Epstein Secrets

case that countries like the United States have no right to lec- ture others on democracy, and that perhaps all elec- tions are equally flawed. The Kremlin's chief propagan- dist described the 2016 U.S. election as "so horribly noxious that it only engenders disgust towards what is still inexplicably c

a back seat to security concerns, or to policy conces- sions aimed at maintaining good relations with Russia. Prior to the saber rattling from the Kremlin, Estonia had an economy with one of Europe's higher rates of VNAvireedomhoustorg 49 EFTA00804773 BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, an

and persecution. They are frequent- ly jailed on trumped-up charges of defamation, tax fraud, or drug trafficking, among others. 12 EFTA00804736 Freedom House 2. Marginalizing the opposition: As noted above, authoritarian leaders use their media power to paint critics as knaves or buffoons. Especially t

to humiliate even a powerful adversary. When George Shultz, President Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, asked Mr. Kennan how to approach the new Kremlin leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the former diplomat replied that the Soviets remained "in many respects insecure people and require reassurance in th

in countries that will hold free and fair elections this year, democracy's global advance has come to a halt, and may even have gone into reverse. Freedom House reckons that 2013 was the eighth consecutive year in which global freedom declined, and that its forward march peaked around the beginning of the c

e case that countries like the United States have no right to lec- ture others on democracy, and that perhaps all elec- tions are equally flawed. The Kremlin's chief propagan- dist described the 2016 U.S. election as “so horribly noxious that it only engenders disgust towards what is still inexplicably cal

tions with other regional states. Turkey similarly claimed a policy of “zero problems” with its neighbors in the period before the Syrian civil war. Freedom House's Tyler Roylance has described a “common set of concessions" that 21st-century au- thoritarians made to the prevailing democratic ethos in the wake of