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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians of criticism in the media to justify a tenuous claim of pluralism. In recent years, tolerance for ideas and opinions that are not aligned with those of the regime has steadily eroded. In Russia, a bad situation became much worse after the invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Those who criticized or even raised questions about the morality or wisdom of the Kremlin's actions were persecuted, dismissed from employment, and banned from media com- mentary. Putin also expanded the zone of media control from the mainstream television and print sectors to the internet. In Venezuela, one opposition or independent voice after another has been neutralized, as key newspapers and television stations were sold, under duress, to businessmen with ties to the government. The new and often opaque owners generally watered down political reporting and forced out prominent journalists.’ Even before the 2016 coup attempt, media free- dom in Turkey was deteriorating at an alarming rate. The government, controlled by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Develop- ment Party, aggressively used the penal code, criminal defamation legislation, and antiterror- ism laws to punish critical reporting. Journal- ists also faced growing violence, harassment, and intimidation from both state and nonstate actors. The authorities also used financial and administrative leverage over media owners to influence coverage and muzzle dissent.® War propaganda: For some time, propaganda from Russia, China, and other authoritarian countries stressed a hostility toward liberal val- ues and democracy, framed around a relentless anti-Americanism. There were, however, certain redlines that propagandists were unlikely to cross. They would criticize American foreign policy and blame it for a country’s problems. But only rarely would they accuse Washington of warlike intentions, and they seldom if ever made military threats themselves. Since the invasion of Ukraine and the resulting economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the EU, Russian propaganda has assumed an uglier, more menacing tone. The same is true in China, where official expressions of hostility toward the United States and “Western” democratic values intensified—indeed took on a histrionic and belligerent character—after the ascension of Xi Jinping as Communist Party leader. In Turkey, progovernment commentators have accused the U.S. government and even an American think tank of involvement in the failed coup of 2016. ° Closing doors to the outside world: More than anything else, modern authoritarianism is distinguished from traditional autocracy by its openness to relatively normal relations with the outside world. China, for example, long sought to balance calibrated repression at home with participation in an impressive array of global in- stitutions. Beijing welcomed the establishment of local branches of foreign, mostly American, universities, joint research ventures with foreign scholars, and even the involvement of foreign NGOs in areas such as legal reform and envi- ronmental conservation. While more ambiv- alent about the international media, Chinese authorities did give unprecedented freedom of movement to foreign journalists in the period surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Russia was less welcoming to foreign involvement in the country, whether by governmental or private entities, but for a time it maintained academic exchanges with the United States and European countries, grudgingly tolerated foreign NGOs, and took some pride in the freedom of Russians to travel freely abroad. Conditions have deteriorated over the past several years. In Russia, the government re- duced trade with Europe in response to sanc- tions, imposed travel restrictions on millions of public-sector employees, smeared domestic human rights organizations as “foreign agents” for accepting international funding, and began blacklisting foreign NGOs as “undesirable.” Chi- na has increased regulatory and legal pressure on foreign companies, bullied foreign countries into repatriating Chinese political refugees, significantly increased regulatory restrictions on foreign NGOs, and sharply curbed journalistic freedom for foreign correspondents. Propaganda and official rhetoric in both countries has increasingly portrayed them as besieged fortresses, threatened on all sides by hostile foreign powers, spies, separatists, and traitors who seek to topple the government and deny the nation its rightful place in the world. In this environment, any interaction with foreigners 54 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019288