Here is the archived version without the paywall:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240516210957/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/

Edit:

I also liked this quote from it:

Most don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, apathetic and afraid, because there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade their own people to stay out of politics, and above all to convince them that there is no democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong. The democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.

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