The Free World

 The Free World

Dan Secrest, 5/16/2024

Worldviews with regard to Our Democracy

I recently sent out a missive to family and friends describing my world view with regard to "our democracy":

I am for an alternative to what I consider to be our current cancerous national security state.  I believe in the need for national security and intelligence, I believe that many of the people in the system are well-intentioned and intelligent.  But I believe there is a systemic rot that trumps these other beliefs, and this is based on my lifetime of experience.

A friend shares his evolving worldview:

[On foreign affairs]: I would describe my emerging views as Westphalian, relentlessly consequentialist, with a strong preference that outside influences, in keeping with Westphalianism, work openly through rather than circumvent or undermine, existing political institutions of foreign states, even when we think those institutions ought urgently to change. I am more and more appropriating the term “statist” — a term, like capitalism, that was coined by its enemies. I think legitimate states (where legitimacy is defined in Hobbesian rather than more idealistic terms) are difficult achievements, and where they exist it is usually better to shape them than to overthrow them.

[On democracy]: Our democracy is deeply flawed. There is no more urgent task before us than to improve it. Nevertheless, our state remains more open and democratic than nearly any formal institution of comparable scale in human history. Cynicism about democracy is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Only you can say what kind of prophesy you prefer to see fulfilled.

[On current protests]: Sometimes your work is to do everything you can to put the spotlight where it belongs, on people who are starving, on the families who may soon be murdered if whatever happens in Rafah occurs with the same respect for civilian life that was shown in Khan Younis and Gaza City. While we are arguing over Columbia and NYU and NYPD, while we are talking about 1968 and another Democratic convention in Chicago, we are, to use the lingo, erasing the people whose lives are at risk. The people who might literally be erased.

But Caitlin Johnstone puts into words thoughts that have been increasingly dominating my worldview:

When Your Rulers Ignore Voters But Are Terrified Of Protesters, That Tells You Something. 

[Comment by Feral Finster]: Voting channels public energy into a controlled and harmless outlets. Coke or Pepsi? Team R corporate imperialist muppet or Team D corporate imperialist muppet? Protesting is harder to control and may lead to outcomes that the rulers don't like.

My view is that the free world democracy as touted by my friend (above) is being exposed as a colossal fraud. I don't feel that politicians really care what I think, and I'm not alone.  

Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker The leaders of the "free world" are remarkably unpopular. Approval percentages as of May 2024:

• Biden (US): 39% approval

• Macron (France): 23%

• Scholz (Germany): 26%

• Trudeau (Canada): 35%

• Sunak (UK): 25%

Apparently, you don't need to be popular to rule in the free world.  The majority rule concept does not match the polling data.  In the U.S., Donald Trump is universally loathed by the ruling class, yet leads Biden in the polls.  Putin was just reelected with 85% of the vote, confirming the polling results of independent western polling agencies.  Zelensky of Ukraine is unpopular at home and cancelled the scheduled presidential election, despite being pushed as the pro-democracy alternative to Putin.  It just doesn't add up, in my view.  

I give my views here, emphasizing that worldviews are subjective as opposed to factual.

Civilizations v Nation States

The world is better characterized as being made up of civilizations as opposed to Westphalian states.  The civilizations live in parallel universes in the sense that the narratives are different.  For example, the free world narrative is that "our states are more open and democratic than nearly any formal institution of comparable scale in human history".  However, the narrative in Russia or the Middle East may well be that the free world politics are dominated by secret intelligence agencies and deeply corrupt institutions.  Westphalian states are independent in theory, but in practice belong to spheres of influence. Institutions and laws (financial, military, industrial, commercial) span country borders but are contested at civilizational boundaries.  Similarly cultural belief systems transcend national boundaries but more frequently are in conflict across civilizational boundaries.  For example, European nations may have a higher regard for national borders since many of these were determined by Europeans during the colonial era.

The Western Narrative Fails the Reality (Consequentialist) Test

My personal opinion is that the western narrative with regard to democracy is remarkably out of touch with reality.  In other words, the consequences of the free world's actions are consistently inconsistent with the professed noble intentions. This is evident from the results of wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine.  Interventions in South and Central America, Iran, Indonesia, and many other places have gone horribly awry, with millions of deaths in causes with no postive results with regard to the spread of democracy and other professed free world values.

The Russian and Chinese Narrative Passes the Reality (Consequentialist) Test

Unlike the U.S., the Russians and Chinese no longer demand that the rest of the world accept their version of a rules based world order.  The expressed intentions are more modest and have been in line with results.  While the U.S. has been militarily and propagandistically active around the world, the Chinese and Russians have fought few wars in the 21st century.  Russia successfully intervened in the Georgian and Ukraine civil wars and has been involved in Syria and Africa with reasonable results. For example, the Russia assistance to the Syrian government successfully stabilized the situation in the face of U.S. military assistance to ISIS and related groups. China has been building up its military in response to being surrounded by U.S. military bases and alliances, but has remained at peace with its neighbors near and far.

The above is debatable and an extremely uncommon perspective in the United States.  And therein lies the problem.  The free world has systematically squashed debate with regard to military and intelligence matters. As in days of old, Westerners do not challenge the basic assumptions regarding their narrative of superiority in comparison to "authoritarian" states such as Russia and China.

The Western Narrative Must Change

I am a Unitarian Universalist, and I believe in universal human values.  All of us around the world face common challenges and have aspirations in common. Human rights violations are serious concerns for Westerners, even if they occur in competing civilizations.  Yet the realist or consequentialist in me believes that our good intentions have to be weighed against the likely consequences.  And, in this light, the most practical and ethical approach is to recognize and respect spheres of influence. 

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has belittled Russia and its popular leader, Putler. Hedge fund managers were kicked out of Russia, Western intelligence agencies got involved, propaganda was pushed out with little resistance and now we are at (proxy) war with Russia.  This has been and continues to be a disaster, with our friends in Ukraine getting wiped out, our friends in Europe paying a big price, our domestic discourse infected, and our enemies becoming immensely stronger.  

It is time to drop the pretense that we are open and democratic and come to terms with the extent to which we are not.  National security and secrecy permeates our government and civilian sectors. Our elite institutions dish out the revelations, from the only ones who can really know, the intelligence agencies as it suits there agendas. A stunning example of this came recently when the New York Times, after years of qualifying every mention of the Ukraine War as "Putin's unproked invasion", released details regarding the extent of US intelligence agency work in Ukraine against Russia over the past 10 years and more.  

The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin

For more than a decade, the United States has nurtured a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia.
Summary:

On Sunday (2//2024) The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine's intelligence services has "transformed" the former Soviet state and its capabilities into "Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today."

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders' communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory. 

Clearly, Kiev and Washington now want the world to know of the deep intelligence relationship they tried to conceal for over the past decade. It is perhaps a kind of warning to Moscow at a moment Ukraine's forces are in retreat: the US is fighting hand in glove with the Ukrainians. And yet the revelations contained in the NY Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused Washington of all along.

Below is a hugely ironic excerpt from the Times report. The section begins by noting that Putin has repeatedly blamed the US-NATO for expanding its military and intelligence infrastructure into Ukraine. Not only had this precisely been going on for the past decade, as is now being admitted, but was presented by the Kremlin as a key cause of the Russian invasion of Feb.24, 2022. Putin and his officials were adamant on the eve of the invasion that NATO was militarizing Ukraine. The Times appears to now fully admit that, yes - this was actually the case: 

…

For more on our broken narrative, I highly recommend What 10 Years of U.S. Meddling in Ukraine Have Wrought (Spoiler Alert: Not Democracy)

The Biden-Obama team’s meddling in Ukraine has also had a boomerang effect at home. As well-connected Washington Beltway insiders such as Hunter Biden have exploited it for personal enrichment, Ukraine has become a source of foreign interference in the U.S. political system – with questions of unsavory dealings arising in the 2016 and 2020 elections as well as the first impeachment of Donald Trump. After years of secrecy, CIA sources have only recently confirmed that Ukrainian intelligence helped generate the Russian interference allegations that engulfed Trump’s presidency. House Democrats' initial attempt to impeach Trump, undertaken in the fall of 2019, came in response to his efforts to scrutinize Ukraine’s Russiagate connection.

We must do better than this.  In my view, we are a deeply sick society, in large part because we swallow the false narrative of moral superiority.  We do have strengths as a society, and I pray that we are able to speak out about our wrong turn and become the civilization that we long to be.  Respect all civilizations while being open about their and our weaknesses.  Don't be like the religionists who believe their civilization is morally superior because they happen to have been born into it and indoctrinated in its ways.

Getting to Yes

We should change the narrative, each doing our own bit, to one of working together with other world civilizations to solve common problems.  Let that be the focus of our foreign policy.