Lordre: Vladimir

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A snag in the Global North's global domination?

Much of the Western press and leadership are portraying the East-West conflict over Ukraine as a temporary issue that will be quickly remedied by regime change against what they see as problematic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin. In some ways, they are correct.

Since the end of the original Cold War, the main tension in the world was emerging in the North-South relationship, not the East-West conflict, making the current geopolitical situation something of an anomaly. Except for direct contests over hegemony, the main struggle in the world has always been between the exploiter and exploited, or the ruler and the ruled.

War against the Global South

With wars mainly being "interventions" targeting Global South nations like Iraq and Libya, and the Global North having a distinct advantage, able to project the image of itself as a global policeman under the authority of the United Nations Security Council, for a time it seemed as if a simmering North-South conflict was becoming the accepted reality.

The alterations to the language of war in the 1990s and early 2000s to speak of humanitarian intervention, rogue states, terrorism and global policing showed a shift, conscious or otherwise, to waging wars on the economically undeveloped nations. Military technology and wargames changed to target lightly armed resistance groups, rather than peer opponents.

What is happening now, with the renewal of conflict between the West and Russia, is an unexpected hiccup in the dominance of the Global North and especially the Western powers. Russia had essentially been considered a solved problem and a defeated enemy for over thirty years, and the West had moved on to other targets. Russia refusing to be dead, and being capable of challenging the West again, is a potentially fatal impediment Western goals.

The wrong battle

For the West to now be bogged down in a contest with Russia essentially means that the Global North is unable to fight the battle it wanted to fight, namely a battle to maintain dominance over the Global South. The West is mainly responsible, failing to create Global North alliance structures that would include Russia and potentially even China in a world order that would see the North dominate the South.

The selfishness of, very probably, individual politicians and thought leaders in the United States and United Kingdom is most likely to blame for the failure of the Global North to form a united front against the Global South (a godsend for the peoples of the latter). It seems like the idea of having Russians and Chinese as part of the club was just unacceptable to English-speaking elites, who would prefer that the "civilised" world and its economically vital activity are only led by people who look and sound like them.

Russia and China are essentially too "developed" now to be considered an economic periphery that can be conquered or exploited by the West. Countries like India, Pakistan and Iran can also increasingly be considered "developed" and don't really fall into the "Third World" stereotype either, as they may have done in the past.

What next?

While there may be attempts by the East and West to use the Global South as a proxy battlefield again, like they did in the original Cold War, the degree of resistance there against all such interference will likely increase. The Global South was on the rise in its own right, with an increasing willingness of local regimes to defy any expression of global authority or global good, and instead take possession of their own resources. Leaders such as Chavez, Morales, Gaddafi and others were not anomalies but part of a trend that was sure to continue, and will continue.

Even if Western regimes are not impeded much, or Russia and China are quickly disposed of and the Global North falls under Anglo-Saxon authority, their attempts to police and control the Global South will still go severely awry. We will still see terrorism, devastating wars and refugee flows that, in addition to climate change, will complicate Western dominance. They will be unable to pacify the populations of the Global South, who will continue to elect leaders who defy foreign exploitation and dominance. As such, even the most optimistic forecast for the West is one of war, waste, misery and the defeat of global hegemony in the long term.

The thousand cuts to the globally dominant Western powers were already going to be a death sentence for it, even without the West encountering a resurgent Russia and having to fight an intra-North battle.

While the war in Ukraine may be sad for people with blonde hair and blue eyes, it offers much-deserved relief for some people of the Global South. Perhaps they may be spared, for a time, from being the focus of murderous rampages by the supposedly civilised West. The situation in Ethiopia seems to have calmed around the time the conflict grew in Ukraine. We should be mindful, however, that the Western-inflamed humanitarian disaster in Yemen is unabated. As the wars in Bosnia showed us, violence may briefly return to the Global North, but is almost continuously exported to the Global South.

It would be a "strategic mistake", as UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss put it, for Russia to attempt to conquer Ukraine entirely.

However, expectations about Russia seizing all of Ukraine and depriving the country of independence seem to be only idle speculation based on the mere presence of many Russian troops near Ukraine. Britain and America have not seen any plans about a Russian attack.

For all we know, Russia intends to maintain such troops permanently for as long as there is still a potentially dangerous conflict in the adjacent Donbass region in Ukraine. The Russian troop presence near Ukraine is no more evidence of a Russian invasion now than in spring last year, when we received the same warnings. We have been through this before.

Preserving Ukrainian democracy

What seems new, though, is the scandalous political situation in Ukraine, in part created by Western blunders. US foreign policy figures such as Professor Michael McFaul assert that Ukrainian democracy is Russia's biggest fear. This seems unlikely, when considering the oligarch-ridden and corrupt state of Ukrainian politics.

Ukraine could even be plunging into an undemocratic abyss as President Volodymyr Zelensky seeks to arrest political opponents and the US helps demonise them. Two top opponents Zelensky has sought to imprison are Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's president following the ouster of the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, and Viktor Medvedchuk, who is considered the pro-Russian favourite in the Ukrainian opposition at present. Between them, these two figures and their parties represent many of the opposition seats in Ukraine's parliament. If the US cared about democracy in Ukraine, it would ask Zelensky to cut them some slack as the EU did.

Popular opposition media have faced total bans as well, on the same grounds of alleged treasonous activity. However, any opposition activity or different foreign policy views could be construed as treasonous to the incumbent government, making democracy nearly impossible. Rather than noticing this worrying trend, the United States encourages it.

Falsely labelling Ukrainian politicians as Russian agents

Medvedchuk's preference for good relations with Russia in no way invalidates his right to compete for democratic votes in Ukraine. Don't expect the Americans to see it that way, though. Don't expect them to think external American interference in the Ukrainian parliament is any obstacle to democracy, either.

Both the US and the UK seem to have started announcing Ukrainian opposition figures are Russian agents, and it is clearly false information, endangering their ability to work and even threatening their lives. This suggests the Western countries in question are insincere about bringing democracy to Ukraine and are only looking for expansion of Western power and alliances.

Consider also that any allegations about Russia illegitimately using politics to interfere in Ukraine behind the scenes are obviously hypocritical. To unearth these interferences would require the Americans or British themselves snooping around, interfering in Ukrainian democracy and picking favourites. Is our interference somehow inherently more democratic than others, even when not based on any vote or pertaining to any attempt to assess the democratic will?

Closer to the West doesn't necessarily mean democracy

Arrests of opposition, bans on media and labelling of opposition figures as Russian assets may bolster the Western hold over the Ukrainian government and bring it closer to the NATO orbit, but we should not confuse this with advancing democracy. It literally means denigrating the country's opposition and backing a regime that wants to maintain power.

We may be looking at an example of Western countries acting with no principles and simply waving around the word "democracy". The word is used as if it doesn't point to political practice. Instead, it is presented as an elusive justification for other practices, including tyranny.

The lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which involved the US and UK implanting deeply unpopular regimes in the name of "democracy", without realising these regimes had no legitimacy, should be a warning about what could happen in Ukraine if the current policy is maintained.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has long held the internet to be CIA, and has not made a secret of this belief. He doesn't use social media, which gives some insight into his attitude towards it.

In many ways, Putin is a man of the Cold War, almost perfectly built to handle Russia's affairs in what is considered a new cold war. He thinks in terms of missile numbers, move and countermove.

And there is some truth to the internet being a weapon of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). When one looks at its origins, most of the work really was done by a US government agency. Those who work at US agencies often step between other bodies, including the CIA. That doesn't mean it couldn't backfire on the US, however, becoming yet another case of what the CIA calls blowback.

It is clear to Putin and his cohorts that a few things went wrong in the last global struggle against the United States, and they will be determined not to repeat their mistakes. During the first Cold War, the then-Soviet Union, to which the Russian Federation is the modern-day successor, had what is considered to be a stagnant society and economy.

Censorship as the loser's strategy

Censorship was arguably a factor in the failure of the Soviet system. People are driven to find the awful truth about things, or at least see the countervailing point of view. When you restrict access to alternative views, even successfully, the effort almost always backfires.

At present, the aforementioned fault seems to be more apparent in the Western countries than Russia. The least popular variety of boring establishment "journalists", are the loudest in calling for suppressing competing information and curtailing freedom of expression on the very internet the West created and which Putin loathes. An example of this is their backlash against Substack.

Western states and their most obvious and vapid shills hate current Russian media networks such as the award-winning "Putin's propaganda channel" RT and Sputnik with a passion, making exaggerated claims about their apparent influence over Western audiences. In the original Cold War, the Russians didn't even possess such media with which to tempt anybody in the West.

For many unthinking people, there is likely a guilty allure to subversive foreign media, which explains both the alleged fascination of Russians with Western entertainment during the original Cold War and the current popularity of something like RT in Western countries. Western companies and authorities labelling RT as dangerous, foreign, and state-sponsored does nothing to reduce people's fascination with it and may only increase it.

We could see an escalation of attempts to stamp out Russian-backed media, going further than simply placing labels on it and moving more and more towards prosecuting journalists and banning points of view entirely. The West can be expected to be more heavy-handed than Russia, because it is backed up by an arrogant moral certitude implicit even in all news reporting on foreign policy, whereas the Russians merely speak of their national security.

A West no longer for freedom?

The sad reality is that in this Cold War, the establishment in the West is treading a boring path of ideological orthodoxy and restriction, and the foreign adversary is not. This is not just an immaterial difference of ideals in a contest of might, either. The attitude of automatically rejecting "enemy" points of view and denying people the right to even see them is potentially a threat to democratic models, dulling the intellect and pacifying political opposition.

Examples of Western ideological inflexibility are the commitment to imposing frameworks of LGBT rights, minority rights, and the freedom to offend religious sensibilities, even when such things divide their own alliances and cause discomfort especially among culturally diverse states. The West presents such things as universal and set to be accepted everywhere, which is far from certain even in Europe.

Western leaders want Russians to be portrayed as the ones afraid of information, afraid of human expression and liberty, as in the previous Cold War. However, with Western press arbitrarily branding all kinds of media stories as attacks or disinformation that need to be suppressed for the sake of democracy (like the blocked and then unblocked New York Post story in the US 2020 election), it is clear that Western states are at least as intolerant places for online dissent as Russia. The minutiae of how information and people are disappeared in the West and Russia may be different, but that is no basis to argue that the West is morally superior or better justified to make anything disappear.

If Western politicians and journalists are right in their claims about the threat of Russian disinformation and social media accounts, it means Russia has effectively turned what Putin considers to be a CIA weapon - the internet - into a tool against the West. It means the US, particularly the CIA, is profoundly confused about its role in the world, having believed it stood for freedom and encouraged technologies to facilitate just that, only to realise this was a mistake and will threaten American statehood too.

In branding the internet as a tool of foreign subversion of their political systems, Putin's enemies in the West are making his own case for him. Impose greater control and restrictions on what information is allowed online? Exactly what he wanted from the beginning. Only allow information that fits with one's national security interests? The Kremlin will be the first to agree with that sentiment.

The internet might be broken up

If the West wants to subvert adversarial influence and narratives on the internet, it will help Balkanise the internet. If Putin's comments about the internet being CIA reflect his views, then he is looking for this anyway. As such, those who continuously serve up stories and articulate concerns about Russian influence are doing Putin's work to destroy the CIA's weapon. It could be argued, of course, that this weapon should be subverted or destroyed, but that is another conversation.

The spread of deep suspicion about all media and the motives of those who produce it, rather than the content itself, may be the real foreign trick, and a clever one. If foreign interference or sympathising with the enemy is perceived in even a minor act of dissent, or any vocal form of opposition, nobody will be willing to correct or reform anything, which will eventually have repercussions for government and economic performance.

Social networking websites and apps aim to manage almost every aspect of your life, curtail your access to information and take responsibility for your safety. In this regard, they are replacing government authority with their own. But when it comes to a clash with states, can they win?

As some background, Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly said at this year's Valdai forum that social media companies had attempted to take on some form of state-like authority and displace the state itself in this regard, and that they had failed. The remarks are quoted by Russian broadcaster RT.

Unfortunately, the source linked by RT is a more than three hour-long video with an English translation in which Putin does not seem to make the alleged remarks, so it is hard to tell what exactly he meant.

If the RT quote was valid, Putin may have said large tech companies tried to assume some roles traditionally held by governments, and the attempts were "fleeting". He would have claimed, "in the US, the owners of these platforms were taken down a peg or two as it was in Europe as well," with some clarity added that this was due to "anti-monopolisation measures".

So, what did Putin mean?

Antitrust laws

The European Union currently has the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on the cards, which apparently will prevent a tech company from trapping users in an operating system or bundle of apps that solely favours its own services (and by extension news feeds) over any other firm's. It also apparently hopes to make sure users can uninstall pre-installed apps, which presumably means preventing US digital giants from forcing European users to use their apps and look at their news feeds.

Antitrust lawsuits have already targeted large tech companies in the US and Australia, with Amazon and Apple often being in focus. Facebook has also had a hard time in Australia, where the government sought for Facebook to pay news outlets for their content and Facebook attempted to push back against the government with help from Alphabet (who own Google), by carrying out a news blackout. Back at the start of the year, the push from Facebook failed to deter the Australian government and in fact other governments took Australia's side.

Subduing African governments?

Social media companies are uniquely confrontational towards governments, lately seeing themselves as authorities on par with some governments. Silicon Valley-based corporations like Twitter certainly see themselves as more reliable and legitimate authorities than African governments, as can be seen from their enforcement actions targeting government accounts in Uganda and Ethiopia.

Twitter's removal of government communications because they promoted violence is an attempt to de-recognise a state, because the monopoly on the legal use of violence is a defining aspect of a state. It is also an ineffective and failed usurpation of the state's responsibilities, since a state can still commit or allow violence whether Twitter deletes posts about it or not.

Victory over Trump?

Some might consider the banning of Trump to be a victory of social media over the US state, but in reality Trump was always an outsider to the US state and it was the US state that defeated Trump. The other branches of the US government certainly hated Trump, as did a majority of lawmakers. The spectre of these state figures cracking down after the evident electoral defeat of Trump was the factor most responsible for compelling organisations like Twitter and Facebook to kick Trump off social media.

The behaviour of social networks certainly suggests they have or had a willingness to compel governments to do their bidding, yet they have been ineffective. The actions of Twitter in Africa have simply resulted in bans targeting the website. Governments have shown they are willing and capable of pushing back against what are really just weak outfits. Social networks can be forcibly broken up due to laws, taken offline or bankrupted by fines at any moment the state truly loses patience with them.

States as continuous victors

Whether or not Putin was actually making comments like the above or sought to discuss the above developments, I do not know. However, the reported observation that social networks are losing their battle with states is valid. There have been plenty of times when new media, organisations and other actors created upheaval in the internal and international order, but they are ultimately crushed under the tank-treads of whoever wields the real power. At this moment, that still means nation-states.

It has been called the weaponisation of migrants. But, with the Poles more culturally averse to migration than their western allies, it may be better described as part of the EU's own internal split.

The EU Civil War

The EU is divided. In the east, we have more conservative states such as Poland and Hungary. In the west, there are those liberal-leaning, more (so-called) advanced democracies in Western Europe. The members of the eastern flank of the EU (and by extension NATO) see migrants as hostile objects. The migrants are weapons - like guns flying into a country to shoot people and cause chaos. The other, frankly more important EU states do not see migrants this way but rather as a way to reinvigorate their economy with fresh workers - more like shovels than guns - who don't need 18 years to be constructed before being used.

Although the leading NATO states (now including the US) have overwhelmingly condemned Belarus for letting migrants cross their border to Poland, it is inconsistent with their own positive view of migrants. Their insincere condemnation is really just an extension of their disdain for the current Belarusian leader Lukashenko, whose political opponents have been explicitly endorsed by Western powers and unilaterally recognised as the country's new regime by at least Lithuania.

Are migrants weapons?

Mindless NATO chants for Belarus to stop its supposed weaponisation of migrants, portraying migrants as agents of foreign harm rather than people, will only work for as long as civil society organisations such as humanitarian NGOs are not involved or on the scene. It is easy enough for governments to make propaganda-like statements about the vague evils of their opponents and use warlike language while no-one else is present at the scene of the controversy, but the liberal civil society of the West will likely side against Poland for its anti-immigration views.

Despite attempts to call on Belarus to take responsibility for the refugees, no expert of migration would tell you that the migrants are trying to stay in Belarus. The destination of the migrants, as in every other similar case, is the European Union. To claim Belarus is somehow the party abusing the rights of the migrants by letting them gather on the border to the EU, their destination, is absurd. They are gathering there because they know the EU will let them in, and it will. The decision to delay and potentially expose the migrants to an approaching deadly winter will be the EU's decision.

The EU's problem is still its own problem, even if 'Putin did it'

Even if Belarus and Russia are conspiring to create the cultural rift between the eastern and western EU sooner than it would otherwise happen, it is still inevitable. If Belarus was not aiding migration through its border to Poland, the migration would eventually just come from somewhere else and the same controversy would happen, with the Polish government receiving all the condemnation from its allies.

Blaming Lukashenko or Putin for painful problems in the innards of the West itself does not do anything to alleviate them. Problems still exist and have to be dealt with, even if they are the result of foreign mischief or trickery. The same lesson must be learned in America, where the claim that Trump voters were simply tricked by Russia sounds patronising and does nothing to change their radicalised minds or address why so many of them were attracted to extremist views in the first place. Sooner or later, Western alliances have to deal with their internal tensions rather than calling the name of a foreign country in the belief this magically moves their problem elsewhere.

Remember who destroyed the homelands of refugees?

Finally, we must remember who created the migrant flows. These are the result of chaos that needed not be created. The United States and allies did not need need to impose their liberal democratic ideology using sanctions, aerial bombardment and other means of force against countries in the Middle East, to the point of neglecting human life and living standards. Poland was a huge offender in this, zealously following America into Iraq in 2003, supporting every reckless military adventure by every American administration in the hope America will return the favour one day (spoiler: it won't).

Poland helped to create the instability, chaos and destroyed infrastructure that migrants are fleeing from in the Middle East. If it does not welcome the consequences of American foreign policy, much as it does not welcome the prevalent liberal ideology and civil society at the heart of NATO and the EU, it should rethink its relationship with its allies.

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