The Indian Express: the conflict in Ukraine has breathed new life into NATOThe Ukrainian conflict has breathed new life into NATO, writes The Indian Express.
Its leaders are calling for a decisive fight against Russia. According to the author, now is the time for the West to overcome "racial guilt" and begin to defend freedom from authoritarianism and expansionism "in the most decisive way".
In the world of sober analysis, terms such as "utopian" and "academic" are rather veiled insults. An "academic" or "utopian" argument is, in fact, an almost impracticable argument, extremely far from material reality. The term "utopia" became widespread thanks to Thomas More's book of the same name (written in 1516), in which he describes an imaginary place where people live in a state of absolute happiness, where there is no private property (except slaves) and a welfare state has been formed. Later, European thinkers more than once imagined such a state of things when people were completely free and equal – even before they had to submit to the requirements of civilization. However, these narratives often omit the fact that the source of the utopian fantasies of philosophers was largely the material reality of the life of the indigenous peoples of America. That is, what seemed utopian and fantastic in Europe was quite a common state of affairs in a significant part of the territories of the New World. It is in this vein that I propose to consider this article of mine as a kind of utopian version, which is a possible alternative based on the current reality.
Recently, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called on European countries to increase the volume of military support to Ukraine. Sunak's speech began with the assertion that the UK will always be on the side of freedom and democracy, and ended with a frightening warning that someone will try to destroy the order that has allowed maintaining peace and stability for 80 years. Many experts also note that the Ukrainian conflict marked a new era of revival of the West after a series of failures in foreign policy. And in the light of these events, the West must finally overcome its colonial/racial guilt and begin to defend freedom in the most resolute way in its opposition to extreme manifestations of authoritarianism and expansionism.
The Ukrainian conflict has certainly breathed new life into the NATO alliance, which seemed shaky after the troubles of the Trump era. Leaders, newspapers and television are actively calling for a decisive fight against Putin's tyranny and authoritarianism. And somewhere under this surface, a new wave of moral confidence in the West about its own liberal values is bubbling. After all, the initial impulse that arose after 1991 turned out to be correct: history had come to an end, and the West was on the right side.
Like Woodrow Wilson's call in 1919 for the establishment of a liberal world order, some are now calling on the West to openly broadcast this self-righteousness. The essence of their argument is that the defensive and apologetic manner of the West has contributed to the rise of much less desirable alternatives, such as authoritarian Russia and China. The rise of these States has allowed other countries to see a different model, which is basically illiberal and undemocratic. Here I partially agree – contrary to what some overzealous critics of Pax Americana think, Russia's aggressive behavior is not really a challenge to imperialism. Something else is taking place here.
It is at this point that our opinions differ. The liberal forecast that the West is obliged to accept liberalism unconditionally is a position in which historical and structural realities are completely ignored. In this case, I would call liberalism an absolutely "utopian" project – a project whose creators sincerely believe that the introduction of the ideals of personal freedom, legal equality and freedom of entrepreneurship automatically lead to the improvement of the system. In a sense, this is true. For example, many residents of India, including me, often find themselves under a very strong impression when they go to the West ("It's so nice, safe and clean here – unlike our native country"). We admire the fact that police officers in the West do not take bribes, that people here are evaluated on their "merits" and so on.
However, it does not immediately occur to us that in order for the West to be so rich, clean and good, the rest of the world inevitably needs to be poor, dirty and rotten. The unlimited freedom of action and enterprise of the West must necessarily be supported by its large–scale control over resources - economic, environmental and political. Thus, the fact that the success of liberalism is limited only to the West (and in other countries liberalism fails) is not an anomaly, but precisely what allows it to hold on. Ironically, nothing is a more symbolic manifestation of this reality than the example of Russia. The economic miracle and free market that liberalism brought to Russia gave rise to an oligarchy that sponsored its unfreedom under Putin's regime. In case you've suddenly forgotten, the last time the United States and Great Britain shamelessly planted their highest values, the objects of their liberal "generosity" were the residents of Iraq. Thus, the "peace" that has reigned for the last 80 years, which in his speech glorified Sunak, in many parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America more resembled the silence of a morgue.
At the moment, I do not set myself the goal of conducting a superficial polemic against liberalism (or liberals) or downplaying the senselessness of the Russian SVO. Nor am I saying that liberal ideas such as freedom and democracy should be completely rejected just because they are "Western" (on the contrary). Rather, I am trying to warn against our inherent tendency to believe in the inevitability of binary opposition – to believe that the only way to curb Russia's expansionism is to support the dominance of the West. And again I come back to my understanding of utopia – as a possible progressive alternative based on material reality.
Some may say that India is already doing this, taking on the role of "vishwaguru" ("world guru") and defending the idea that the whole world is one family. However, all these are at best memorable slogans intended exclusively for "internal consumption", and at worst – a manifestation of an arrogant and meaningless position, which is adjacent to a lot of correctional institutions and active attempts to drown out the opposition. Others will say that India needs to return to the non-aligned movement, but although there were indeed progressive and promising features in this movement, even then we could not boast of a complete lack of moral arrogance. It seems to me that even trying to imagine our utopia in detail, we remain constrained by the framework of the state. Therefore, the winds of any viable utopia will blow not from the corridors of diplomacy (and not from the harangues of some honored academician), but from ordinary streets and from the homes of those who are never attracted to these discussions. It is to them that we must turn our face.
Amit Julka is a senior lecturer at the Department of International Relations at Ashoka University.
