My most recent article published last week was quite timely. It was about pressure cookers, which despots have used throughout history to control their populations. One of the sturdiest of those devices in operation in recent decades was in Damascus, the capital of Syria. Manufactured with components imported from Russia and Iran, it had been kept hermetically sealed for more than two decades by the owner, Bashar al-Assad. The millions of his compatriots trapped in it were left gasping for air throughout that time. Thankfully, the lid was blown off this weekend.

For over fifty-three years, the Assad dynasty ruled Syria with an iron fist. As far as brutal dictatorships go, Bashar al-Assad’s regime had been one of the most odious. He assumed the presidency in July 2000, a month after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who had held the post since 1971.

In the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring, millions of Syrians went into the streets to demand political reforms, basic freedoms, and government action to stop endemic corruption. Instead of heeding those calls, the Assad regime mounted a brutal repression campaign. Soldiers fired on unarmed protestors, killing hundreds. Tens of thousands of men and boys were arrested and imprisoned. Most of them were viciously tortured, with many subjected to extrajudicial killings.

The regime’s brutality created the conditions that led to the Syrian civil war. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have reportedly been killed. Over thirteen million people, more than half of the country’s prewar population, have been displaced. A large number of them currently live as refugees in other countries.

For those Syrians who were unable to escape, life inside the country over the past thirteen years had been hellish. The heinousness of the regime’s crimes against its own people became progressively worse over time. In addition to the continued mass arrests, tortures and killings of political opponents, Assad unleashed chemical weapons on the population. Tens of thousands of people, including large numbers of women and children, suffered painful deaths.

For much of that period, Assad was aided and abetted by another repulsive tyrant and merchant of death, Vladimir Putin. Russian war planes provided air cover for the Syrian regime, providing the safety and comfort that enabled the government to carry out its atrocities. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the crimes he had committed against defenseless civilians, it looked for a long time that there would be no accountability. Until just a few days ago.

Russia and Iran, Assad’s main patrons, have been embroiled in their own wars recently. That has left both of them stretched too thin and unable to provide the level of support that they did previously. The Assad regime suddenly became vulnerable as a result. The Syrian rebel forces took full advantage of that, capturing the country’s largest city, Aleppo, just a week ago. It became immediately clear that the insurgents had a bigger goal in mind. Sensing the grave risk to the regime, Russia quickly scrambled fighter jets to mount a bombing campaign to stop the rebel advance but it was unsuccessful.

The speed with which the rebels marched from Aleppo to the capital, Damascus, has left the entire world stunned. According to reports, government forces offered little resistance. Most of them simply abandoned their positions, leading to the swift collapse of the regime. Assad fled to Moscow on December 8, just days after the uprising began.

There is one very important lesson that needs to be learned from the developments in Syria over the past week. As authoritarians have been actively collaborating in the last few years to undermine faith in democracy, there are some indications that they are finding a growing number of sympathetic ears here in the West. Those subscribers to that worldview should take note of what happened in Damascus on Sunday. Autocracies are never as strong as they appear on the surface. The rot in those despotic and often kleptocratic societies always runs deep. The decay may occur over a long period of time, but the collapse happens quite suddenly.

I have found it quite shocking to hear a good number of people, including some highly educated ones, say that Western sanctions on Russia have failed. That view is based on the fact that Russia’s economy has kept growing since Putin launched his senseless war in Ukraine. What these people fail to mention is that this supposedly impressive economic performance is mostly based on unsustainably high military expenditure.

The entire Russian economy has been placed on a war footing, meaning that the growth being pointed to is not the high-quality type that any serious nation should be proud of. With rising inflation, a rapidly depreciating currency, loss of important markets for its primary exports, and exodus of talent due to the war in Ukraine, Russia is on a sure path to ruin. Unfortunately for the millions of ordinary citizens there, their tyrant has managed to build himself a pretty robust pressure cooker. As is the case with all kitchen appliances, it will break eventually, but that may come too late for a lot of Russians.

The rambunctious nature of liberal democracies does make Western societies look dysfunctional at times. However, that is the very trait that makes open societies resilient. The confrontational self-examination that we constantly engage in is a healthy exercise. We certainly could do better in some areas of our politics, but loss of confidence in our form of government is definitely not a mindset we should be developing.