When interviewed about The Bookseller of Kabul, the Norwegian woman who wrote the book had a very simple answer when asked, "shouldn't you just accept that it's just Afghan traditions and culture that caused him to mistreat his wives": "I am not a cultural relativist."

There are universal standards of human rights. Political systems that violate them have no future--in the long term. The book Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsZDlBU36n0&t=5s) explains why rulers above the rules authoritarian systems lose in the long run.

China's imploding bubble and middle income trap and Russia's resource cursed kleptocracy show how. Here's how Putin's and Xi's claim that there are multiple paths to successful development and prosperity is simply wrong: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-modern-world-a-dutch-invention-the-english-copy-fda9ced7a6b8

The Dutch invented the modern world, the English copied them and the Americans copied the copy. Everyone else adapts and copies their rule of law bond market financed fiscal-military state model or fails to prosper. This explains why Taiwan and South Korea avoided the middle income trap by transitioning peacefully out of authoritarianism. It also explains Israel's transition out of socialism to Israel, Startup Nation. It also explains why China and an increasingly authoritarian Hindu fascist India are stuck in the middle income trap.

It's also now clear from Russia's war against Ukraine that Germany "Wende durch Handel" (change through trade) didn't work with Russia or China.

To merit respect a nation needs the soft power of political, economic and social practice worth emulating. Unless you're a tiki-torched Tucker Carlson fawning over Viktor Orban and Putin, it's clear that Russia and China, as increasingly autocratic regimes, have chosen to burn what little soft power they had. But, like the writer of The Bookseller of Kabul, I'm not a cultural relativist.