"Beware of Führerstaaten": Op-ed by Wolfgang Ischinger and Sebastian Turner for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

This article has originally been published in the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung.

Spies are not supposed to spread insights of their own power apparatus. But that is exactly what the head of Russian foreign espionage Sergei Naryshkin did on February 23, involuntarily and unmistakably. At a meeting of the Russian Security Council, his answers not only revealed how the pretexts of Russian imperialism change rantingly. When Vladimir Putin humiliated his top spy in front of the world public, he revealed: the Russian Federation has become a Fuehrerstaat (leader state). The autocrat has absolute power. He is not controlled by any public, any party, any parliament, any judiciary, any cabinet, or even any clique of officials or secret service - on the contrary, he controls them all. One day after Naryshkin's embarrassing revelation, the world witnessed what leader states are capable of: Russia invaded Ukraine and has been killing thousands and terrorizing millions ever since.

Connoisseurs of Russia could see the metamorphosis from the dysfunctional post-Soviet Yeltsin years to Putin's leader state coming. Of course, there is no longer a Politburo, which in the old USSR appointed or removed the CPSU General Secretary as a controlling body. The Duma and the Federation Council are claqueurs, and press diversity has almost completely disappeared. The business community is also subservient, from the 2005 show trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the sudden deaths of business representatives opposed to the Ukraine invasion. Even Putin's aggressive rejection of the democratic world during his historic appearance at the 2007 Munich Security Conference was not taken sufficiently seriously in Washington, Brussels or Berlin.

If you look from Russia, a declining world power, to China, a rising world power, you will see disturbing similarities. China's strongman Xi Jinping has eliminated almost all opposing forces in his one-party state in order to be able to be elected for life at the next party congress starting on October 16. He has changed the top intelligence officers several times, and he has a firm grip on the military. He personally rules all organizations of the state, party and society. Anyone who contradicts him ends up in the interrogation cellars of the Central Disciplinary Commission. The economy is also on a short leash, from Jack Ma's house arrest to laws that make data collection a state monopoly. In this, Xi far outdoes his ally Putin. With social dots and facial recognition, Xi has totalitarian power over everyone: Citizens, institutions, and hierarchies.

Leader states are to be feared because even the country's most original interests can be overridden by No. 1's personal priorities, visions, whims and diseases. The yes-men also create a false reality for the autocrat, so that he can make irrational decisions despite many years of political experience — and no one will stop him.

There have always been autocrats who could subjugate an entire polity. Nuclear powers as leader states, however, are a new geostrategic challenge to which the world must adjust. They represent a new class of risk, especially for democracies, and should therefore be classified and treated as such.

Germany relied on "change through trade" — from the Coal and Steel Union to Ostpolitik to its current dealings with Xi Jinping's China. Reducing political risks through mutual economic dependencies, however, has proven to be completely unsuitable for leader states. Any form of dependence on a leader state is counterproductive in principle - it can even tempt the autocrat to behave in an unpredictable manner and thus exacerbate strategic vulnerabilities. Accordingly, the G7 and the EU should classify countries according to whether they are approaching the leader-state form of government, based on credit ratings. With each step toward autocracy, measures should be taken to reduce strategic vulnerabilities and influence the autocrat's calculus.

We can learn from the Russian attack on Ukraine and from the effect of the current sanctions against Russia — they change the strategic behavior of the other side at best in the medium and long term and harm everyone:

Toward leader states, we must focus on prevention through credible deterrence instead of punishment ex post. NATO is right to change its approach in the Baltic states: it is no longer thinking in terms of a possible reconquest of occupied territory, but is positioning itself militarily from the outset in such a way that no one in Moscow can get the idea of implementing attack plans. Similar questions now arise with regard to Taiwan — a possible acid test for democracies!

Democracies need independence from leader states and credible deterrence. Consequences must be announced in advance, as in the case of rearmament in the 1980s, so that ideally they do not have to be applied at all. But they are only credible if the democracies really stand behind them. To do so, they must know that they are dealing with particularly dangerous countries — the Führerstaaten (leader states).

Wolfgang Ischinger is President of the Board of Trustees of the Munich Security Conference Foundation.

Sebastian Turner is founder of Table.Media and editor of China.Table Decision Brief.