post, assuming himself to be the supreme champion of universal democracy.

The United States is back: if Donald Trump during his mandate shattered the relationship with the European Union (EU), ignored NATO and scorned multilateralism, it is up to Democrat Biden to put together, piece by piece, the whole intricate puzzle to put it back together again.

The dynamics of the global village have been clearly altered since the attacks of 11 September 2001, and ten years earlier all intelligence services, the Pentagon and various think tanks had already positioned China as the greatest challenge to US supremacy. 

Without the Cold War inherited after the end of World War II between the US and the former USSR, the security, defence and geo-strategic challenges were confined to the long-standing rivalry between the United States and several Arab nations ruled by satraps and in which, above all, major energy interests converged. 

Since 1970, the oil crisis provoked by the main Arab oil-producing and exporting countries in retaliation for US support for Israel, brought on an inflation and debt crisis in the following decade that would affect the United States, the United Kingdom and other economies. 

Since then, Iran, Iraq and Libya have been Washington's number one enemies; it has taken the White House little more than forty years to change the face of the Middle East; and it is well on its way to 2022 with its enmity towards Iran and North Korea.

However, the greatest concerns lie with China and Russia, because all analyses place the Chinese economy as the most important after 2030, a nation that breaks with all the stereotypes raised by Washington: economic freedom, political freedom and democracy. 

Although both countries have a market economy, they are constantly singled out for not respecting human rights, freedom of expression and political freedom. Biden accuses them of "not sharing the same values that democratic economies" hold with the US.

In China, President Xi Jinping raised to constitutional status (18 October 2017) that "socialism with Chinese characteristics enters a new era" in which the country will have to become a "modern socialist power".

Jinping has been in power since 2012 and makes no secret of his intention to perpetuate himself in power, praised by his co-religionists in the Chinese Communist Party as a visionary of the stature of Mao Zedong, but in the 21st century. 

In addition to the controversy over the origin of SARS-CoV-2, amid the West's incredulity over the World Health Organisation's (WHO) version of an animal that infected a human being and from there jumped to a global chain; very recently, Jinping's government announced that, in its new family policy, couples will be able to have up to three children, something surprising after many years of the one-child policy (since 2016 a second child has been allowed), which encourages a higher birth rate.

China is looking to the horizon and while ageing Europe has zero birth rates in several countries, the Asian giant is once again playing the demographic card as if 1,339 million people were not enough. 

Russia, which does not have the economic potential of its Chinese friend, nor the demographic potential (144 million inhabitants), has military power and is familiar with the stratagems of geopolitics; It is also a nation in which there are constant reports of persecution of leaders opposed to President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power since 2000 (Medvedev governed for only four years in 2008) and has already reformed the Constitution - in the midst of the pandemic in July 2020 - to stay in government for as long as he wants, extending the terms of office to six years, and will be able to remain in office until 2036. 

That is to say that, in a dangerous way, autocracies are governing a large part of the world's population and are spreading, as has happened in Myanmar. Others have taken advantage of the pandemic to impose new rules on their population, as in North Korea, which a few days ago decreed a new law that prohibits the wearing of tight jeans, haircuts that are "not socialist" or even branded T-shirts from other countries... nothing that vindicates capitalism. 

In other countries, such as Belarus, President Aleksandr Lukashenko emulates Putin's undemocratic steps by rigging elections to remain at the helm of the nation's political destiny. Autocracy is a real and enormous danger...