Militant humanism
Here is what Sune Haugbolle of Roskilde University (Denmark) writes in article "A Militant Humanism for the 21st Century":
" ... the conflict in Syria is abjectly exposing the failings of the UN system to react to gross human rights violations and war crimes and to stop war and misery from spreading.
... Humanists must stop being apologetic about their beliefs or defeatist about their possibilities. We need a militant humanism devoted to defending the utopian quest for global justice. This means justice on the home-soil, inscribed in national legislations, but also justice in our international system. We need militant humanists who don’t back down from the barricades, who talk and act, who show their solidarity in action.
Guns and barricades are metaphors for a struggle that must find its appropriate means. I prefer them to be non-violent, but in some contexts there is no choice but to take up arms."
Indeed, the UN is gradually becoming an outpost of the "Authoritarian International". Russia and China, using their veto power, with the support of other non-democratic countries, are blocking any attempts to pacify dictators or even simply to condemn military coups. Under these circumstances, the creation of an active "League of Democracies" becomes simply necessary - to confront autocrats and dictators, to help underdeveloped countries in their social and economic development.
Westernization
There are big problems and big doubts associated with the accelerated progress of underdeveloped countries. Here's what American intellectual Mark Lilla writes:
"The truth is that billions of people will not live in liberal democracies in our lifetime, or in the lifetime of our children or grandchildren - if ever. This is not just due to culture and custom: ethnic divisions, religious sectarianism, illiteracy, economic injustice, meaningless national borders imposed by colonial powers ... the list goes on and on. Without the rule of law and a respected constitution, without a professional bureaucracy that treats citizens impartially, without military subordination to civilian rule, without regulatory bodies that ensure transparency in economic transactions, without social norms that encourage civic participation and law-abiding behaviour - without all this a modern liberal democracy is impossible. So, the only sensible question to ask when thinking about today's undemocratic states is: what is Plan B?
Nothing reflects the bankruptcy of current political thinking more than our unwillingness to raise the issue, which smacks of racism on the left and defeatism on the right. But if the only choice we can imagine is democracy or chaos, we rule out the possibility of improving undemocratic regimes by not trying to forcibly transform them (American-style) or vainly hoping (European-style) that human rights treaties, humanitarian interventions, legal sanctions, NGO projects and iPhone bloggers will make a lasting difference. These are the utterly characteristic delusions of our two continents."
Indeed, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the newly formed countries chose a democratic path of development. But "post-Soviet democracy" proved to be unstable. Only the populations of three Baltic countries (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) managed to maintain democracy. The rest of the countries have gradually - to a greater or lesser extent - degenerated into some incomprehensible for Western experts "hybrid regimes".
Unfortunately, M. Leal does not have a plan B. But there must be such a plan (for accelerated development of backward countries), otherwise the earth's ecosystem is in danger of collapse. The European Greens do not understand that the environmental goals cannot be achieved with backward countries. In the cities of Africa, Central Asia, India - modern sewage systems, waste processing, ecological production, green energy and much more should appear ... In other words, backward countries should turn into highly developed ones in record time.
The authors of the political economy work ("Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty" by James A. Robinson, Daron Acemoglu) were guided by the institutional principle in their work. In their view, the development of the state depends on political and economic institutions. The ruling elite, which concentrates all power in its hands, most often does not seek to develop these institutions and to improve the welfare of citizens, but thinks only of its own benefit.
Rapid progress in poor countries is therefore impossible without coercive external intervention, which is unacceptable from the point of view of existing ideology (and international laws). But there is no other way. The democratic West must assume the role of an active 'Civiliser', despite the failed attempts of the Americans and Europeans. It should be taken into account that autocrats easily break or circumvent any laws and rules by overthrowing democratic governments and persecuting the opposition.
Under these circumstances, the League's constitution, laws and doctrines, as well as generally accepted ideology, should allow for interference in internal affairs (including forceful) and "parental tutelage" of less developed countries. Naturally, such "tutelage" only makes sense if the population of the troubled country has support. The flight from Afghanistan in August 2021 is a reminder of what happens when popular support is lost.
If the League existed in 2022, a Russian attack on Ukraine would be impossible!
If the League had existed in 2020, there would have been an intervention in Belarus. After the election fraud, immediately after the brutal suppression of mass protests, the League special forces would seize the government buildings in Minsk and arrest "president" Lukashenko and other high-ranking criminals... The population of Belarus would rejoice, the League population would be terribly proud of the determination of its leadership... Belarus is quite a developed country, and it could become fully independent in a few years, without external tutelage.
This is a favourable scenario. What if the generals of the Belarusian army start a civil war? What should be done according to the League's ideology and strategy? Then it would be necessary to form local armed formations of voluntary defenders of democracy. And win together, making full use of the combat capabilities of the League army, including the most modern combat equipment.
And what happens if Russia intervenes and starts using nuclear weapons? Then there would be a nuclear war. You have to have an overwhelming military advantage and decisiveness to avoid a nuclear war (and indeed Russian interference).
What would be the League's actions after the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022? Answer: no problems. With the League in place, the invasion simply wouldn't have happened.
Consider the war in Afghanistan (from 2001 to 2021) from the point of view of an external “Civilizer”. At the beginning of the war, most of Afghanistan was controlled by Taliban - organization of radical Islamists. The northern part of the country was controlled by the "Northern Alliance" - an association of several field commanders. Each commander established his own orders on his own territory. However, the Northern Alliance as a whole was represented by Ahmad Shah Massoud, who maintained a more or less civilized order. Women were even allowed to work and study!
A Western coalition military operation began on 7 October 2001 (described on wikipedia). For the first month, combat operations were limited to US air strikes against Taliban military targets. The Taliban's air defense system was knocked out almost immediately; all of their aviation was destroyed at their airfields. Communication and supply systems were destroyed.
After a month of bombing, the Taliban's fighting ability declined and, on 9 November 2001, the Northern Alliance conducted its first major offensive since the start of the air campaign. By the end of the year, almost all of Afghanistan had been liberated from the Taliban.
Hamid Karzai, appointed head of the transitional Afghan administration in December 2001 and confirmed as interim president in June 2002 by the Loya Jirga (All Afghan Council of Elders), took over.
From the point of view of the Civiliser, the military intervention of the Western coalition should have stopped there! The country had made a great "civilisation leap". The savage Taliban were replaced by a centralised state, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. This state should have been further assisted to maintain a higher degree of civility in fighting radical Islamic terrorism. Had "civilised Islam" in Afghanistan been able to survive, the world would now be a different place.
However, further developments in the real world was disastrous. After about a year, the Taliban recovered and turned to guerrilla warfare. Operations against the Taliban were not without civilian casualties. While in 2001 many people (especially in urban areas) welcomed the arrival of armed foreigners, attitudes changed dramatically over time.
As a result of guerrilla warfare and terrorist actions, Western losses increased year by year. Attacks on Western alliance personnel by police and Afghan army personnel became more frequent. Over time the Taliban began to capture cities and entire provinces. Until - in August 2021 - coalition troops had to literally "run away" from Afghanistan.
In the arguments above, the terms "level of development" and "civilisational leap" were used. Many authors object to their use, pointing out that any civilisation can only be understood in terms of that civilisation. For example, Samuel P. Huntington in his book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" does not use the concept "level of development" at all. In his view, this approach reflects a dangerous "Western arrogance" that creates conflict situations.
The division of human communities into "civilisations" is one extreme. The other extreme is the division into democracies and non-democracies. Freedom House promotes democracy and has documented human rights violations around the world. Its annual report "Freedom in the World" defines the level of freedom in each country on the basis of a composite index that takes into account many factors, such as freedom of the press, civil liberties and so on. It divides countries into "free", "partly free" and "unfree".
Such a division may be useful in deciding who can be included in the League of Democracies. Otherwise, this approach has proved to be a dead end. Mark Lilla writes "…big surprise in world politics since the cold war’s end is not the advance of liberal democracy but the reappearance of classic forms of non-democratic political rule in modern guises.”.
Consider this process in terms of the "techno-humanitarian balance" hypothesis.
Techno-Humanitarian Balance (TG-Balance)
the author of the TG-balance hypothesis is Akop Pogosovich Nazaretyan.
In accordance with the hypothesis of techno-humanitarian balance, throughout the history of mankind, there was a logical relationship between three variables: the technological capacity, the quality of cultural and psychological regulation and internal stability of the society. One of the consequences of the hypothesis is that with increasing destructive power of the weapon and the demographic density the percentage of victims of violence among population did not increase in the long-term retrospective, on the contrary, it decreased; this was due to the regular exclusions of societies with decompensated aggressiveness. It is shown that the observations and calculations generally confirm this paradoxical assumption.
In other words, the hypothesis of "TH-balance" states that the greater the power of military and production tools, the more advanced means of internal regulation are necessary to preserve society. If the technological potential of society exceeds the regulatory mechanisms, a syndrome of "homo prekrisimos" emerges, a period of euphoria begins, and then follows the inevitable painful collapse, crisis. Most civilisations on Earth have not perished because of external causes such as climate change, meteorite falls, volcanic eruptions and so on. They ruined themselves by undermining the natural and organisational foundations of their existence. Techno-humanitarian balance is the key law of selecting societies for viability...
... Here is a typical example from contemporary ethnography. The Khmer mountain tribe lived in Vietnam. For thousands of years they lived in their niche, hunting with bows and arrows. But during the Vietnam War, the tribe disappeared. The Americans blamed the Viet Cong for their extermination, while the Vietnamese blamed the Americans. But the investigation showed that no one touched them, everything was simpler and more terrible. The savages got their hands on American carbines. They quickly mastered the new equipment and after a few years the tribe disappeared. They killed each other, destroyed the surrounding fauna, degraded.
Similar stories happened to the Indians during the American conquest. The sudden leap across historical time is not painless. In ordinary, authentic history, there are no such abrupt transitions; everything stretches over centuries, and the culture has time to adapt to new destructive technologies, develop new cultural mechanisms for deterring aggression, a new morality and system of values.
Let's look at the world in terms of the idea of techno-humanitarian balance.
With the invention of the atomic bomb and the means of its delivery, the "technological capability" of the means of destruction increased. But the "regulatory mechanisms" in response to this threat began to emerge as a result of the "Cuban Missile Crisis" in 1961. The crisis nearly escalated into a nuclear war. As a result, the parties (the USSR and the US) agreed on consultations, equipped a direct telephone link between the top leadership, and began discussing and adopting treaties (on control and reduction of weapons of mass destruction - WMD). Thus, the TG-balance was restored.
In today's global world, the TG balance is once again broken. Thanks to globalisation, savages have gained access to the most modern technologies. Therefore, self-destruction of the entire earthly civilization is possible - according to the scenario of the "Mountain Khmers".
Mark Lilla describes it more tolerantly: “The break-up of the Soviet empire and the “shock therapy” that followed it produced new oligarchies and kleptocracies that have at their disposal innovative tools of finance and communication; the advance of political Islam has placed millions of Muslims, who make up a quarter of the world’s population, under more restrictive theocratic rule; tribes, clans, and sectarian groups have become the most important actors in the post-colonial states of Africa and the Middle East; China has brought back despotic mercantilism”.
Russia has made a significant contribution to the violation of the TH-balance. For example, the "Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missile Treaty "(INF Treaty), signed back in 1987, ceased to operatein 2019 - due to mutual recriminations between Russia and the US about its non-compliance. As a result, there are more missiles and fewer "cultural regulators". There are many examples, as Russia's foreign policy priority has become a deliberate destruction of the established TG balance.
Internet was invented in the USA at the request of the military in 1969. In the eighties, scientists began to use it, and in the nineties it became publicly available. In the 2000`s, cyber warfare - cyber-attacks, espionage, information war - began on the Internet. Once again, the most advanced weapons, computer and network technologies ended up in the hands of savages from Russia, Iran, China, North Korea...
An even greater danger is the artificial intelligence (AI) used in combat technology - autonomous drones, missiles, self-propelled 'killer robots', submersibles and spacecraft. The danger is the lack of "cultural regulators". Simply banning "killer robots" does not work - many countries oppose it. But the greatest danger is that the rate at which new killer technologies emerge exceeds the speed at which international agreements can be adopted - while negotiators are negotiating one problem, several new ones are emerging.
What conclusions can be drawn (from an analysis of the TG-balance hypothesis) for the "League" and its ideology? As long as "wild" countries have access to modern military technology, an arms race of attrition is inevitable.
Under difficult conditions - an arms race and economic war - countries like China, Russia or Iran must go bankrupt, as happened to the Soviet Union (which went bankrupt - not least because of exorbitant military spending).
Unfortunately, democracies are currently developing shamefully slowly, especially compared to China. How to achieve "acceleration" of the League is discussed in the previous section, "Straitjacket for Capital.
Hybrid “Chilly War”
Why "chilly war" and not "cold war"? During the Cold War, the economies of the warring camps were isolated - almost completely. In our time of globalisation, this is not possible. Therefore, despite antagonism, economic ties will help to prevent a global war.
Authoritarian countries are always preparing for war. Until recently, it was believed in democratic countries that wars were forever over, that any problem could be solved by diplomatic efforts, that the treaties concluded would be honoured.
It is already known, for instance, that Russia possesses and uses chemical weapons despite the fact that it has signed and ratified the "Chemical Weapons Convention". At the same time the Russian leadership denies all accusations! This is one of many examples where authoritarian countries fail to fulfill their obligations and their leaders lie.
Authoritarian countries such as Russia, Iran, China have very different ideologies, but one thing they have in common is that deception and violation of obligations is not considered as immoral behaviour. Muslims, for example, do not even bother to hide it - any agreement with infidels is not worth the paper it is written on and can and will be broken at any time.
The West should now use the ancient wisdom: "If you want peace, prepare for war". An arms race and the maintenance of military superiority are the only way to achieve goals such as peace, arms limitation and reduction treaties. The implementation of the agreements reached can also only be achieved from a position of strength.
Since there is a hybrid war going on, the League needs to strengthen security forces, police forces and introduce censorship. There is also a need to wage ideological warfare.
As practice has shown, strong security agencies are prone to military coups. Only an accepted ideology and strong social institutions can prevent this.
Continue: Straitjacket for Capital
Content:
Militant humanism
Westernization
Techno-Humanitarian Balance
Hybrid “Chilly War”
Straitjacket for Capital
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