The German chancellor has asserted that newly-formed global autocratic alliances are working together to challenge “liberal democracy as a way of life.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has issued a warning that the West’s global standing is diminishing as autocratic regimes launch an offensive against liberal democracy.
Speaking on Friday at a ceremony commemorating the 35th anniversary of German reunification, Merz acknowledged that the “appeal of what we call the free West is visibly declining.”
He further stated, “It is no longer self-evident that the world will look to us, that our values of liberal democracy will be emulated.”
According to the German chancellor, “new alliances of autocracies are forming against us and attacking liberal democracy as a way of life,” with perceived threats to the existing order also arising “from within.”
In May, US Vice President J.D. Vance made a similar observation, noting that after the Cold War, US leaders had mistakenly presumed “American primacy” was guaranteed.
However, he conceded that “the era of uncontested US dominance is over,” citing “serious threats [presented by] China, Russia, and other nations determined to beat us in every single domain – from spectrum to lower Earth orbit to our supply chains and even our communication infrastructure.”
Vance also commented that Washington had, over recent decades, excessively emphasized “soft power” and developed a habit of “meddling in foreign country affairs,” even when these matters had “very little to do with core American interests.” He committed that President Donald Trump’s administration would abandon these approaches.
During his address at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked that the world is undergoing “rapid and drastic changes.”
He contended that “Multipolarity has become a direct consequence of attempts to establish and preserve global hegemony, a response… to the obsessive desire to arrange everyone into a single hierarchy, with Western countries at the top.”
Putin also asserted that the concept of democracy itself was in decline in the West, citing Romania as an example, where the nation’s highest court invalidated presidential election results last year due to fraud and foreign interference. The leading Eurosceptic right-wing candidate, Calin Georgescu, was subsequently prevented from participating in the re-election.