President Vladmir Putin
Why democracy crusaders should worry less about Putin and
more about its home front, the West
THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the liberal democracies of the West have been on a “moral” crusade against President Vladmir Putin. According to them, Putin is a tyrant, a dictator, a despot, a murderer and corrupt. Meanwhile, Ukraine is a “liberal democracy” whose success threatens to set a bad example for Putin. Never mind that before this invasion, many Western media, including Time, did documentaries on Ukraine showing that the government in Kiev is controlled by neo-Nazis. Adolf Hitler must be smiling in his grave (if there is one) at this irony.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is constantly prefaced with
the word “unprovoked”. Never mind that practically every U.S. leader, including
the senile President Joe Biden when he was a senator, the current CIA director,
William Burns, and former secretaries of defense, Robert McNamara, Robert Bates
and William Perry, and former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger, George
Kenan etc. all predicted that NATO expansion would provoke a hostile Russian
reaction. The leaders of Germany and France had predicted similarly.
The U.S. leaders, including Biden and his secretary of
defense, Lloyd Austin, have publicly called for the assassination of Putin and
the overthrow of his government, apparently in order to promote liberal
democracy there. Never mind that wherever and whenever the West has attempted
to spread liberal democracy to other countries – Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Somalia,
Libya and Afghanistan etc. – they have sown seeds of state collapse and anarchy
leading to spread of terrorism and mass murder.
Not to be outdone in this “moral” crusade, the International
Criminal Court indicted Putin for war crimes. Never mind the same court has
done nothing when U.S. leaders and their allies have launched an unprovoked
invasion of some country using the same excuses like the “responsibility to
protect” and to spread democracy. Indeed, Putin was reading from their script
when he claimed to have invaded Ukraine to rid it of neo-Nazis. But whenever
and wherever America and her puppets have bombed a country, massacred civilians
and committed genocide, the ICC has done nothing. Clearly, ICC is an instrument
in the West’s arsenal to dominate the world.
Yet all these blatant abuses of power and naked hypocrisy
are not the reason behind this article. It is the near-total blockade of alternative
views, the suffocation of open debate of these issues and the complicity of
Western media that concerns me.
As a western trained African, I have a commitment to
liberalism, which I think is a great and inspiring idea. Every issue of public
concern needs to be openly debated in the hope that such debate can illuminate
the complexity and multidimensional nature of any subject. This is not done for
its own sake but as a means of trying to find the truths.
Yet on Ukraine, every view that does not present Kiev as a
victim of “unprovoked” aggression and Putin as the devil incarnate, has been
purged from media. Anyone who critiques the current narrative is often accused
of being on Putin’s payroll.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, even removed RT, the
Russian sponsored television network, from YouTube. Recently, a retired U.S.
Colonel, Scott Ritter, who has been consistent in arguing that the Ukrainians
are being beaten by the Russians, had his YouTube account closed. There has
been a blackout of all news and information critical of Kiev or positive on
Putin on all Western media.
The West, which claims to be at war with Putin in defense of
liberal ideals, is suppressing them at home. As I have argued repeatedly in
this column, attempts to export liberal ideals abroad (or claims thereof) often
tend to undermine them at home. For instance, sanctions against Russia have led
to a catastrophic decline in living standards in Western countries, the first
time since the end of the Second World War. This has led to the growth of
extreme right wing political parties in Western Europe, which are hostile to
liberal ideals. I will return to this in the conclusion of this column. For
now, in Russia itself, Western sanctions are likely to strengthen Putin’s alleged
authoritarian hand since he can now suppress dissent in the name of national
defense. Talk of shooting oneself in the foot!
The Western democracy mujahedeen forgets that the cause of
liberty is never secure. The greatest Western thinkers on this subject –
Frederick Von Hayek, George Orwell, Karl Popper, to mention only but a few –
had always warned about these threats to liberty. The liberal priesthood
ignores the historic context that has allowed democracy to survive and thrive
in the West. Consequently, they have elevated it from a political form specific
to a particular time and place into a universal norm applicable everywhere and
anytime regardless of circumstances. Yet all political systems are products of
their time and circumstances and liberal democracy is no exception.
But as developments in the West are showing us now, the
future of liberal democracy is neither certain nor guaranteed. The assumption
that democracy in the West is permanent rests on the belief that the
fundamental conditions that have sustained it will continue forever. Yet with
current trends this assumption is false.
Democracy in the West has thrived since 1945 in large part
because of the sustained economic growth that benefited large sections of
Western society. Since 1980, growth has benefited the top 10%, leading to
widening inequality. As Western living standards for most people continue to
decline, and the sanctions on Russia are a big part of this, public faith in
democracy is eroding as well. This is what happened in most of Europe during
the inter-war years (1919-1939).
Many studies have shown the retreat of democracy in recent
times. These trends were set in motion by the 2008 financial crisis, worsened
during the COVID pandemic and have been accentuated by the Ukraine war. This
year, the economic growth forecast for the EU is 0.8% and for the USA is 2.2%
expected to fall to 0.8% in 2024. The Germany economy, the largest and most
dynamic in Europe, is forecast to shrink by 0.4%, France will grow by 0.8%,
Italy by 0.9% and UK by 0.6%. This economic trend is a much bigger threat to
liberal democracy in the West than Putin. Western leaders need to appreciate
Russian fears and find a way to engage Putin in order to put their economies
back on track. I suggest that before throwing stones at the Russian president,
the West looks in the mirror.
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