, Columnist
Putin Has Fallen Victim to the Dictator’s Disease
It’s not just that longtime autocrats stop listening to anybody. Their supporters come to share in their delusions.
Follow the leader?
Photographer: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images
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Last weekend saw the re-election of the man often thought of as Europe’s proto-Putin: Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has attacked his country’s democracy while seeking to weaken the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization from within.
Yet Orban should be careful whom he emulates. If Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent performance is any indication, he has fallen victim to the dictator’s disease — the tendency for absolute power to heighten the propensity for catastrophic miscalculation.