Words Left from the Last Post
This is Part II of the post on global governance. In my first post Goals, Insurance, Ideology & Global Governance, I called for a critical switch from putting ideologies and values above everything else to constructive work on building international rule of law, with a new emphasis on finding facts, toning down value conflicts and toning up value coexistence and cooperation. I argue that antagonistic, zero sum ideological fights are no longer a good cause. The world needs a new fight — or better yet new constructive works for international rule of law — to supersede the old one.
This does not mean all values and ideologies are equal. Liberal democracy is still superior to all other values and ideologies. This does mean however to accept the fact that values and ideologies are slow to change. In addition, at least for large countries, ideological changes are best arising organically from within. Pushing too hard by outsiders only encourages domestic resistance, turning things to the opposite direction.
Justice Before Peace & Prosperity, Facts Before Ideologies
The three goals of Justice, Peace and Prosperity (JPP) I proposed last time are not at an equal footing. Achieving international justice is more foundational than the other two. Without installing a set of pro-justice procedures, rules and entities (to be discussed in another post), no sustainable peace is possible. But without peace, global prosperity remains a dream.
Among all the pro-justice factors, fact-finding is the most important. Thus instead of the “rule based international order,” I propose a “fact + rule” based international justice system.
We risk falling into an “ideological trap” if we fail to make a timely switch because the “hazard of excessive ideologies” can lead to losses of self-fulfilling prophecy: If one suspects others as ideological evils, they will become evils as you want them to be. One will end up fighting an enemy in one’s own imagination, dragging the world down along with it.
How Do Values Become Coexistable?
Because today’s ideologies and values are no longer fatally antagonistic, we are not forced to enter a zero-sum game aimed at mutual destruction. This differs from the old days, when defending our values was a matter of life or death, an issue of survival. We could not — and should not — seek compromise or negotiate with those old enemies.
The downfall of the former Soviet Union, the rapid rise of globalization, even the latest blockchains and cryptocurrencies, these social and technological changes have all pointed to the need and advantages for the world to work together despite our preexisting differences in values, preferences and ideologies.
What drive diverse values to become coexistable today are two reasons. The first is today’s ideological challenges that liberal democracy faces have changed from communism and fascism to authoritarianism. In the last post I pointed out how fascism and communism were on a track of inevitable collide with capitalism and democracy, but how authoritarianism is mostly a mode of domestic governance.
What I did not mention before is the second reason: The power balance of ideologies has also drastically changed to our favor, not to authoritarianism. The sole superpower of the world is the largest functional democracy (sorry I will not count India as a functional democracy, at least for now), which says a lot about the reality of the world. In addition, authoritarianism has a bad reputation, so bad that both China and Russia have categorically rejected or hated it. It is interesting to see China talking about how democracy has many versions and how China represents a unique model of “whole process people’s democracy.” Of course talks like that are cheap, China must first prove itself by showing freedom of expression, starting from not blocking people’s posts or closing their accounts on WeChat or Weibo just because they said something government did not like.
Autocrats and authoritarian leaders may act like kings at home, but they do not carry much weight on the global stage. We humans seem to have had enough of strongmen and governmental mouthpieces, who tried to have their voices heard outside homes but have not had much luck. As a result, they retreat to where their comfort zone is and stay inside their country borders.
No Need to Corner Competitors
The big question the US faces today is how to handle competition of different values. The answer seems easy: If we realize ideologies are coexistable, and know the competitors are significantly weakened since the end of Cold War, the most constructive thing to do is to switch from an “ideological fighter” to a new world constructor with justice, peace and prosperity. JPP are in the best interest of the world.
What we are seeing now however is a great reluctance to live with competitors. I will just list three recent examples of the US doing ideological cleansing.
- The current Russia-Ukraine war provides a rare opportunity for the US to openly reveal its top priority: not in peace-building but in defeating, or as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin put it bluntly, in weakening Russia — apparently using Ukrainians’ blood to the extent possible. The moves seem to be perfectly justified in the name of helping Ukraine defend Russia invasion. But the devil is in the details or more accurately in the degrees: knowing when to push forward and when to stop. So far the US has shown no interest in stopping the war from escalating, nor in encouraging Putin to come to the negotiation table, which is clearly in the best interest of both sides and of the world. Kiev now possesses enough advanced western weapons to attack the Russia territory, turning the table around from strictly defense to offense.
- We do not know many ongoing details in the battlefield, but we do know the Russia-Ukraine conflict started 8 years earlier in 2014, not in February 2022, when Putin ordered his illegal “Special Military Operations” in Ukraine. It is widely reported that Kiev committed anti-humanity crime against civilians in the Donbass area just as badly — or even worse in terms of duration — as Moscow did. When Biden showed his “moral anger” over Putin, and when the Pentagon spokesman showed his emotion over the alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine, I was supposed to be moved. Instead, I found them less sincere and less convincing, more as a political show — unless they blame all anti-humanity crimes.
- The recent “AXIS Act” that passed the US House of Representatives makes it impossible for the world to take the US House seriously — when it comes to international affairs. The bill was named so that it ends with a name AXIS (Assessing Xi’s Interference and Subversion) seemingly by coincidence, but Congressman Andy Barr (R-KY) has lifted the veil and made it clear that the “alliance between the Chinese Communist Party and the Russian Kremlin is the new Axis of evil that threatens the United States and the rules-based international order.” This bill requires State Department to file ongoing reports to Congress within 30 days of the bill’s enactment and every 90 days thereafter. But why bother and why wait for the reports? Barr and his colleagues already know China and Russia are the Axis of the 21st century before showing evidence of any kind. The bill takes us back not just to the Cold War, but all the way to WWII, to the days of Hitler and Mussolini. The only logic step is for the US to prepare for — if not proactively to launch — the WWIII, nothing less.
Let us all consider this question: Say a congressman proposed a bill to accuse Trump guilty of letting the Russians meddle the US presidential election in 2016 before the Special Council Robert Mueller published his report, will that proposed bill get passed in the House? Not a chance. GOP members will fight full heartedly to block such a bill.
Making Senses of the US Moves
Americans love peace and loathe violence (look at what Will Smith ended up with his one slap on the face of Chris Rock). The US also has many other nice things like (1) thoughtfully written and religiously followed rules and laws, (2) intrinsic value in equality and fairness, (3) parents’ preserving and encouraging individual preferences, plus (4) rewards for hardworking and motive for success. It is these things putting together that made the US sustainably stronger than others in the world.
How can a country of world leader, a country that I love most, make so many risky international moves? I have been asking myself this question for years. Below are what I came up with and are divided into different groups of Americans.
The first group is “Superpower Americans” whose real cause is to maintain the status of the world’s sole superpower. These people just use ideologies as a convenient disguise, which makes sense given the high mobilization power and the noble sound bite based on ideologies. They know perfectly well that China and Russia, especially China, are not nearly as aggressive and dangerous as Hitler’s Germany, the militarism in Japan and Stalin’s Soviet Union.
If the ultimate goal is to maintain superpower, it is irrelevant whether the enemies are aggressive or gentle, they will remain dangerous threats as long as they grow faster than the US. Reasoning with them on how today’s competing ideologies are weaker and less threatening means nothing and is a waste of time because they already knew.
At the other end is the genuine “Value Crusaders” who take it as the American mission to eliminate all value competitors as soon as possible, and as much as possible. Like the first group, reasoning with them on how weaker and less threatening the competitors are means nothing, because they believe the doctrine of “risk avoidance” and nothing else. As long as there are different values in the world, they all must be wiped out no matter what. They do not want to take chances.
The third groups are the “Value Suspecters” who do worry about diverse ideologies and values and feel uncomfortable with the rapid rise of a country or countries with different values — although they are not “Value Crusaders.” Since they possess little independent knowledge of other countries, they can easily fall to the prey of what politicians tell them. Worse still, as a democratic government only needs to respond to its constituents, not to the “world citizens” at large, as long as the politicians know a majority people in their jurisdiction hold such view, they can say and do anything without personally shouldering much liability.
The fourth group of “American Fighters” is large and contains many Americans. In almost all domestic affairs, most if not all Americans must fight their way through for their cause to prevail. The shared mindset is that if you are strong, show and use your strength. It is likely for them to carry that “fighting spirit” over to international affairs. The only problem is that unlike domestic affairs, where the fights are within the confines of mature rules, international business is largely an uncharted territory, making things ten times riskier than inside the US.
The final group is the “Cake Eaters” for lacking a better term. Some Americans have the “Let them eat cake” syndrome, as the famous proverbial story from the 17th or 18th century France told us, in which a spoiled princess made the cake suggestion to the starving peasants when there was no bread. This may sound sarcastic or mean but not. It is only caused by different situations and scenarios. For example, for Americans the war in Ukraine only happens on the TV and internet, while for the Europeans it is as real as a bomb explosion next door. It is hard for Americans to fully understand the dilemma and hardship others are going through day in and day out. This is the very reason we need conversations and dialogues among all stakeholders in the world to bring all facts and truth to the table. This is a topic to be discussed in next post.