Hours after the presidential debate, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said that his boss didn’t bother to watch. Mr. Peskov even scoffed at the notion: The Russian president could hardly be expected to set his alarm to watch the broadcast in the middle of the night in Moscow. In any case, he added, the debate was America’s internal affair. But judging by the wave of propaganda that immediately followed on Russian television, Mr. Putin was, indeed, paying attention.
For Russia’s leader, like his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the crisis in American leadership that crystallized for the world to see onstage last week was a gift — the perfect opportunity for their governments to re-up the narrative of America’s imminent collapse they’ve been pushing. By engendering uncertainty about American global leadership, Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi believe they can reorder the world in a way that amplifies their countries’ international influence at Washington’s expense and helps preserve their grip on power.
Russia’s state-owned Channel One covered the debate in depth, describing President Biden and Donald Trump as “small children from the nursery.” As Russian viewers were treated to replays of the candidates bickering over who was the better golfer, the presenter predicted that life itself in America would become “one never-ending game of golf,” with the United States lurching “from one big hole to the next.”
China’s official commentary was more reserved. The state media briefly summarized the debate, also focusing on the barbs and the insults. Beijing’s Global Times mouthpiece quoted an anonymous American voter saying, “There must be something wrong with the system,” and another claiming that the U.S. democracy was failing.
This is all part of the long game for Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, who for years have sought to counter accusations that their regimes are tyrannies by attacking American democracy. They have tried to plant the idea among their own people and their sympathizers in the West and developing nations that the United States is not a democracy at all but a dysfunctional oligarchy in terminal decline.
In February 2022, a few weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi signed a statement claiming that Russia and China had “deep democratic traditions, based on a thousand years of development,” and criticized certain unnamed countries (read: the United States) for attempting to impose their own version of the political system on others in a way that “undermines democracy and discards its spirit and true values.”
The debate offered fresh grist for this longstanding campaign. From Beijing’s and Moscow’s perspectives, it doesn’t matter who won that night or who lost. What matters is to demonstrate that the American elections in November will be a farce, in which voters are being duped into choosing between two equally unpalatable options.
Their tactics may be effective in the short term. Prophecies of America’s implosion have already fed anxiety among U.S. partners and allies. European leaders live in dread of a potential Trump-led American undermining of NATO, trying desperately to Trump-proof Europe against such an unfortunate eventuality by developing an E.U.-wide defense industrial strategy and considering whether to appoint an E.U. defense commissioner. A second term for Mr. Biden poses its own security risks, as it’s unclear whether he has the stamina to lead in an increasingly uncertain and dangerous world.
A deeper question is embedded in the doubts America’s adversaries are sowing. If the two leading presidential candidates have nothing better to do than to spar over who is the better golfer, where does this leave America’s vision for the world? Is America still the shining city upon a hill, or is its prolonged political malaise a sign that something is burning down? It’s hard to tell from the outside looking in. But Beijing and Moscow are fanning the flames and presenting themselves as ready to step in when the nation that led the world through the 20th century retreats into itself.
There is, however, a profound flaw in the story Russia and China are selling. The disturbing sight of the American presidential debate immediately spurred a broad political conversation in the United States — the kind that would never be possible in China or Russia. These two autocracies are also run by aging men, but unlike Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, they are entirely insulated from criticism, face no opposition and may very well rule their countries until they die.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, both 71 years old, may delight in the advanced age of America’s leading presidential candidates, but they are fast approaching old age themselves. The difference is that no one will ever openly suggest they should step aside. They will hang on to power unchallenged, even if their regimes stagnate and wither. Mr. Putin’s criminal war in Ukraine, which has cost Russia billions of dollars while making it overreliant on China, and Mr. Xi’s disastrous Covid policies that sapped business confidence and lengthened China’s recovery, are just two recent examples of their dreadful leadership for which they have faced no meaningful domestic political repercussions.
China’s and Russia’s problems do not end there. Unlike democracies, which can set constraints on the powers of the executive in the form of term limits, autocracies, of course, do not. That makes younger leaders a different but equally dangerous threat. Joseph Stalin was just 58 in 1937 when he unleashed bloody purges, killing hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. China’s Mao Zedong started his murderous Great Leap Forward in 1958 when he was just 64. When they died, they left their nations in miserable messes that took years to sort out. The Soviets found themselves in such a deep morass by the early 1980s that their system proved unreformable, leading to a complete meltdown in 1991. Chinese citizens survived decades of political upheaval and unrest, only to find themselves under the thumb of another aging autocrat today.
America, by contrast, has so far managed to bounce back from its deepest crises. The civil rights struggle and the antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s generated intense polarization in American society. Then came Watergate, with its shocking revelations of corruption and conspiracy at the very heart of American power. Skyrocketing oil prices spurred a recession in the mid-1970s, and the American defeat in Vietnam delivered a grave blow to the United States’ global prestige, from which many thought the country would never recover.
At the time, the Kremlin was certain that the world was going its way and sought to extend power and influence to far-flung corners of the world. The Soviets were all too keen to take advantage of America’s problems by advertising America’s high crime rates and rampant drug addiction. In the words of one Politburo document from 1971, the Soviet policy was to discredit the United States, “thus undermining the U.S. position as the leader of the bourgeois world.”
In the end, of course, it was the United States that prevailed in the Cold War, leaving the Soviet Union behind. Beijing had more foresight than Moscow. In 1979 the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, argued, “If we look back, we find that all of those countries that were on the side of the United States have been successful, whereas all those that were against the United States have not been successful.” He chose to seek closer ties with America. Mr. Xi appears to have little of Mr. Deng’s foresight. Like the Soviets in their time and Mr. Putin today, the Chinese leader is banking on America’s demise.
Yes, America is at a low moment. Anyone can see that, without the help of Chinese or Russian propaganda. And there may be darker days still ahead, with no promise of a quick resolution or even a smooth election this fall.
But history has shown that resilience is built into the American system — through its institutional constraints, accountability and genuine, meaningful debate about the country’s direction. Amid all this turmoil, an American comeback still feels possible, even plausible. America in decline is America on the road to renewal.