Are Putin and Xi in decline? Populism and autocracy still have deep resources.

In his wonderful 1941 memoir, "The World of Yesterday," Stefan Zweig recounts the optimistic mood of Europe before 1914 and World War I.

Bourgeois civilization seemed to be on a permanent upswing. Technological marvels like the Zeppelin were filling everyone with hope for a borderless future. "We still felt only slightly uncomfortable when shots rang out from the Balkans,” he wrote poignantly. But what he and his friends took for the red hue of dawn was "really the firelight of the approaching international conflagration.”

We are in danger of making the same mistake again. "Enough about democracy’s weaknesses. Let’s talk about its strengths,” says Fareed Zakaria, the author of a prophetic 2003 book on "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad." "Time and history are not on the dictators’ side,” says Michael Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House, an organization that can hardly be accused of an excess of optimism in recent years.