Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic: “If the 20th century was the story of a slow, uneven struggle, ending with the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies – communism, fascism, virulent nationalism – the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse. Freedom House, which has published an annual ‘Freedom in the World’ report for nearly 50 years, called its 2021 edition ‘Democracy Under Siege.’ The Stanford scholar Larry Diamond calls this an era of ‘democratic regression.’ Not everyone is equally gloomy – Srdja Popovic, the democracy activist, argues that confrontations between autocrats and their populations are growing harsher precisely because democratic movements are becoming more articulate and better organized.”

“But just about everyone who thinks hard about this subject agrees that the old diplomatic toolbox once used to support democrats around the world is rusty and out of date. The tactics that used to work no longer do. Certainly sanctions, especially when hastily applied in the aftermath of some outrage, do not have the impact they once did. They can sometimes seem, as Stephen Biegun, the former deputy secretary of state, puts it, ‘an exercise in self-gratification,’ on par with ‘sternly worded condemnations of the latest farcical election.’ That doesn’t mean they have no impact at all. But although personal sanctions on corrupt Russian officials might make it impossible for some Russians to visit their homes in Cap Ferrat, say, or their children at the London School of Economics, they haven’t persuaded Putin to stop invading other countries, interfering in European and American politics, or poisoning his own dissidents. Neither have decades of U.S. sanctions changed the behavior of the Iranian regime or the Venezuelan regime, despite their indisputable economic impact. Too often, sanctions are allowed to deteriorate over time; just as often, autocracies now help one another get around them.”