When the German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote that “all power comes from the people,” he went on to ask the rather important question: “But where does it go?”
Liberal democracy’s signal achievement in the half-century after World War II was to answer that question in a way that promoted social consensus and solidarity.
Although governments were chosen by majorities of equal citizens, they worked within a constitutional order based on the rule of law, democratic institutions and accepted values and rights. They governed with the consent of a minority that they respected.
By the end of the 1980s, some believed that this system of governance, which engendered economic success and political stability, had won the day against any alternative. Communist and fascist authoritarianism were discredited. A mood of triumphalism set in, breeding complacency.
Things look a lot less rosy for liberal democrats today.
For starters, the boom and bust of the first decade of this century took its toll. So, too, did the encouragement of an unrestrained form of globalization that took little account of the social consequences of lower comparative labor costs in developing countries for workers in developed countries.
Freer trade and more open exchange were not accompanied by labor-market and social-security policies to mitigate their negative effects. Moreover, China, now the world’s largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, distorted international market rules to its own advantage.
Two other issues further discredited democratic governments. First, social inequity grew alarmingly in many countries, most notably the US, leading citizens to question whether they lived in fair societies.
Second, migration from poorer to richer countries, fueled by poverty and demographic factors, created tensions in developed economies. Living standards were squeezed, and people postponed their hopes for a better quality of life.
Some now see a clash between illiberal democracy and undemocratic liberalism. Elites are thought to want to curb what they see as the irrational and undeliverable hopes of the majority, while the majority fights to overturn the checks and balances that moderate the popular will.
The growing disillusion with democratic government is evident in the rise of leaders such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and, of course, US President Donald Trump.
The US president appears reckless in his attitude to the US Constitution, the rule of law, freedom of the press and civil political debate. The US used to be the standard bearer for liberal democracy and human rights, but the Trump administration prefers tough-guy authoritarians to democrats, and even attacks democratic US allies.
Others indulge in their own forms of populism. In Britain, the Conservative Party’s rejection of close ties with Europe is accompanied by threats to assault institutions that have hitherto restrained executive power.
These include Britain’s independent courts and judges, its world-class public-service broadcaster, the BBC, and any civil-society organization likely to disagree with the executive.
There is no need to exaggerate; the world has not written the last act in the history of liberal democracy. Still, there are enough signs of trouble to make sensible Americans and Europeans recall Europe’s slide into tyranny in the 1930s, and to resolve to act now to prevent anything like that from happening again.
While crying wolf is rarely recommended, sometimes there really is a wolf skulking through the woods.
As if the West’s apparent connivance in the destabilization of its own system of governance were not bad enough, liberal democracies also must cope with external threats.
For example, Russian President Vladimir Putin finds it difficult to resist trying to stir up trouble in European democracies, and — despite Trump’s disavowal of the evidence — in the US, too.
By funding nationalist and populist political parties, trying to dissolve the glue of the values that hold the EU together, and employing dark and devious high-tech banditry, Putin relentlessly continues his efforts to alter Europe’s political map.
Putin wants to return Europe to being a continent dominated by spheres of influence rather than self-determination.
However, Russia, a ramshackle state with hydrocarbons and rockets, lacks the economic clout to mount a fundamental assault on liberal-democratic values. So, although the Kremlin’s menacing behavior must be watched and firmly repulsed, the threat it poses seems unlikely to become existential.
China is a different matter. The country’s remarkable and mostly welcome rejuvenation as a major economic power has given it considerable global and regional influence.
The intrinsic weaknesses of China’s flawed system of authoritrian government mean that its communist leaders worry about how to maintain absolute control in the face of technological, demographic and economic change.
The Chinese Communist Party, government and armed forces therefore have been instructed (for example, in the leaked “Communique on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere”) to attack the promotion of Western constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society and independent journalism.
This offensive also targets any historical scholarship that tries to discover what actually happened in the past, rather than simply accepting the party’s version of events.
Every means is to be used to try to destroy these dangerous tendencies, whether mobilizing the Chinese diaspora through the “united front,” influencing overseas universities or using commercial pressure in order to “create dependencies and induce self-censorship.”
The toughest variant of this approach is known as “wolf diplomacy,” featuring often-bogus promises of trade deals or investment for countries that toe the line. Indeed, China’s efforts have produced the sort of pre-emptive cringing in the West that itself erodes liberal-democratic values.
Some apologists for China’s behavior counsel caution, arguing that past Western failings offset those of the communist regime in Beijing. Their advice that the world must both engage with China and deter its worst behavior might sound balanced and wise.
However, engagement must be on terms that are fair to both sides. Deterrence needs to be real when necessary — at which point the wise apostles of engagement tend to make their excuses and leave. If liberals continue to be so weak-minded, it will be at our own peril.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external relations, is chancellor of the University of Oxford .
Copyright: Project Syndicate
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
RSS