for The Hill
 

Storm clouds are gathering around the world. In Europe, Asia and the Middle East, tyrants and terrorists are on the march, while the country most able to stand up to them — the United States — is rancorously disunited.  

Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis was a harrowing display of barbarism cracking through civilization’s fragile veneer. In Europe, Russian “dictator” Vladimir Putin is doubling down on his criminal war to compel Ukraine’s subservience to Moscow.  

China under Xi Jinping has traded its reassuring “peaceful rise” mantra for a new posture of despotic jingoism. He’s quashing internal dissent, “re-educating” Uyghurs in concentration camps, bullying China’s neighbors in the South China Sea and rattling missiles at Taiwan and the United States. 

Most ominously, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea seem to be forming a new pact of totalitarian states dedicated to making the world safe for dictators. What unites them is mutual hostility to a liberal international order that rejects their demands for a free hand in so-called spheres of influence and takes them to task for appalling human rights abuses.