The events of the end of last week seem to have intensified the argumentation in our forum about the race for the new world order. Russia continues to ruthlessly devastate Ukraine in the face of an announced shipment of tank weapons and other military arsenal to Ukrainian resistance forces by NATO and EU members. China, on the other hand, continues its ambition around Taiwan and in that spirit last week it threatened all countries that support Taiwan to stop playing with fire. These two growing giants are the leaders in defiance of what they see as Western dominance in international relations. Much like how Russia views NATO and EU expansion ambitions, China has sent a signal that any public support for Taiwan is a serious provocation for China.

Things heated up earlier this year with visits by German and Lithuanian lawmakers to Taiwan, as well as a military exercise by Taiwan's armed forces in response to China's last year (which, according to some analyses, is the largest ever with 71 aircraft and 7 warships). At the same time, this visit is unequivocally a reflection of what we emphasized in the last issue, which is that China, and not only Russia, is now in the vocabulary but also the calculus of Western analyzes and assessments of threats to NATO and the EU. The high stakes that Russia has made since last year through the invasion of Ukraine are the pure operationalization of defiance. A quick victory over Ukraine should have meant a lot for Russia. It was definitely supposed to represent a blow to NATO in the attempt to expand and ultimately materialize the ambition for Russian influence in Ukraine. China, on the other hand, secretly seemed to be hoping for success, which should have been a dangerous precedent for its sphere of influence and for merging with the island (Taiwan).

But things did not go as planned. The West has shown tenacity and, for the time being, determination to counter these ambitions. Thanks to the determination of the Ukrainian people to resist Russia, and not to wait for it as a liberator, the West, at least for the time being, managed to dampen this "surprise" which is nothing but another collapse of ultraliberalism that clumsily underestimates the real threats, making them something they are not. However, the question is whether and how long it can persist in all this, as a prelude to taking positions for a better defense of dominance from challengers. What is eye-popping and a problem for the West is not only the same ambitions of the two rising regional hegemons (which they hope their different culture and architecture of autocracy make an unnatural alliance – we will return to this in the next issue) but also the personal commitment of their leaders. Namely, the cordiality that Putin and Xi expressed at their last meeting projects commitment and determination for an alliance that should redefine the position in the world of set rules and principles, but according to these leaders, on a different scale.

That, my dear, for these leaders is the Western liberal matrix, which influences the formation of principles and attitudes on certain issues on the international level, which is why they are accused by the challengers of universalizing values. To simplify, one of the basic things around which defiance is built is that the "universalization" of values ​​about what is good and what is not, what is right and what is not, whether a certain behavior of states as subjects is good or not, so even what is moral (though not necessarily legally permissible – for example, intervention with the use of force), and what is not, is done on a liberal prefix. So, for Russia and for China and for those who support them, for example Iran and North Korea to some extent, as well as many other authoritarian leaders around the world - Belarus, Venezuela, Brazil, even a large part of African countries, and lately and from the Middle East - the Gulf first of all, the problem is that the criteria on certain issues are shaped according to the taste of the West (hence liberal, not just democratic - paraphrased from the last joint statement by Xi and Putin last year stating that there are many kinds of democracies and that they do not agree with how things are seen in liberal democracy).

Purely as an illustration, we will try to sublimate the arguments given in anti-Western cuisines. According to this logic (meaning the criticisms of the liberal-democratic approach) you are not free if you do not have civil and political liberties and rights or, most simply, you do not have the right to vote. You can have all kinds of economic and social freedoms and rights, but if you can't vote, or if it's not done in the way it is in the Western world, then that's a problem and it's not democratic. Libya is often given as an argument (although it is not entirely true). In the manipulations, it is pointed out that the Libyans during Gaddafi had a lot of social and economic rights, but they did not have the right to vote in free and fair elections. Let us just clarify here that one of the reasons why their arguments succeed is that human rights are a set of civil and political rights (which they do not have as liberally), but also of economic and social rights (often called second generation rights which they supposedly have ) etc. group rights (third generation rights that unite the rights of certain groups and minorities, ethnic, religious, or the LGBT community, etc.) In addition, criticism also moves in the direction that these rights should ensure open societies, which will ensure an environment in which there is free movement of people, services, goods and capital (just to keep in mind, these are the four freedoms of the EU).

The problem with such freedoms, which according to these critics are forced by liberals, is that they do not serve the population where they are implemented, but the elites who have an interest in quick profits, cheap labor and regulations that are not as tight as in the Western world, especially around paying taxes etc. To support their views, they appeal to double standards (which, in truth, there are in the practice of liberalization and democratization as a process that needs to be expanded, in order to ensure world peace and coexistence - take the problem of stabilitocracy and you will understand why it is easy to build a manipulative argument). This is precisely why firm leaders who supposedly oppose these elites are not desirable for the West (Orbán may be another authentic example invoked as an argument). They are autocrats. To be completely correct, the term "allegedly" is because in absolute terms these leaders ensure the progress and growth of the power of these countries, but there is no evidence that their policies are better for the population than those they are supposedly fighting against (not we are talking about the statistics they produce, the latest example is from Hungary where the extremely low support for the EU's efforts against Russia turned out to be just a good permutation of the authorities).

The worry about all this shifting and positioning, my dears, is that the leaders of the liberal world know that this challenge is not naive. It is existential with apocalyptic consequences. The seriousness is much greater than some sleepy EU leaders think. Just for perspective, Xi and Putin have met 38 times so far, which for the two leaders is almost twice as many meetings as any other leader. In addition, almost all leaders in the defiance camp believe that the threat of color revolutions is the result of fundamental flaws in the current world order – the combination of institutions, ideas and power structures that determine how global politics will play out. As a result, they share a determination to create a new world order that better accommodates the interests of Russia and China – as defined by their current leaders. How all this will go in practice is another matter.

That is why in the next issue we will focus on the weaknesses of one and the other side, on which both have hope for success. From how Scholz entertains support for Ukraine (with a confession about meeting a Polish citizen who supported him while "jogging"), through how Switzerland practices neutrality to curb arms shipments, through criticism of the weaknesses of the alliance between China and Russia and why the West is in a hurry to arm Ukraine (for example, WB should send Apache helicopters in addition to tanks) in the following issues we will try to understand the dynamics that will take place in the period ahead. Follow us, we will not disappoint you!

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