Psychological defeats are the most serious of all. Nations drag their consequences for many years, generations even.
China was defeated in its own country against the British and French empires, Spain in Cuba, the United States in Vietnam, France in Algeria, the USSR in the cold war. The defeats write history as much or more than the victories and, of course, they condition the present.
China, Russia and the United States want to win not only to dominate the world, but to forget the humiliations of the past. The same is true of Xi, Putin and Trump. It is something personal, typical of authoritarian leaders. They confuse their private interest with the interest of the State.
History teaches us that no one, no leader, wins anything forever. The victories are ephemeral if we compare them with historical time. Even those that last for more than a century fade with the next twist of fate.
When the going goes wrong, open societies survive more easily than closed ones. Where tyrannies, violence and subjugation flourished, the defeats have been much deeper and more lasting.
In falling, the autocrats drag down their people and states. This is how it has been throughout history. It is therefore likely that Xi will drag China, Putin Russia and Trump the United States if he regains the presidency next year.
All three are united by the personal experience of psychological defeat, humiliation, and not having been accepted in their respective societies. Xi went through jail and ruin, the degradation of his father and the suicide of his sister.
Putin's mother kept him single and he never knew his father. Mother and son lived very modestly until he joined the KGB. When the Berlin Wall fell and he lost his job in Soviet counterintelligence, he drove a taxi back to a small flat in St. Petersburg.
Trump grew up in Queens, New York's most gangster district, far from the upper-town elites who, despite his wealth, never considered him one of their own.
After winning for several years, now all three have started to lose. They are at the gates of their last redemption. If Trump does not return to the White House, he will be finished forever, but America will get ahead.
Putin and Xi have it harder. They are not Mao or Stalin. They can't be and this is good for the world. Technology allows them to subjugate the masses, but not to mobilize them. Progress has reinforced individualism even in the most authoritarian regimes. Chinese and Russians hold the leader, but do not follow him. They are not messianic. We do not see patriotic fervor on the streets of Russia and China, and this collective prudence should cheer us up.
Xi and Putin dream of leading changes that have not been seen in a hundred years, but they cannot change their own people. Xi has a national rejuvenation blueprint that is nearly impossible to deliver. Demographic projections indicate that by the end of the century, China will have lost almost half its population.
Russia, which is already suffering demographic decline, will also see how Muslims will be the majority in 2063.
The size of the population and the territory have been decisive in consolidating geostrategic hegemonies. Xi, Putin and Trump know it. They know what they are up against: the end of a China at the center of the world, as well as the end of a white, Christian Russia and America.
How will history remember them? The three of them are obsessed with the place they will occupy in the books that speak of the 21st century. They project power, but it is a power that does not emanate from the ability they have to feed their people, but from the power of the media and the military, from constant threats and provocations.
We citizens of liberal democracies worry that all weapons will end up being used, that wars will continue to fascinate us as they have always done. Periods of peace and prosperity are boring compared to the adrenaline that revolutions and armies bring us. Technological acceleration makes the tension of war bearable, even appetizing.
This is a danger that, however, we can nullify from liberal democracies. Europe can compensate for the intellectual decline by promoting the humanities and the demographic decline by accepting immigrants who for nothing in the world will want to live in China or Russia. When circumstances require it and institutional and political restrictions allow it, open societies are creative, flexible and supportive. Much more than the closed ones.
If democratic leaders in Europe and the United States take all this into account, they will be able to negotiate with China and Russia from a vantage point. Notice how Xi listens to European leaders when they ask him to persuade Putin to withdraw from Ukraine.
It is true that these European leaders are small and improvise. Their changes of course are discouraging, but the solidity of our progress also resides in their doubts and modesty. They are not strong, but they are not spiraling down like Xi, Putin and Trump either. They don't win much, but they don't lose either. We should not forget that time is always running in favor of modest and resilient turtles.
