The main theme of the Valdai conference concerned whether Russia s history and geography doomed it to authoritarian rule.

The good news, then, is that there are far fewer people who seriously want to see a fascist regime in Russia than the government claims.

He went on to say that, in the eastern half of Europe, one foul tyranny was driven out by another, and liberation was postponed for nearly 50 years.

The most fateful attack to accompany the installation of any dictatorship is an attack on civil society.

And, if the military loosens the reins, the Muslim Brotherhood could take over and form its own authoritarian, non representative regime.

And that regime that we got rid of was actually a dictatorship, an authoritarian regime, that for decades created a great sense of paralysis within the nation, within the people themselves.

Alternative modes of action remain limited and vulnerable, but they exist and will not disappear in an authoritarian regime, that is already a significant achievement.

A terrible dictatorship, a regime without a future and a dwarf in terms of power politics defied the international giants.

Lukashenko hopes that dramatic economic reforms will win Western support, disarm foreign and domestic critics, and achieve economic modernization under authoritarian rule.

But how forward looking is it to model a twenty first century country on the absolutist example of the past?

It is the last group that is decisive when senior military and security personnel abandon an authoritarian regime in the face of popular pressure, its days are numbered.

Given that Syrians were socialized in a deeply authoritarian system, even those who are fighting for a democratic system are inexperienced in the art of coalition building.

The current regime is clearly autocratic. Yet it aspires to democratic legitimacy in the eyes of Russian citizens and the international community.

Russia s brutal twentieth century, with its totalitarianism and gulags, nearly proved that officer and de Maistre wrong.

For more than three decades, Indonesian reformists struggled against the crushing weight of an authoritarian regime, until it became clear that our only way out of the Asian crisis was through democratic reform.

Russia is passing from being the Russian Federation of Boris Yeltsin to a unitary authoritarian regime under Vladimir Putin and his former KGB colleagues.

But, with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki s government widely considered to be another authoritarian and sectarian regime, Iraq has not been able to gain any soft power.

As a result, the consequences of a failure to hold elections, a violent crackdown, or a takeover by another authoritarian regime would surely be worse than taking a chance on democracy.

But Obama will have to define a clearer US policy, addressing China s rapid rise under an authoritarian regime that aggressively pursues border claims and whips up nationalism at home.

The main theme of the Valdai conference concerned whether Russia s history and geography doomed it to authoritarian rule. If democracy was the wave of the future, was Russia destined to miss out?

In this sense, Putinism can serve as a model for extreme right parties, which, in post World War II Europe, cannot openly advocate an authoritarian regime or a one party system.

Putinism presents a clever and effective model of a right wing authoritarian regime that can function within modern Europe s sociopolitical constraints one that Western Europe s extreme right seems keen to emulate.

During the current financial crisis, which hit Russia right after the war with Georgia last August, the Kremlin and the Duma issued a series of laws and orders that have turned Putin s authoritarianism into a dictatorship. Opposition parties have become negligible.

If Bhutto had not been assassinated and, instead, successfully became prime minister, she would likely have clashed with Musharraf over his arbitrary empowerment of the presidency at the expense of the premiership.

Whether Tunisia becomes a democratic, economic, and social success story or, instead, sees its revolution end in chaos, civil war, and a new authoritarian regime will have consequences far beyond the country s borders.

This summer s Olympics in Beijing will be no less political, but will it resemble Berlin or Seoul? Will it mark the apotheosis of an authoritarian regime or the beginning of its demise?

Putin sees his own crusade to save Russia from disintegration and separatism as similar to Alexander s. But how forward looking is it to model a twenty first century country on the absolutist example of the past?

In 1993, after the Oslo agreements, the Palestinian Authority established under Yasir Arafat became another militarized authoritarian regime, very much like Syria and Egypt, and did nothing to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian refugees.