Boomerang

Metodi Hadji-Janev / Photo: "Free Press" - Dragan Mitreski

What the liberal-democratic world was creating with good intentions suddenly began to become counterproductive. In other words, the "revisionists" managed to corrupt the code of liberal democracy and return it as a hybrid product that has the contours of a liberal-democratic product, but with an autocratic prefix.

We will dedicate today's article to a phenomenon that has been happening to the liberal-democratic world for some time, and that on several levels. That means if you thought we were going to write about our boomerangs for home use, we've disappointed you. But I hope the heat of the debate will intrigue you because we will offer something that is not available elsewhere or at least can rarely be debated on such a forum. Today we will talk about how everything that the liberal-democratic world created and stood for good and with good intentions suddenly started to become counterproductive. In other words, as "revisionists", those who challenge the primacy of the liberal democratic world have succeeded in corrupting the code of liberal democracy and now bring it back as a hybrid product that has the contours of a liberal democratic product, but with an autocratic prefix.

The problem is that it is difficult to recognize. What's more – it creates confusion and feeds the internal spontaneous struggle that seeks to destroy the liberal-democratic idea. It does so in the field of diplomacy, economy and through one of the mechanisms of that order of rules and principles – international law. In other words, it does it through soft power or through the inversion of the so-called "track – 2 diplomacy". Whether it will work is another matter. Let's go in order.

One of the things that we were among the first in the region to discuss and elaborate on at large is the race for chips. As strange and industrial as it may seem, since we are taught to see war only through the use of force, it is important for two reasons. First, chips are important because almost the entire development of those promising technologies depends on them. In its 2018 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy, China has an ambitious plan. By 2020, China should have made significant progress in AI modeling and production to be globally competitive in this field and establish ethical norms, policies and regulations in some of these areas. By 2025, China should make a "breakthrough" and become a leader in AI at the world level. For this purpose, it is even foreseen to form a regulation. In short, by 2030 China should dominate the world. At the same time, Putin in 2018 pointed out that whoever dominates the world in AI production will rule the world. Without Putin telling them, the USA and the EU reacted to all this because they realized through the attempt to dominate the 5-year technology what it could mean for the liberal-democratic world. But a brief retrospective of the not-so-distant past, a period in the heyday of the rise of liberalism, may hide the missteps for this fear. Here, my dear, if you go back and see these things soberly, you will realize that they are a junction of several segments.

One, definitely, is the infatuation and naive humanity (in which there is nothing wrong, let's face it) that everyone wants to be "nice" in the way liberal democracy thinks we should be "nice". So that there is no "running away" in criticism, let's just clarify - this does not refer to the distorted policies and intrigues with double standards or to how liberal democracy is put into practice by some states and elites, but to the pure liberal-democratic idea of ​​inclusiveness . Next are the very contours of the liberal-democratic framework, which is dialogue, the reduced role of the state, the free market, the free movement of goods, people, services and capital. Yes, my dear, you who deal with EU integrations will see the four freedoms of the EU. Finally, here under the radar is the greed that in this part of the world that dominated at that time managed to poison the true idea of ​​liberal democracy and perhaps humanly create a vision of uniqueness in relation to the rest. At a given moment, that rapture and dominance, unfortunately, will become the strongest magnetism to spread the liberal-democratic concept, especially in countries and cultures that have a greater tradition than those who try to preach it.

In some countries, such as, for example, the Eastern European ones (we are here too) or those from Central and Northern Europe, it was perceived in a different way. While here in the region, the incompetent political elites materialized that whole liberal-democratic idea in a campaign to win elections, which was helped by extremely weak diplomats, in a good part of that new Europe the story has very successful moments. That everything is shiny, it is not. No one claims that. But if there is progress, there is also how. But let's not get away from the point. It is this last idea, the greed above all of the corporations that are the biggest donors to the political elites in the Western world, instead of stimulating all three lines that we explained above and making a kind of "resilient balance" for liberal democracy, they favored pure profit. In that rapture, apart from security problems, other value and structural problems were created. Safe because the architects of that new special elite that everyone wants to reach, are not guided by patriotism or national feelings. They are driven by pure profit.

Therefore, all that infrastructure in terms of security has a huge number of gaps that, despite being noticed some two decades ago, even the most pragmatic, the United States, is struggling with how to protect it.

In that rapture, due to greed, these actors influenced the policies that will pave the way for certain autocratic systems that have a great historical tradition and culture that is collectivist, built on solid determinism (not on the right to choose the individual), and above all of long memories to become part of a system of open societies. In that context, the opening of the way in the weaknesses of the trade zones, however humane it may seem, was done on a completely different basis, beyond humanity and the idea of ​​pure profit. China, my dear, in this way, in this context, is a product of that part of the liberal-democratic elite that greed sold as an ideology to the liberal world. It masquerades as "making China more democratic through trade and market liberalization", much like the rest of the autocracies that are either part of the geostrategic race (Russia) or are for now neutral actors waiting for their moment (eg autocratic kingdoms from the Gulf), was naive.

Unlike liberal-democratic societies where the role of the state is limited to the market and where there is some kind of democratic channel for controlling the authorities, this does not apply in all these systems. As a result (because of space) that liberal world that bound these autocracies into it now suffers a boomerang. Fast forward Russia manages to supply itself with the materials it needs to fuel the war. China continues to defy dominance of technology. This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a short article that metaphorically compared China's supply of chips to Russia to birds finding their way to their target. According to the article, chips, semiconductors and other materials necessary for modern technologies that have a disruptive and dual nature (used for convenience and progress, but also for attacks and malicious purposes) have interesting routes, including Turkey and Russia. An additional phenomenon, on the other hand, as an echo of the liberal-democratic framework of conducting international politics, was the Chinese proposal for peace in Ukraine, which Zakharova accepted as a 100-meter sprint with a low start. If you are reading it, the suggestion itself is "very nice". We would say, democratically. He preaches peace, respect for principles and international law. But, there is one important flaw, because it is sequential. He skips the period of occupation, of illegal invasion and shouts "guys, what happened before, forget it, from here on we will measure the work". In other words, we will now talk about sovereignty and respecting territories. Since the forum stands for liberal democracy and because we believe that this is our way, we will soberly say that the Chinese proposal is a big "bullshit"!

Very similarly, "Politico" came out with a nice analysis about the demographic change in Crimea, a masquerade that the Russians want to sequentially present the territory of Crimea as Russian with all Russian traditions. And again we will say "that's okay". But it hurts a lot, honestly, when these sequential tricks in other parts will be sold as "must do", for the sake of liberal values! In order not to be declared pro-Russian, because that is the passion of our quasi-liberals, we will stop here and distance ourselves, underlining that all similarities with sequentiality are accidental. And you, my dear, we will invite you to the next debate when we will try to explain the scheme of passivation of liberal power through the rest of the instruments of political power by Russia and China. In the next issue.

(The author is a university professor, associate professor at Arizona State University, USA)

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