For the first time since the end of the Cold War the world is steadily becoming less democratic The true culprits are dictators & counterfeit democrats But argues Klaas the West is also an accomplice inadvertently assaulting pro-democracy forces abroad as governments in Washington London & Brussels chase pyrrhic short-term economic & security victories Friendly fire from Western democracies against democracy abroad is too high a price to pay for a myopic foreign policy that is ultimately making the world less prosperous stable & democratic The Despot's Accomplice draws on years of extensive interviews on the frontlines of the global struggle for democracy from a poetry-reading politician-kidnapping general in Madagascar to Islamist torture victims in Tunisia Belarusian opposition activists tailed by the KGB West African rebels & tea-sipping members of the Thai junta Cumulatively their stories weave together a tale of a broken system at the root of democracy's global retreat