The signs feel chilling.
Military parades roll through Beijing. Red carpets unroll for Putin. Smiles, handshakes, promises of friendship — and behind them, a shared enemy: the West.

But this isn’t the Cold War reborn. Something different is forming. 

Today I’ll take you past the parades and the propaganda, into the machinery of autocracy itself. 

Here’s the path we’ll follow:

Checkpoint 1 — How Autocracy Really Works: Why regimes like Russia and China rely on the supreme leader as the brand of the system.

Checkpoint 2 — The Prime Principle: Imitation: How autocrats survive through performance and fakery.

Checkpoint 3 — The Autocrats’ “Alliance”: Why so-called alliances of dictators are shallow business deals, not true partnerships.

Checkpoint 4 — Why America Lost This Round: How U.S. missteps accidentally fed the autocrats’ narrative of strength.

Checkpoint 5 — A New Cold War? Is the world sliding back into a Cold War, or into something else entirely?

Stay with me — because by the end, you’ll see how today’s alliances of convenience reveal less about strength, and more about the fragility of authoritarian power.

How Autocracy Really Works

Here’s the first thing you need to know when you watch an autocrat in action: he is not performing for you.

The real target audience is not the outside world. It’s his own bureaucracy—and above all, the tight circle of loyalists who have invested everything in him.

As long as the bureaucracy believes the regime is strong and capable of protecting its interests, it will serve faithfully. Bureaucrats know perfectly well that nobody loves them. Why would they? In an authoritarian state, public service is not about serving the people—it’s a way to get rich at the expense of taxpayers. Officials climb into government for one reason: to gain privileges, then convert them into money and status.

And those privileges are always unfair. So, the privileged class in such countries is widely despised and cannot rely on its own legitimacy.

Which results in Rule #1. The bureaucracy desperately needs a supreme leader who can look loved by the people while protecting the system. The autocrat becomes the brand ambassador of the entire regime. “If you love me, then you must accept the whole system I represent.”

But that’s only the first part.

Second: The autocrat must prove he has the resources to defend his bureaucracy’s interests abroad. The elites of such states are desperate to funnel their fortunes out of the homeland and into safer jurisdictions. Their greatest privilege is immunity—the ability to solve problems outside the reach of the law. The law either protects everyone, or it protects no one. And the top bureaucracy knows this perfectly well: in a lawless state, everything they own can be taken away at any moment. That’s why moving money abroad—and often the family along with it—isn’t just important, it’s essential. In fact, this is the ultimate goal of public service in an autocracy.

If you’ve ever been to London, Miami, New York, or California, you already know where the elites of authoritarian countries settle. Walk through any luxury mall and look at who’s buying the designer goods. Ask real estate agents who’s snapping up the most expensive homes. More often than not, they’ll tell you: wealthy foreigners from authoritarian regimes. And very often, not entrepreneurs, but the wives, children, and mistresses of government officials.

But to make those dreams real, their supreme leader must negotiate with the West to secure visas and capital transfers. In other words, the president-autocrat is really a broker with the outside world, promising his bureaucracy access to wealth and safety while keeping the wheels of foreign trade turning.

And this leads us to the third rule: the bureaucracy expects the leader to have enough resources to guarantee its prosperity. Domestic markets in large autocracies are always underdeveloped because the population is exploited, and the benefits earned are siphoned into the pockets of the privileged class. Without foreign trade and external relations, the system cannot survive.

These economies are structurally inefficient. They don’t serve business; they serve bureaucratic clans. That is their congenital flaw—and it inevitably keeps them backward. No matter what autocrats do, they will never match democracies in science or technology. Because talent and capital flee to safer places. Even their own children and grandchildren leave—and the elites themselves quietly help them go.

That is why uninterrupted access to resources is so critical. Resources can be used to patch, or at least disguise, the inefficiency. There are two ways to get them: either through ruthless exploitation of the population, as in China and North Korea; or through ruthless exploitation of natural wealth, as in Russia. The resource is exported, traded for money, the money distributed among the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy, in turn, supports the autocrat who makes it all possible.

Fourth: the supreme autocrat must constantly prove he has the strength to destroy his enemies—both foreign and domestic. That alone guarantees stability and makes the system predictable enough for bureaucrats to plan their careers. A young official starts out hoping he’ll have enough time to climb the ladder and claim the rewards he came for. That is only possible if the current regime endures. Because once a new autocrat comes, he brings his own favorites, new clans form around them, and the old guard is pushed aside—or eliminated outright.

In the end, the supreme leader of an autocracy must always demonstrate four things to his bureaucracy:

• That he is loved by the people.
  
• Respected abroad.
  
• Wealthy enough to provide.
  
• Strong enough to crush his enemies.
  

This is the real purpose of parades, Olympic Games, international summits, and grand televised speeches.

They’re not aimed at you. They’re staged for the autocrat’s own audience—so his bureaucracy never doubts his power.

The Prime Principle: Imitation

Here’s the core paradox of every autocracy: the ruling class wants one thing, while the people want the opposite.

Officials can’t exactly go on TV and announce: 
“We’re here to loot the country, ship the money abroad, and jail or kill anyone who resists.”

So how do they solve this impossible contradiction?
By lying. Constantly.

Autocracy is built on performance. It must pretend, day and night, that it cares for its people and that everything is going splendidly.

And the longer the lie runs, the more it feeds itself. Dissenters are pushed out, leaving behind an echo chamber where the ruler and his entourage hear only what they want to hear. They believe their own myths. And why not? They reached the top, therefore they must be smarter, more talented, chosen.

Here’s how the machinery of imitation works:

Fake elections.
 Alternatives are banned. On the rare occasion an opponent emerges—like in Belarus—they’re simply denied power. Elections exist not to decide, but to display. They are rituals designed to prove to the bureaucracy that the leader can manufacture “proof” of the people’s love. Love itself isn’t required—the paperwork will do.

Fake care for the people. Propaganda showcases gleaming skyscrapers, shiny stadiums, endless highways, and bridges. In China, miles of railroads and entire ghost cities were built. But most citizens can’t afford to use them. That’s not the point. The point is for connected businessmen and officials to make fortunes on the contracts, while the masses sit in front of their TVs, believing that shiny images equal national greatness.

And here’s the cruel twist: when ordinary people have no personal success, they cling to the “success” of their nation. The glory of the state becomes their only source of pride.

Fake threats. 
How do you justify war, empty wallets, censorship, and idiotic laws that ban Instagram or punish people for searching the internet? By hammering one message: “The enemy is coming.” NATO is plotting an attack. We’re not fighting Ukraine—we’re fighting the West. And since most citizens know nothing about NATO or their own history, they shrug: “Well, the authorities must know better.”

Fake hatred.
The privileged elite loudly brandish their patriotism—not by caring for their own people, but by despising the West. They paint democracies as weak, decadent, and immoral. Yet, the same elites rush to buy apartments in London, go shopping in Milan, or vacation in Paris. Their girlfriends and mistresses flaunt it all on Instagram. The more ordinary people are denied visas, the more prestigious it looks to be sipping coffee on the Champs-Élysées.

Fake friendships.
 Autocracies depend on foreign trade. Isolation would kill them. So they must always show that their leader is welcomed, respected, and even celebrated abroad. After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia briefly became toxic. No one wanted to shake hands with Putin. But by 2025, the image had shifted. Central Asian countries, once hesitant, now openly resumed business with Moscow. The lesson was simple: as long as you avoid secondary sanctions, nothing else matters.

That’s why Putin flew to meet Donald Trump—not to negotiate peace, but to stage a photo-op. To show his officials that red carpets still unroll and that even the U.S. president shakes his hand. Trump never realized he was being used as a wedding prop—like a general invited to impress the guests, not out of love, but out of utility.

The Autocrats’ “Alliance”

So, is a new Axis of autocrats really possible? After all, they look so alike.

But similarity doesn’t make an alliance. Common interests do. And the only true shared interest authoritarian regimes have is what they like to call a “multipolar world.”

Translated, that means: “Prosperous Western nations should stay out of our business. Let us loot our people and the territories we claim—like Ukraine—without interference.”

This is not an ideological struggle. Autocracies have no ideology. They care only about two things: endless power and endless access to public resources.

And don’t be fooled—no autocrat feels warm affection for another. By nature, an autocrat is a Hunter archetype. That’s the only personality type ruthless enough to claw past all rivals and seize supreme power. Hunters crave to be the richest, the strongest, the ultimate victor. Which means they are not friends—they are competitors, constantly sizing each other up.

That’s why China will never call Russia or Vladimir Putin its “ally.” Beijing will not throw itself into the war in Ukraine. And Moscow won’t go to war for China against India—or pledge unconditional support for a Chinese takeover of Taiwan.

These are not alliances. They are business deals.

If North Korea provides Russia with shells and manpower, Russia pays back in resources. Nothing more. No one spends their own strength to fulfill another autocrat’s dream.

So ignore the parades and the photo-ops. Look at the facts.

Russia has been negotiating with China since 2015 about the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline. And after ten years? Nothing. China doesn’t need it. Beijing’s energy strategy is to reduce dependence, not deepen it. Yes, China buys Russian oil and gas—but only at fire-sale prices. They’re exploiting Russia’s weakness. Moscow brags about “record trade volumes,” but profit shrinks as prices collapse.

Meanwhile, Europe is determined to end its dependency on Russian energy. And China just opened one of the world’s largest shale gas fields. By 2030, Beijing won’t need extra Russian gas at all. That’s why they sign vague memorandums and nothing concrete. The one tangible agreement at the last Kremlin summit? Exports of reindeer and reindeer meat. That’s the level of this so-called “alliance.”

Consider agriculture. China is one of the world’s largest grain importers. But it buys wheat from Ukraine and Kazakhstan—not Russia. Russia begged Beijing to let it issue bonds in yuan to raise money on the Chinese market. Rejected. Russia asked for credits. None given.

Instead, China keeps tariffs high on Russian coal—fueling a crisis in Russia’s coal industry. Chinese steel floods the world market, crushing Russian metallurgists. In July alone, Russia’s steel output fell over 10 percent year-on-year. Chinese carmakers now dominate the Russian market, devastating what remains of domestic auto manufacturing.

And this is the pattern everywhere: the press shouts about a new geopolitical club, but inside, the “club members” are at each other’s throats. China and India clash on their borders. Both rely on aggressive nationalism to mask poverty and inequality: “Yes, we are poor, yes we are powerless—but at least we are great.” Neither bureaucracy will ever abandon nationalism, because it’s their only substitute for improving people’s lives.

And don’t expect Chinese or Indian corporations to rush in and replace Western businesses in Russia. Big players aren’t fools. Who would invest in a country where property rights mean nothing, courts are not independent, and the state seizes assets whenever it pleases?

Yes, small and medium traders will make money skimming off sanctions loopholes—smuggling Coca-Cola, electronics, and drone parts. But big business? Big business looks at the whole world. And when it looks at Russia, it sees a country at war, hit by drone strikes and ruled by caprice.

The so-called “union of autocrats” is not a real club. It is a marketplace where predators trade scraps—each convinced he’s the smartest in the room, each dreaming of outliving the others.

Why America Lost This Round

In recent months, Washington’s actions have played directly into the hands of the autocrats. Without realizing it, American officials helped them build the very image they craved—an image that reassured their bureaucracy and strengthened the regime from within.

How did this happen? Because there is no real understanding of the Hunters who rule in places like Moscow and Beijing. If you don’t understand the motivation of your counterpart, you can’t negotiate. You keep offering “solutions” that don’t address what they actually want.

This blindness is common among leaders. The higher people climb, the more they start believing their own instincts are flawless. But lacking the right information, they make decisions that sabotage even their best intentions.

That’s exactly what happened to Donald Trump. He spent eight months negotiating with Vladimir Putin, convinced he had read the man correctly. He offered clever deals and graceful exits from the war—never realizing that Putin doesn’t answer to the Russian people at all.

The people want peace and prosperity. The bureaucracy already has prosperity. What it wants is recognition. Guarantees that its stolen wealth, parked abroad, will remain untouchable. For that, it needs its leader to project raw strength.

This is why the war in Ukraine isn’t about land. It was never about protecting Russian speakers. In fact, those same Russian speakers lost their homes, their health, and often their lives because of the Kremlin’s actions. But that doesn’t matter inside the Kremlin. Their agenda is different: to make the West “respect Russia’s interests.” Which, in their language, simply means: “Let us keep stealing, and don’t interfere.”

By failing to see this, Trump lost. And Putin—and every other autocrat watching—won.

The message is clear, dangerously clear: attacking your neighbor is wrong… but if you want it badly enough, you can get away with it.

Look at Russian social media today. Propaganda hammers home the same images:

    •    Putin wins visa-free travel with China.

    •    Putin is no longer isolated.

    •    A shiny new pipeline is on its way.

    •    The West is weak, irrelevant, sidelined.

None of this benefits ordinary Russians. They’ll never afford a trip to China. They’ll never profit from a new pipeline. But the bureaucracy? It sees stability. Salaries will keep flowing. Luxury lifestyles are safe. And Western humiliation feeds their dream that Europe will one day come crawling back to Putin.

That’s why the PR matters. The red carpets, the handshakes, the promises of grand projects—they give the bureaucracy exactly what it needs: hope. The hope that if it just rallies behind the leader and lets him finish the job, victory—and immunity—will be theirs.

And that is how America, without even realizing it, helped the autocrats tighten their grip.

A New Cold War?

So—is this a new Cold War? Not quite.

Our minds love patterns. We process new events by comparing them to what we already know. So it’s tempting to see today’s world as a repeat of the U.S.–Soviet standoff, with China stepping into the USSR’s shoes.

But that’s a false picture. The Soviet Union and its satellites were cut off from global markets. China, by contrast, is deeply—almost fatally—interwoven with the global economy. And most of all, with the U.S. economy.

The Cold War had a clear goal: bankrupt your rival until they collapse. But what happens if today’s so-called “Axis of Evil” bankrupts America? Who will buy their exports then? Who will shelter their families, their bank accounts, their stolen wealth?

That’s the real point. There is no Cold War. There is only a fight by authoritarian bureaucracies to preserve their privileges. And their greatest privilege is access to the luxuries of democracy—not at home, of course, but abroad, where their fellow party bosses can’t touch them.

So what lessons should we draw?

First: education is the foundation of good decisions. And knowing your own blind spots is the beginning of true learning.

Second: aggressors cannot be appeased. Putin’s drive for war looks irrational only if you judge it through your own life experience. Step into his shoes—consider his fears, his values, his history—and the logic becomes clear. He is not chasing prosperity. He is chasing the display of sheer dominance, performed for the only audience that matters to him: his mafia clan, which is also his bureaucracy.

Third: this conflict is not East versus West, nor democracy versus dictatorship. It is modernity versus archaic tribal instincts. The Putin clan lives by an ancient code—one that once helped tribes survive and later built empires. But empires always rest on privilege, and privilege always suffocates progress. That is why autocracies inevitably fall behind.

And here’s the contrast: mature democracies do not wage war against each other. They negotiate. That is the hard-won result of thousands of years of social evolution. Which means humanity already has the answer: the only way to eliminate wars is to prove, again and again, that archaic ways no longer work.

The real danger isn’t the red-carpet photo ops. Autocrats will betray each other in a heartbeat if it serves their dominance game. The real danger is the message the West sends them. If Ukraine falls, every dictator will read it the same way: this works. The strong can seize what they want, while the weak hide behind excuses.

Dictators study results. They aren’t squeamish about violence if it brings victory. Which means the only defense is hard, consistent resistance. Because bullies are aroused by weakness. But when faced with strength, they run. They are sadists, yes—but they are also cowards. They don’t enjoy pain when it is theirs.

That is the real dividing line of our age. Not Cold War. Not ideology. But a clash between a modern world that values freedom and fairness, and an archaic, predatory mindset that thrives on privilege and violence.

And now I want to hear from you. What do you think is the future of modern authoritarian regimes?

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