The conflict in Ukraine is coalescing into two warring camps:
- The West: US, Europe, Anglo allies, Japan
- The East: Russia, China
The bi-polar nature of the conflict is becoming more and more pronounced. Much of the world is looking on, but yet to definitively choose a side. What does it look like from the outside?
The West's vision is of prosperity, technology, and freedom, the natural evolution of the industrial revolotuion and European colonization of the world. The East's vision is of the rest of the world catching up to the West in technology and prosperity, and of pushing back with regard to freedom. Western freedom has always favored the West, and Russia is fighting back on this front. China has surveyed the landscape and decided it stands firmly with Russia in this regard.
Beyond the military/industrial/economic details lies mythology of who we are and what we stand for and where we are headed. The West's enlightenment mythology is being exposed by the Internet, Everybody can see the hypocrisy. What does the East offer as an alternative?
- The truth. The East merely has to point out the hypocrisy of the West to earn empathy.
- A new world order which is fairer and with better prospects for peace. The old world order is clearly failing with hot and cold wars drowning out the prospects for a prosperous future. China and Russia regularly lay out the case for a new and improved multipolar world.
In short, the East has the better vision -- one based on reality. The West's enlightenment vision has been corrupted beyond recognition. The East offers better prospects for a healthy future.
5 comments:
Dan, while I agree with your analysis, I think you missed some factors.
The first is the deep entanglement of the Western liberal tradition beginning in ancient Greece and modified by the Roman republic and then empire as a civilizational model with capitalism as an economic system. This combination of social, political and economic liberalism with capitalism viewed as the only liberal economic system has internal contradictions that have come to the fore. This is one aspect of the present challenge to world civilization. Actually, democratic socialism is more in conformity with the principles of liberalism that capitalism is.
The second challenge is for civilizational models to claim exceptionality and even exclusivity. This was true for theologically based models in the past and Western liberalism as a civilizational model has inherited this tendency while claiming to have transcended it. This is resulting in the pitting of civilizational model against each other and it is interesting that the president of the Russian Federation presented the current situation in these terms, emphasizing the Russian civilizational model as an alternative to Western liberalism in its current state of development, which those adhering to other models view as degenerate and headed in the opposite direction from genuine civilization.
So the West is coming apart internally at the seams, while it pitched is a civilizational struggle ("crusade") with Russian civilization, Chinese civilization, Iranian civilization and Islam. There is also friction between the Hindu civilizational model both within India and in relation to the Western liberal model that seeks to dismantle it in India and replace it with liberalism.
This dynamic, which is really a complex dialectic among civilizations, will dominate this century. It will work itself out in the end but only after conflict. One factor here is the impatience of the US in particular to gain closure by imposing its civilizational model by force ASAP, which, on the other hand, is antithetical to the foundation of true liberalism, which is accommodation.
Thanks Tom.
I'd certainly appreciate a more liberal approach in terms of accepting differences in places like Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine has, for example, become extremely illiberal as the West purports to spread liberal values -- The State of Ukrainian Democracy Is Not Strong.
Also, I'm a fan of democratic socialism, and would like to see more of that and less of capitalism.
Interesting comments over at NakedCapitalism yesterday:
Reading this made me wonder what Europe will look like after the war is over. So the EU/NATO nations will have reduced economies, be partly de-industrialized, social services money will be spent on military equipment instead leading to more serious poverty, those countries will be less competitive on the world stage and maybe a lot of their young people will emigrate away to make a new life for themselves. Now let us take a look at Belarus. It will be firmly linked in with Russia, China, India and all the other countries of the east. Their economy will be more developed and incomes should rise so money spent of defence will not be such a burden... as the Iron Curtain came down in the East, it went up in the West
I don't think that other civilizational states and theocratic states are going to become liberal after the model of the West, and especially the US, anytime soon at any rete. Imposing another civilization (Western liberalism) to shape them to its own image is illiberal. The liberal way to go about doing this is not by imposing it but rather through leading by example. As far as the young emigrating away from those place, which liberal state is going to accept them. Everyone would like to emigrate to rich country. The rich countries happen to be mostly Western liberal, but that is not necessarily owing to liberalism as such but economic liberalism that is joined at the hip with imperialism and colonialism. The solution is to let the great leveling run its course with decolonization.
Right. There are probably many different cultural frameworks consistent with technological development and prosperity. The Western / enlightenment model and institutions won't necessarily take root everywhere as envisioned by Francis Fukuyama in "The End of History".
I agree with you that migration flows are a question going forward. If Europe is no longer the land of opportunity, will the migration flow reverse in some way? Now we see the West keeping out ideas from Russia and its allies as the iron curtain has gone into reverse in this respect, at least to a certain degree. Sanctions -- restrictions on trade imposed by the West -- are another aspect of this. Sanctions, censorship, and propaganda indicate a closing of the West to competition in the short run, and a potential lack of opportunity in the long run.
Already, profit has moved beyond the West as oil from Russia is reloaded for sale to Europe at higher prices. Beyond this, the West relies upon the rest of the world, including especially Russia, for high tech development. For example, the U.S. H-1B visa program supports import to the U.S. of tech workers. Also, the West relies on Russian natural resources for high tech industry. Simplicius76:
Some concerning numbers, highlighting the reliance of the US chipmaking industry on Russia/Ukraine-based materials, are shared by the source. For example, market research group Techcet says that 90% of US semiconductor-grade neon supplies come from Ukraine, while 35% of US palladium is sourced from Russia. In addition, other vital materials like C4F6, Helium, and Scandium also come from the potential flashpoint region.
Anyway, the original point was that the Western enlightenment mythology is losing its relative allure as we close down trade, debate, and opportunity, while the alternatives from China and Russia promote multipolarity and greater openness with regard to trade at least.
Thanks again for your comments!
the original point was that the Western enlightenment mythology is losing its relative allure as we close down trade, debate, and opportunity, while the alternatives from China and Russia promote multipolarity and greater openness with regard to trade at least.
Yes, this is the take away. It goes by the name of loss of soft power owing to violation of one's own so called sacred principles in the pursuit of wealth and power, along with over-reliance on hard power.
The ROW (rest of world, i.e., non-West) is calling BS.
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