Nationalist autocrats are on the march. Trump yawns.

Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, Getty

At this time seven years ago, what came to be known as the Arab Spring was blossoming across the Middle East, spreading the ideal of reform. It was possible to think then that what the conservative theorist Francis Fukuyama had predicted at the end of the Cold War, in a book called “The End of History and the Last Man,” was actually coming to pass — that eons of autocracy were ending, and a global age of democratic self-determinism had dawned.

As it turns out, though: not really. And not just because Egypt is back to military rule, while Syria and Yemen and Libya are each engaged in all-out civil war.

What you might have missed over the last week or so — with all this mesmerizing spectacle about coming tariffs and an exodus of White House aides and a guy who briefly worked for the campaign publicly melting down on a string of cable shows — is a rush back toward the repression and militarism of the 20th century in some of the world’s most powerful nations.

By Matt Bai.

Full story at Yahoo News.