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We live in interesting times. The Soviet satellites in eastern Europe and elsewhere, the military oligarchies once supported by the United States in Latin America, have receded into the past, features of the second half of the 20th century. During the Cold War, those who suffered under, and resisted, authoritarian regimes understood their rules, their alliances, their diversity and what qualified those who sought change for prison or worse. The collapse of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev heralded not the gradual global triumph of liberal democracy but fresh growth and development of unpredictable authoritarian States.
What causes authoritarianism? Economic explanation of political structures is the tribute Liberalism paid to Marxism. The old liberal refrain was apartheid would be ended if only a black middle class could form sharing in national wealth. The Soviet Union collapsed after economic failure. The ending of support from East Germany and the Soviet Union were largely instrumental in bringing Mandela’s ANC to the negotiating table. And it was economic sanctions against South Africa that drove the Afrikaner regime to negotiate. In October 1990, West German diplomacy achieved the re-unification of Germany. Germany firmly believed that key to its success lay in trade and economic development. As Anne Applebaum puts it in Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators who Want to Run the World, published this year by Allen Lane: * “They also believed that trade and diplomacy would, eventually, help normalize relations between Russia and Europe”, a foundational element of Angela Merkel’s thinking. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was born. In 2022, the $20 billion project designed to bring gas - bypassing Poland and Ukraine – direct from Russia to Germany, was destroyed in an underwater explosion. The hope of “Wandel Durch Handel”, change through trade, went with it. As energy bills rise this winter, we are still living through the consequences of the policy. The priority of trade and economics were UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s refrain as he promoted interdependence with China hoping to bring it into the democratic world during his tenure as Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016. Such was the hold an optimistic economism had on international relations. In 2022 former Hong Kong Governor, Chris ( now Lord) Patten, called Cameron’s position on China “mush diplomacy”, “hoping for the best is not a very good basis for policy”, he added. Yet, a stubborn belief persisted, at least during the first decade of the 21st. Century, that, given time, economic progress, wealth creation, and reduction in inequality could sort things out. As Quartet representative, 2007-2015 (for the UN, EU, US and Russia), Tony Blair was tasked with promoting economic growth in Gaza and the West Bank in pursuit of peace. A kind of economistic faith that with enough GDP all manner of things would be well lingered alongside faith in economic sanctions against declared enemies. Applebaum makes a strong case that Russia did not emerge from the 1990s as a State that for a variety of reasons had tried, but failed, to adopt the liberalism its Western advisers were promoting. Rather, from Putin’s first days in the new century, she argues, he was setting up Russia as a mafia State to enrich his coterie, a kleptocracy with added nationalism and a “restorative nostalgia” for a defunct imperial Russia as its motif. The new feature of most post-Cold War authoritarian regimes is organising power primarily to enrich themselves. Trump-like, they do deals with each other forming an eclectic, transactional rather than ideological, network. Such unlikely bedfellows as Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Mali and North Korea are participants. In pole position, there is a pragmatic China relying on its economic power to reel in client States and supporting Russia in its episodes of combat with Europe and the USA. There are also States of geopolitical importance, even functioning democracies like Turkey and India, as well as Saudi Arabia governed by a dynastic dictatorship, who for their own purposes occupy a Janus-like position. Iran remains a full-blown autocratic Shi’a theocracy, an active player in the network. Afghanistan under the Taliban stands alone as a Sunni tyranny driven by a crazed gender ideology. The key to the new projection of authoritarian power is found not only at national level: a brutal security apparatus and, in the case of China, Orwellian levels of surveillance. Internationally, technological opportunities open to all allow the spread and sharing of disinformation tailored to intensify social conflict in democracies and the political advancement of political extremes. Social media provides multiple platforms on which “to manipulate discontent, channel anger and fear”, in their target communities and enhance a search for homogeneity, belonging and order over diversity and difference. As Applebaum succinctly puts it, liberalism and democracy were not exported to the East, rather an ‘autocratic pre-disposition' and illiberalism infected the West. This was a message in her Twilight of Democracy first published in 2020 by Allen Lane. But the picture looks a little less dire today. Beginning with the 2023 defeat of the Law and Justice Party in Poland by Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), followed this July by the Labour Party landslide crushing a Conservative Party too long in hock to its right-wing, then Marine le Pen’s setback in the French elections followed by Bangladesh ridding itself of Sheikh Hasina in August, and the USA seemingly past peak-Trump populism, liberalism has been making a comeback. The problem with Applebaum’s two books – and some sympathy is appropriate – is that while with great journalistic skill she pulls together a convincing diagnosis, her policy prescriptions are either too generic or underemphasise the powerful forces that will block their impact. Most notably getting some control over cyber-subversion and political interference of a sophisticated kind on social media platforms seems intractable. (The arrest of the Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, in France suggests one possibility). She also – laudably - advocates non-violent resistance while acknowledging the terrible toll of civilian casualties that resulted from street demonstrations and resistance in Iran, Myanmar, Egypt, Syria and other authoritarian States. She is right that autocratic drift, the ubiquity of corruption enriching political leaders for whom elections are a form of ‘decoration’, needs calling out. But her suggestion that civil society in democracies, as well as diasporas, should see themselves linked to citizens in autocratic regimes, faces the longstanding dilemma: “foreign interference, working for a foreign power” is the first thing on the charge sheet. Autocracy, Inc. provides a welcome coherent analysis of the kleptocracy network from a prominent centre-right figure. There are very few lacunae in the story Applebaum tells. You get a handle on a vital security topic in double-quick time. It was news to me that an emphasis on a ‘multipolar world’ is a key authoritarian card played to justify repressive political systems, or that the repetition of ‘the decadent West’ is primarily aimed at non-aligned nations. Applebaum’s warning is timely. It explains why States need to pool expertise to counter effectively the combined forces against democracy. There is no doubt the way forward will be demanding for democratic States struggling with overwhelming internal problems created not by authoritarian States but by feckless governments, bankers, tech-giants and, secondarily, by the international energy companies. *Talking about the book in Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, London N1 2UN, September 2nd Doors open 18.00 See TheArticle 30/08/2024
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The sigh of relief on 21 July when Jo Biden stepped down as Democrat presidential candidate was deafening. Within less than a fortnight the Democrats nominated Vice-President Kamala Harris to replace the outgoing President with ratification to take place at their 19 August National Convention.
After intense consultations, at a Philadelphia rally on 6 August Harris presented Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz, as her Vice-Presidential running mate. Walz memorably described Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, as “creepy” and “weird”. Walz’s humour and masterful engagement with his audience in an acceptance speech was striking. To those watching from afar it suddenly felt like Trump was toast. The Harris-Walz ticket is nicely balanced. Kamala Harris, a former senator who now presides over the United States Senate and a former Attorney-General of California, tough on crime, modern and colourful, father Jamaican heritage, mother Indian heritage, husband Jewish. Walz, white, Lutheran and folksy with a track record of worker-friendly policy in Minnesota and a personal history that might have been designed to counter Trump. The son of an aspiring Nebraska Catholic family, Walz followed his father, a school superintendent, into teaching. He was his school’s football coach - the nearest thing to a secular priest. In three years, he turned a dud team around to win a state-level schools’ championship. The stuff of movies. He also served 24 years as a US Army reservist and, before entering politics in 2005, taught in China, his interest in human rights gained during this rich experience continues. The religious dimension of the Democrat ticket is perhaps less well balanced. And given the significant white evangelical Christian support for Trump, this matters. Since the attempted assassination, Trump has been ‘doing God’ more and has found a fruitful narrative as beneficiary of divine intervention. Kamala Harris is a member of the progressive Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, established in 1852. It is led by the Reverend Amos C. Brown, a respected former black civil rights activist - taught by Martin Luther King - who supports same-sex marriage. Tim Walz, raised a Catholic, joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ECLA), the most liberal branch of Lutheranism and the largest in Minnesota where it makes up 20% of the state’s Christian community, second only to Catholics. He acknowledges his debt to his Catholic family. “My mum and dad taught us: show generosity to your neighbours and work for the Common Good”. Walz avoids ideological language and presents down-to-earth policy. He is also passionately pro-choice seeing it as a basic human right. His Minnesota State Protect Reproductive Options Act says, “every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health”. Abortion is a salient issue for US voters. Some 82% of Democrat voters disapprove of the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that unduly restrictive regulation of abortion by states was unconstitutional. Polling of all Catholic voters by the respected Pew Foundation in 2022 indicates that only 42% think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, though for the smaller number of those who attend mass regularly (20%) the figure is 68%. Despite there being some 70 million American Catholics, pro-choice is politically a vote-winning position. The voting behaviour of other groups in US Christian communities remains important. White male and conservative Evangelical Christian voters notably helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Against that precedent the religious implications of the Harris -Walz ticket might remain a vulnerability. But there are far too many political issues for religious positions to determine the result of the Election. Trump, now at sea strategically, has fallen back on branding Kamala Harris a ‘left-wing extremist’. His denunciation of his opponent as a dangerous radical with a ‘crazy laugh’ is manna for Trump’s core constituency, but US Presidential elections are won or lost by swing and undecided marginal voters in seven battle-ground states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. A spectrum of local and national issues, several of them falling into the category of social justice, will decide their choice. The most dangerous for Kamala Harris, whom Trump likes to call Biden’s former ‘border czar’, (though she never had that role), is immigration. It is the American Constitution itself which gives these battle ground states their peculiar importance. In the national vote, which is a stage in the overall electoral process, voters determine the members of the national Electoral College which in turn determines who will be the next President. How many each state is allowed depends on how many representatives the state has in the Federal House of Representatives plus two Senators – a number which is related to each state’s population. In all but two small states, the winner of the popular vote takes all the Electoral College delegates. And it is possible to become President without winning the national vote; Donald Trump did this in 2016 with 77 electoral votes more than Hillary Clinton who beat him by 2.87 million popular votes. In the majority of states, the result of the election is predictable, in UK terms ‘safe’. California, the largest US state with 54 electoral votes, has been solidly Democrat since 1992 and Minnesota, with 10 electoral votes, Democrat led since Richard Nixon’s Republican landslide victory in 1972. As in the UK, the strategic priority is to hold your safe seats and gain the marginals. Fewer than 80,000 combined votes in three out of six of the key marginal states gave Trump the Presidency in 2016. Kamala Harris has considerable ground to make up and she is making it up fast. She is currently behind Trump in only one of the marginals, Nevada, and that by a whisker. Much of the two campaigns is happening and will happen on social media. She performs well with a lightness of touch, laughing at Trump, and benefits from endorsements and funding from stars such as Beyoncé. “She does it all with a sense of joy” in Walz’s unexpected words. The same could be said of Walz himself. Homey, mildly amusing videos featuring his daughter Hope are attracting the generally pro-Democrat Gen-Z voters (18-27). There is a touch of the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey’s, endearing antics. Dad (or Grandad) is on the ticket. A week is a long time in politics and there are under twelve of them before America chooses a President. The US has never had a female President, let alone a black woman, and nobody knows how the idea will play with the Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. Never underestimate misogyny or racism. Never forget the power of repeated lies and disinformation. So even with Dad on the ticket, it is perhaps premature to assume Trump is toast. See TheArticle 16/08/2024 After the general election, in the House of Commons, the former and present Prime Minister laughed together and said nice things about each other. This occasioned a note of self-congratulation in the media about the state of British democracy. Peaceful change of government. No-one disputing the vote count. A gold medal for GB in electoral conduct.
Well, up to a point Lord Copper. There is evidence of what seemed organised intimidation during campaigning: death threats requiring police protection, canvassers photographed while talking to voters, masked men disrupting a community meeting, fake Labour Party leaflets, yelling and vitriolic abuse directed at Labour candidates. All serious enough for the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, to call relevant ministers and civil servants together to discuss what might be done. The grievance behind such worrying levels of intimidation is, of course, Gaza and the Labour Leader’s initial response to what became horrifying civilian casualties. It all began just four days after Hamas’ massacres inside Israel. Sir Keir Starmer was interviewed by Nick Ferrari on LBC just after the Labour Party conference ended. Asked about ‘proportionate response’, whether a siege, “cutting off power and water” was appropriate, Starmer, endorsing Israel’s “right to defend herself”, replied that it did “have that right, it’s an ongoing situation, obviously everything must be within international law”. A siege of enemy forces is not prohibited by international humanitarian law but besieging civilian populations is. Starmer’s words had conflated his insistence on the right to defence and his answer to the illegal besieging of a civilian population. It was a costly mistake. Refusing to call for a ceasefire made things worse. Starmer, expecting to become Prime Minister and determined to gain credibility in the international arena, chose not to break step with the USA which opposed an immediate ceasefire until destruction and death of civilians in Gaza became intolerable. His stance compounded anger, discomfort and criticism inside and outside the Labour Party and highlighted the growing gap between politicians and the public. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby responding to the King’s Speech in the House of Lords acknowledged these divisions. “Interfaith dialogue in this country has almost collapsed since October 7 last year and tensions are high and that is entirely as a result of overseas matters. That is seen with Israel and Gaza. Conflict overseas has a profound impact on our own society and our own domestic policies, because of the multicultural nature of our communities”. Systematic electoral punishment of the Labour Party, in the opinion of many for taking the Muslim vote “for granted”, needed organisation. TMV, The Muslim Vote, is a collective of Muslim organisations, led by Anas Altikriti - himself a contentious figure - which supported some 30 candidates, including 9 Independents, 9 from Galloway’s Workers’ Party, but also Greens, Lib Dems and Scottish and Welsh Nationalists standing against a Labour candidate. Several of the groups in the TMV network are mistrusted by government. Four pro-Gaza candidates supported by TMV were elected, wiping out thumping Labour majorities, several others came close to winning, in seats like Bethnal Green and Bow, Birmingham Ladywood, and Ilford North. Some polling shows that in constituencies with over 30% Muslim population the share of Labour votes had dropped since 2019 from 65% to 36%. TMV was certainly not the only reason Labour lost key seats such as that of the Shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth’s Leicester South. Muslims who like other British voters were concerned about the NHS, housing, cost of living and, also, like other less affluent voters, felt neglected. Part of the general malaise with politics. Gaza energised voting particularly amongst Muslims. But it is difficult to deny that the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) Gaza massacres and destruction in response to civilian slaughter of October 7 was so profoundly shocking – not only for Muslims – that it became the passionate focus of single-issue voting this July. And undeniable that the characterisation of the Arab-Jewish conflict in the Middle East as religious is still hardening Palestinian and Israeli positions, exported into a British election encouraging intimidation and bullying. Fury directed at Muslim women candidates who remained loyal to the Labour leadership revealed a misogyny we have come to know in Afghanistan that should by now be in the dustbin of history. Gaza has become a religious dispute to the degree that Hamas and the right-wing religious fanatics in the Knesset have forced it into this mould. At the heart of the conflict lies rival nationalisms and a battle for control of territory. To be Palestinian is not identical with being a Muslim nor ever has been. There are Christian and secular Palestinians. Christians were amongst some of the earliest Palestinian nationalist leaders. There are also plenty of Jews in Israel and around the world appalled by what the IDF is doing in Gaza. The TMV’s approach amongst Muslims reinforced the perception that protest about Gaza was a religious single-issue. Christians are not immune to the lure of sectarianism and single-issue voting as the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland showed, and the issue of abortion in the USA is now showing. The United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2019 gave an example that seems to me excellent counsel to voters of all faiths. “As Catholics, we are not single-issue voters. A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support”. In the past, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales have said much the same. The events after the horrifying murders and stabbings of young girls in Southport have put the intimidation of electoral candidates into a wider perspective. Violent and planned public disorder in Hartlepool, Westminster, Manchester, Aldershot and Sunderland, as well as Southport, has revealed a major national issue. Re-emergent EDL, English Defence League, followers plus other small extremist groups, and their incitement of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hatred, adds to the Home Secretary’s in-box and that of the Prime Minister. There is more to come. It is striking a chord amongst certain – male- sections of the population. EDL-type thuggery and disinformation in social media - needing decisive government intervention - are yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s problem. As far as British democracy is concerned, sadly, everything in the garden isn’t lovely. See TheArticle 03/08/2024 |
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