The attack on “the liberal idea” by Vladimir Putin in his long interview in the Financial Times at the end of June is still vibrating in my mind. First, I’d like to know if the Russian people share his views on immigration. In Britain and the US, despite the anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions of Prime Minister Theresa May and President Donald Trump, most people, according to polls, are more pro-immigration than they are against.
Is this so in Russia? What
This is pure Trump. They share the same outrageous prejudices.
Putin leads off from the example of immigration to conclude that “the liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population”.
Also, as examples of the weak character of liberalism, he criticizes those who are trying to undermine the Catholic Church and those LGBT supporters who are allowed “to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people”.
To be fair, Putin takes care
Chicago University’s influential professor, John Mearsheimer, published an article in International Security on the liberal international order in the same week that Putin spoke.
“The order is in deep trouble. The tectonic plates that underpin it are shifting, and little can be done to repair and rescue it. Indeed that order was destined to fail from the start, as it contained the seeds of its own destruction”.
He says, given the agenda that the liberal international order had, “it was bound to collapse because the key policies on which it rested are deeply flawed. In
Nationalism and balance of power concerns in the target state serve often to block the spread of democracy.
In Britain, Brexit evolved out of immigration concerns. In the US, Trump intends to win a second term partly on the back of the immigration issue.
“Nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet. It invariably trumps liberalism wherever the two clash, thus undermining the liberal order at is core.”
There’s also the issue of “
At the onset of the 1990s after the Cold War ended it looked as if the US was well suited to construct a liberal international order. China was in the early stages of its rise and Russia was in a state of complete disarray.
Successive US and EU governments thought the best way to deal with possible political instability in Eastern Europe was to expand NATO eastwards. Despite that, relations with Russia and China were good.
The administration of George W. Bush thought that it could turn all the countries of the Middle East into liberal democracies.
But by 2005 we could see serious cracks in the edifice. The second war in Iraq led to the strengthening of ISIS into a formidable force. The war in Afghanistan stalemated. The US and its allies pursued regime change in Libya and Syria which ended up precipitating civil wars.
In 2007-2008 there was the global financial crisis. Israel has hardened its negotiating terms and now it seems there’s no hope for the Palestinians to have their own state. In Europe xenophobic
Clumsy attempts to spread democracy and further NATO expansion provoked the war in Ukraine. Then came Trump with his agenda of “America First”. He’s tirelessly worked to undermine American democracy and liberal institutions.
Not least, Russia and China are both steaming ahead, despite the sanctions on Russia.
Is the liberal order truly over? Are Putin and Mearsheimer right? Perhaps it’s too early to say.
If the liberal order is to be preserved it has to be profoundly reformed.
One Response
Can you explain what is democratic and liberal about subdueing entire European urban societies with islamisation, africanisation, ethnic priority poliicies to the detriment of Europeans, reolacement of their biological soccle instead of maintaining their homeogenity, estranging them from their Slavian brothers ? What purpose or whise interests does mass immigration to Europe serve in times of dwindling cheap labor force need as a result of automation, delocation of industries, causing already over 60% of immigrants living on social security instead of working ? Is it not tome for a oaradigma change and stop nailing critics of mass immigration of ethnic resentment down to ‘ultraright’ parties and just admit that social democrats, christian democrats and liberals got it totally wrong, betraying their very own peoples ‘ survivals in search of an utopic all.people are the same and interchangeable and compatible wishful thinking approach to world economic inequal distribution and that it is ethnicity and culture what accounts for that instead of just socio-economic parameters?