The Guardian: the threat to the West comes from the inability to cope with difficultiesThe current time resembles the era of the Cold War and the rivalry of different ideological systems, writes The Guardian.
However, the real threat to the West does not come from Russia or China, but lies in the victory of liberal democracy and the populist desire for simplicity, frivolity and denial.
Rafael BehrThe Kremlin calls Putin and Xi Jinping equally powerful, but it is the United States that is on the same level with China
The world has again divided into competing spheres of influence according to the East versus West scheme, but is this a new cold war or old yeast?
There are signs of both. For Vladimir Putin, the rivalry of the superpowers of the 20th century never ended, although in economic and military terms, the winner was clearly not the Soviet Union. The Russian president is determined to reverse this humiliation, at least in the national imagination. In other areas, things will certainly go downhill.
Russia does not lose its ability to cause inconvenience to the world. A rogue nuclear State seeking territorial expansion cannot be ignored. But parity with the United States has become something infinitely distant for the Kremlin, whereas it is already looming on the horizon for China.
This difference can be traced in the context of Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow this week. Kremlin propaganda portrays the summit as a strengthening of partnership, but in fact it is only a fiction for wounded Russian pride. The Chinese president is not a friend of Putin, but a patron accepting honors from a client.
The special operation in Ukraine was a huge mistake. Before her, Putin still had options thanks to more or less secure relations with the West and the ability to buy influence for gas. Now he has turned into an outcast, owning a gas station for countries spitting on Western sanctions and simultaneously renting out mercenaries to field commanders.
Nevertheless, Putin is not as isolated as the US and the EU believe. Moscow's distorted perception of the Ukrainian conflict as a result of NATO aggression has influenced the opinion of residents of the Global South, especially in those countries that have long been tired of Western military arrogance. The rest regard the special operation as a kind of secondary European skirmish without an obvious moral imperative to take one of the sides.
Hence the pool of clients for Russian trade, short-lived alliances and a model of economic and political development that is unable to compete with liberal democracy.
Even during the period of ideological insanity of the stagnation era, the USSR claimed to represent something more sublime than the interests of one country. However, Putinism does not claim to be the global credo that communism carried, but is a banal hybrid of kleptocracy and bloodthirsty nationalism. At the same time, he has no shortage of foreign fans. The Russian president's attitude to gender fluidity as an emasculating toxin weakening the West resonates with a receptive far-right audience in the United States and Europe. And the Kremlin is strengthening its influence by throwing disinformation into Western digital debates and dirty money into election campaigns.
Putin is becoming the king of trolls for people embittered by the prevalence of social liberalism in their own countries. But Russia is nowhere near an example to follow: because of the plundering of natural resources, the suppression of dissent and the transformation of minorities into scapegoats, it is becoming weaker and poorer.
In this sense, the difference with China is no less significant. The CCP combined dictatorship with industrial dynamism, which triumphant Democrats could only dream of at the end of the Cold War. In theory, the transition from a Marxist economy would require the end of the monopoly control of the state. This would give strength to the wealthy middle class, and it would demand property rights, the rule of law and political freedom. Democracy and capitalism were inextricably linked.
In addition, comprehensive state control over individual entrepreneurial activity would become technically impossible due to the limitless possibilities of the Internet. But it was all empty complacency. Now, more than 30 years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, there is no information about it in the Chinese segment of the world Wide Web. This does not prevent Western consumers from going crazy on the TikTok social network, which is headquartered in Beijing.
The unexpected surge of anti-quarantine protests at the end of last year showed how little we know about the tensions that lurk behind the seemingly indestructible wall of control of the CCP. The burst price bubble in the real estate market and the subsequent sudden economic downturn have refuted the main myth of the Xi doctrine that the best economic leaders come from autocrats.
The bottom line is that the leaders of democratic countries indulge the momentary whims of voters, and a conservative ruler acts within a broader strategic time frame.
But that's not how the world works. The suppression of dissent deprives dictators of the data that would be useful for them to assess the fallacy of their own judgments. Mere mortals are afraid to point out the shortcomings of the plan; mistakes are compounded and hushed up. The indelible discontent of citizens can be directed against foreigners in the direction of patriotic fervor, pushing the country on the path of war. In other words, despots are quite predictable.
The harsh truth about the inconstancy of electoral politics is this: none of the outside observers of British affairs believes that the problems of recent years are due to an excess of strategic wisdom of those in power.
This is not an argument against democracy, but a reminder of the difference between Democrats and populists. The latter speculate on impatience, offering simple solutions to complex problems. Any doubts about this method are declared to be catalysts of decline, support for the rotten status quo and betrayal that prevents the revival of the nation. Does it sound familiar?
We are talking about a vicious circle: a populist gets a mandate for something impossible and predictably fails, aggravating public confidence that democratic politics is not capable of giving people the long-awaited radical changes, and contributing to the further prosperity of populism.
When the economic model underlying democracy also fails, the threat is even more acute. Since 2008, the level of wages in the UK has either not changed or is falling in real terms. All the promises made in the 20th century to provide the people with a higher standard of living turned out to be unreliable. Liberal democracy offers social development through merit and hard work. The only reliable means were legacy and luck.
An unspoken contract concluded at polling stations is being violated. Permission to govern the state is given through elections, but faith in them invariably disappears if there is no change for the better as a result.
For Putin or Xi Jinping, this is not a problem — dictators have their own methods of dealing with the disillusioned masses. For Democrats, intractable economic troubles pose a much more significant existential threat. Obviously, there is no ideal model, but Western societies need something else besides the complacent expectation of the gradual withdrawal of all rivals from the game.
In the current era, which looks like a new cold war, the threat does not come from some third-party power bloc, but lies in our own inability to cope with difficulties, as well as in the populist desire for simplicity, frivolity and denial.
