Irish Examiner view: Autocrats thriving while West dithers on standing up to them

Today's strongmen leaders seem immune to international law or pressure

Russian President Vladimir Putin this week enacted legislation that prevents his opponents from standing in September's elections.

It may, as another bank holiday arrives but without barbecue weather, seem unduly mordant to fret about the growing reach, assertiveness, and audacity of our world's autocrats. In an island nation that does not support even a modest navy to half protect its fisheries, those considerations are long-fingered, which, ironically, exacerbates dangerous neglect. That may be a consequence of a few, just a few, generations of stability and affluence in the West, and undue reliance on Pax Americana. Our traditional neutrality also encourages a kind of wishful complacency in today's world.

That long-fingering may be encouraged by events like what seems the end of Benjamin Netanyahu's term as Israel's prime minister. A bitterly divisive and aggressive figure he epitomises today's strongmen leaders who seem immune to international law or pressure. Without his benefactor, Donald Trump, Netanyahu's hand was weakened but it is far too early to hope that his successor might be a positive force in all Israeli lives.