Shield of the Republic How Evil Regimes Cling to Power (w/ Stephen Kotkin)
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Jan 26, 2026 
Stephen Kotkin, historian and Princeton professor emeritus and senior fellow at Stanford, explores why authoritarian regimes can be simultaneously strong and fragile. He discusses regime resilience in Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and China. Short takes cover regime continuity after leader removal, security-force splits, institutional inheritance, and policy tools to pressure autocrats.
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Powerful Yet Brittle Regimes
- Authoritarian regimes are simultaneously powerful and brittle because their survival depends on suppressing political alternatives.
- Exploiting divisions within security forces and co-opting key insiders creates pathways for change without immediate full democratization.
Use Graduated Incentives For Change
- Use graduated incentives like phased sanction relief tied to verifiable behavior to shift insiders' self-interest.
- Appeal to patriotism and career concerns to persuade security figures to back a managed transition.
Wrong History, Wrong Strategy
- Post-Cold War strategy wrongly assumed autocracies would liberalize if integrated economically.
- Russia and China draw on deep landmass-imperial histories that resist political liberalization despite economic engagement.
