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Black smoke rises from the area of Gazprom Neft’s Moscow oil refinery on the southeastern outskirts of Moscow on June 18, 2026. (Getty Images)
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Join Hudson Institute and the Martens Centre for a live discussion on democracy versus autocracy and the great power showdown, part of the 11th annual Transatlantic Think Tank Conference
Over the past decade, geopolitical tensions have increased significantly around the world. This is partly due to the rise and increased assertiveness of China on one hand, and the continuing revisionism and rogue actions of Russia on the other.
Increasingly, this competition has been cast as one of the fundamentally different political systems. The democratic West and its Asian partners are competing for power and influence with autocratic Russia and China, which hold different values and a different vision of how the international system should be organized. Russia and China are seeking to export their political systems and corrupting influence through such instruments as the Nord Stream pipeline and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
What can Europe and the U.S. do to boost the resilience of their own political systems and those of their partners around the world? Should they form an alliance of democracies to help each other—and others—to withstand such autocratic and corrupting pressure? What kind of geopolitical opportunities or limitations does conceiving of grand strategy as a division between democracies and autocracies create for Europe and the US? Join Hudson Institute for this important discussion.
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