Is the liberal order losing against authoritarianism?
To paraphrase Mead’s argument, the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which took place at UN Headquarters in New York City, was a bust.
If you read Walter Russell Meade’s gloomy, Thucydidean Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal this week you will come away thinking that the liberal order is about to be subsumed into an authoritarian super state within the coming weeks. Actually, apologies to the father of History, because Walter Russell Mead, quite frankly, makes Thucydides look like Richard Simmons. The title of his shiny, happy Op Ed is “The Rules -Based International Order is Quietly Disintegrating.” And — Good morning, Vietnam!
Of course, you might ask, Why even bother reading a Wall Street Journal Op Ed in the first place? And you would not be wrong. Such a soul destroying activity — giving mind space to their Op Ed writers, which over the years have included such despicable characters as Amy Chua and Charles Murray — is clearly calculated to rasp and magnify cynicism.
But Walter Russell Mead, though sunless and conservative in worldview, makes a well argued point. The rules-based, American led international order — or, the anti authoritarian group of nations standing up to the rise of the populist right — is at present in what can only be properly construed as “the hour of the wolf.”
To paraphrase Mead’s argument, the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which took place at UN Headquarters in New York City, was a bust. Col. Mamadi Doumbouya, leader of Guinea’s military regime, used his time before that august body, to attack — not to reinstate — the deposed ruler. “Apparently it wasn’t just a corrupt and self-serving leader’s third-term bid that forced the military’s hand in Guinea, it was the West, which, in his telling, imposed democracy on unwilling Africans,” observed Michelle Gavin of the speech.
Further, North Korea’s UN Ambassador accused the US of making 2023 an “extremely dangerous year.” This condemnation at the UN was occurring a week after Kim Jung-On was having a summit with Putin, who, arguably, did more in geopolitics to make 2023 an "extremely dangerous year” than any other world leader. Columbia’s President used his platform at the UNGA to lambaste Washington on its “war on Drugs.” France has withdrawn from Gabon, after a “series of setbacks” in the Sahel. Western counterterrorism efforts will almost certainly be hampered by this news. But then, perhaps France’s decline in prestige in the Sahel is — how does one say this in polite company? — well deserved. And Burkina Faso — in the treacherous African Sahel — just announced that it had foiled an attempted coup in the last 24 hours. As Mead puts it himself of the global disarray:
“It isn’t only the United Nations. Messrs. Xi and Putin also ditched this month’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi. Meantime, China was busy demonstrating its utter contempt for the World Court ruling against it’s ‘Nine Dash line’ territorial claims in the South China Sea. Beijing continues to develop military facilities on Mischief Reef, part of the internationally recognized Exclusive Economic Zone belonging to the Philippines, and increasingly polices its claimed maritime boundaries in defiance of Western protests.”
On the flip side, there are actually things to be happy about. The good relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia continue to, quite frankly, boggle the mind. If you had told me, as a Philosophy student in the early 90s, that in my lifetime Israel’s Minister for Tourism would touch down in Saudi Arabia, saying, “Good evening from Riyadh, which is now close to us,” I would have caught an immediate case of the vapors.
Even a decade ago this would be nearly inconceivable. And yet, here we are.
There are some good things going on geopolitically, vis-a-vis the West. One of the most underreported stories is the degree to which Germany is hueing to the West on Russia and China. In previous decades, it was customary for high German political officials to work for Russian petrochemical corporations. How different thingsare now, after Ukraine. Tarik Cyril Amar, an expert on the Holocaust, writes in Newsweek:
There has been much complaining about tardy German support for Ukraine, currently over hesitations to deliver "Taurus" missiles to Kyiv. But don't let the noise distract you. The real story, the one with long-term future consequences, is how far Germany has gone. Berlin is now a key supplier of military and humanitarian aid, and without it, the EU—with Ursula von der Leyen, a German, at its head—would never have outdistanced even American support for Ukraine. On uncompromising rhetoric toward Moscow, too, the new Berlin can't be beat.
That Europe’s biggest economy has increased its defense budget in the shadow of the Ukraine War is something remarkable. Is postwar Germany finally getting serious about its defense? As well as the collective defense of Europe? If so, this — and the newfound seriousness of the West — was achieved by way of a profound miscalculation on the part of Putin, junior partner to Xi.
And finally, there is the matter of the so-called “Global South.” The Global South has been surprisingly neutral on the Ukraine War, which doesn’t so much signal an alignment with Russia as it does a frustration with the West’s “forever wars.” This caught most prognosticators off guard. But it is not so surprising to people that actually have spent time in the Global South, as opposed to the Hamptons and Europe. Howard French in Foreign Policy gets it right:
It is true that many countries in the world are falling further and further behind the “developed” countries, not just in terms of per capita GDP but in many other ways as well, including on indices of human development, longevity, environmental welfare, and others. But Africa stands out as a clear human emergency that has been treated as anything but. The continent’s relative plight was impressively documented in a recent report by Bloomberg News that documented many of the ways Africa has lost ground over the last decade.
The West pays selective but attenuated attention to Africa mostly for immediately self-serving purposes. The most obvious of these are slowing large-scale migration from the world’s fastest growing continent by far in terms of population as well as combatting Islamist extremism. Both of these missions are at the heart of France’s crumbling position in West Africa, where until very recently it had retained extraordinary influence with its former colonies in the Sahel region, only to see former client states angrily renounce old forms of partnership.
There is a bit of good news here. America is not France. And France — and the other former colonial powers — have centuries of baggage to unpack with regards to a lot of the global south, particularly Africa. Modi, an ally of the West, is vying for the leadership of the Global South. And Biden, of course, is listening. China, also, is doing everything it can to claim that position. So is Lula of Brazil, who seems to be the best fit.
It is good to see the Global South playing such an important role in the battle for the global international order. The stronger a role the Global South plays on the world stage, the faster the world moves from bipolarity — the terror of the twentieth century — and into a more equitable multipolar world order in which smaller, less wealthy countries, like Brazil and Ghana and Rwanda, have their set places at the table and are not bitterly fighting for the fallen scraps.
“Joe Biden. Donald Trump. Mike Pence. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kamala Harris. These are just a few of the names that will be talked about incessantly through this period. But the entity with arguably the biggest impact on all of us through the 2024 election cycle won't be any of those names. It will be, as per usual, the media.” (Jack Meyers)
“The dawn of the A.I. labor dispute era has begun. The Writers Guild of America this week became the first major labor union to secure a contract guaranteeing its members protections from the rapidly developing technology, which is poised to displace innumerable jobs in the coming years. After nearly 150 days on strike, the screenwriters secured a number of groundbreaking wins in their new contract with the major film and television studios. The terms, shared by the guild, prevent the studios from using A.I. to write or rewrite material, from forcing writers to use A.I. software when producing scripts, and crediting A.I. for screenwriting, among other things.” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)
“When Donald Trump lost the White House in 2020, Europe’s strongmen, populists and climate change deniers lost a powerful ally and a protector. Yet most of Europe’s mini-Trumps have survived his fall, his denial of defeat and the storming of Congress by his supporters, and are now hoping that a comeback for the Republican frontrunner in next year’s US presidential election will put fresh wind in their own sails.” (Paul Taylor/The Guardian)
“While significant progress has been made by political parties and groups to recruit and train women for office, more work needs to be done. According to a recent study by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox, men are two-thirds more likely than women to have been encouraged to run by an elected official, party leader, or political activist to run for office. And being asked to run and having the support to run are more important to women than men. While female candidates running for Congress on average outraised male candidates for the first time in 2018 ($1,675,000 versus $1,537,000), women have historically been disadvantaged when it comes to fundraising. Women have struggled to access and reach large individual donors, PACs, and other kinds of funding. Another reason why it has been difficult for women to break barriers, especially at the highest levels of elected office, are incumbency and retention rates. Traditionally, men have dominated the political arena, and therefore enjoy the incumbency advantage.” (Carah Ong Whaley and Kylie Holzman/Center for Politics)
And I think Alivev chose UNGA week to further embed into Armenia, given the hellscape over there this week.