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In February 1994, in the grand ballroom of the town hall in Hamburg, Germany, the president of Estonia gave a remarkable speech. Standing before an audience in evening dress, Lennart Meri praised the values of the democratic world that Estonia then aspired to join. The freedom of every individual, the freedom of the economy and trade, as well as the freedom of the mind, of culture and science, are inseparably interconnected, he told the burghers of Hamburg. They form the prerequisite of a viable democracy. His country, having regained its independence from the Soviet Union three years earlier, believed in these values: The Estonian people never abandoned their faith in this freedom during the decades of totalitarian oppression.

But Meri had also come to deliver a warning: Freedom in Estonia, and in Europe, could soon be under threat. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the circles around him were returning to the language of imperialism, speaking of Russia as primus inter paresthe first among equalsin the former Soviet empire. In 1994, Moscow was already seething with the language of resentment, aggression, and imperial nostalgia; the Russian state was developing an illiberal vision of the world, and even then was preparing to enforce it. Meri called on the democratic world to push back: The West should make it emphatically clear to the Russian leadership that another imperialist expansion will not stand a chance.

At that, the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin, got up and walked out of the hall.

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Meris fears were at that time shared in all of the formerly captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe, and they were strong enough to persuade governments in Estonia, Poland, and elsewhere to campaign for admission to NATO. They succeeded because nobody in Washington, London, or Berlin believed that the new members mattered. The Soviet Union was gone, the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg was not an important person, and Estonia would never need to be defended. That was why neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush made much attempt to arm or reinforce the new NATO members. Only in 2014 did the Obama administration finally place a small number of American troops in the region, largely in an effort to reassure allies after the first Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Nobody else anywhere in the Western world felt any threat at all. For 30 years, Western oil and gas companies piled into Russia, partnering with Russian oligarchs who had openly stolen the assets they controlled. Western financial institutions did lucrative business in Russia too, setting up systems to allow those same Russian kleptocrats to export their stolen money and keep it parked, anonymously, in Western property and banks. We convinced ourselves that there was no harm in enriching dictators and their cronies. Trade, we imagined, would transform our trading partners. Wealth would bring liberalism. Capitalism would bring democracyand democracy would bring peace.

From the January/February 2022 issue: Anne Applebaum on kleptocrats and the United States dirty-money problem

After all, it had happened before. Following the cataclysm of 193945, Europeans had indeed collectively abandoned wars of imperial, territorial conquest. They stopped dreaming of eliminating one another. Instead, the continent that had been the source of the two worst wars the world had ever known created the European Union, an organization designed to find negotiated solutions to conflicts and promote cooperation, commerce, and trade. Because of Europes metamorphosisand especially because of the extraordinary transformation of Germany from a Nazi dictatorship into the engine of the continents integration and prosperityEuropeans and Americans alike believed that they had created a set of rules that would preserve peace not only on their own continents, but eventually in the whole world.

This liberal world order relied on the mantra of Never again. Never again would there be genocide. Never again would large nations erase smaller nations from the map. Never again would we be taken in by dictators who used the language of mass murder. At least in Europe, we would know how to react when we heard it.

But while we were happily living under the illusion that Never again meant something real, the leaders of Russia, owners of the worlds largest nuclear arsenal, were reconstructing an army and a propaganda machine designed to facilitate mass murder, as well as a mafia state controlled by a tiny number of men and bearing no resemblance to Western capitalism. For a long timetoo longthe custodians of the liberal world order refused to understand these changes. They looked away when Russia pacified Chechnya by murdering tens of thousands of people. When Russia bombed schools and hospitals in Syria, Western leaders decided that that wasnt their problem. When Russia invaded Ukraine the first time, they found reasons not to worry. Surely Putin would be satisfied by the annexation of Crimea. When Russia invaded Ukraine the second time, occupying part of the Donbas, they were sure he would be sensible enough to stop.

Even when the Russians, having grown rich on the kleptocracy we facilitated, bought Western politicians, funded far-right extremist movements, and ran disinformation campaigns during American and European democratic elections, the leaders of America and Europe still refused to take them seriously. It was just some posts on Facebook; so what? We didnt believe that we were at war with Russia. We believed, instead, that we were safe and free, protected by treaties, by border guarantees, and by the norms and rules of the liberal world order.

With the third, more brutal invasion of Ukraine, the vacuity of those beliefs was revealed. The Russian president openly denied the existence of a legitimate Ukrainian state: Russians and Ukrainians, he said, were one peoplea single whole. His army targeted civilians, hospitals, and schools. His policies aimed to create refugees so as to destabilize Western Europe. Never again was exposed as an empty slogan while a genocidal plan took shape in front of our eyes, right along the European Unions eastern border. Other autocracies watched to see what we would do about it, for Russia is not the only nation in the world that covets its neighbors territory, that seeks to destroy entire populations, that has no qualms about the use of mass violence. North Korea can attack South Korea at any time, and has nuclear weapons that can hit Japan. China seeks to eliminate the Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group, and has imperial designs on Taiwan.

From the December 2021 issue: Anne Applebaum on how the autocrats are winning

We cant turn the clock back to 1994, to see what would have happened had we heeded Lennart Meris warning. But we can face the future with honesty. We can name the challenges and prepare to meet them.

There is no natural liberal world order, and there are no rules without someone to enforce them. Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others. We might not want to compete with them, or even care very much about them. But they care about us. They understand that the language of democracy, anti-corruption, and justice is dangerous to their form of autocratic powerand they know that that language originates in the democratic world, our world.

This fight is not theoretical. It requires armies, strategies, weapons, and long-term plans. It requires much closer allied cooperation, not only in Europe but in the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. NATO can no longer operate as if it might someday be required to defend itself; it needs to start operating as it did during the Cold War, on the assumption that an invasion could happen at any time. Germanys decision to raise defense spending by 100 billion euros is a good start; so is Denmarks declaration that it too will boost defense spending. But deeper military and intelligence coordination might require new institutionsperhaps a voluntary European Legion, connected to the European Union, or a Baltic alliance that includes Sweden and Finlandand different thinking about where and how we invest in European and Pacific defense.

If we dont have any means to deliver our messages to the autocratic world, then no one will hear them. Much as we assembled the Department of Homeland Security out of disparate agencies after 9/11, we now need to pull together the disparate parts of the U.S. government that think about communication, not to do propaganda but to reach more people around the world with better information and to stop autocracies from distorting that knowledge. Why havent we built a Russian-language television station to compete with Putins propaganda? Why cant we produce more programming in Mandarinor Uyghur? Our foreign-language broadcastersRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio Mart in Cubaneed not only money for programming but a major investment in research. We know very little about Russian audienceswhat they read, what they might be eager to learn.

Funding for education and culture needs rethinking too. Shouldnt there be a Russian-language university, in Vilnius or Warsaw, to house all the intellectuals and thinkers who have just left Moscow? Dont we need to spend more on education in Arabic, Hindi, Persian? So much of what passes for cultural diplomacy runs on autopilot. Programs should be recast for a different era, one in which, though the world is more knowable than ever before, dictatorships seek to hide that knowledge from their citizens.

Trading with autocrats promotes autocracy, not democracy. Congress has made some progress in recent months in the fight against global kleptocracy, and the Biden administration was right to put the fight against corruption at the heart of its political strategy. But we can go much further, because there is no reason for any company, property, or trust ever to be held anonymously. Every U.S. state, and every democratic country, should immediately make all ownership transparent. Tax havens should be illegal. The only people who need to keep their houses, businesses, and income secret are crooks and tax cheats.

We need a dramatic and profound shift in our energy consumption, and not only because of climate change. The billions of dollars we have sent to Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia have promoted some of the worst and most corrupt dictators in the world. The transition from oil and gas to other energy sources needs to happen with far greater speed and decisiveness. Every dollar spent on Russian oil helps fund the artillery that fires on Ukrainian civilians.

Take democracy seriously. Teach it, debate it, improve it, defend it. Maybe there is no natural liberal world order, but there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do. They are hardly perfect; our own has deep flaws, profound divisions, terrible historical scars. But thats all the more reason to defend and protect them. Few of them have existed across human history; many have existed for a time and then failed. They can be destroyed from the outside, but from the inside, too, by divisions and demagogues.

Perhaps, in the aftermath of this crisis, we can learn something from the Ukrainians. For decades now, weve been fighting a culture war between liberal values on the one hand and muscular forms of patriotism on the other. The Ukrainians are showing us a way to have both. As soon as the attacks began, they overcame their many political divisions, which are no less bitter than ours, and they picked up weapons to fight for their sovereignty and their democracy. They demonstrated that it is possible to be a patriot and a believer in an open society, that a democracy can be stronger and fiercer than its opponents. Precisely because there is no liberal world order, no norms and no rules, we must fight ferociously for the values and the hopes of liberalism if we want our open societies to continue to exist.

This article appears in the May 2022 print edition with the headline There Is No Liberal World Order.

Read the original here:
There Is No Liberal World Order - The Atlantic

Voters must make a choice between war and peace; danger and security, in Sundays general elections, Gergely Gulys, the prime ministers chief of staff, has said in a newspaper interview.

In the interview published by pro-Fidesz Magyar Hrlap on Friday, Gulys said election turnout was a signal measure of democracy, and turnout had always been higher when Fidesz was in power.

Democracy is alive and stronger with Fidesz, he said, urging voters to cast their ballot for the ruling alliance.

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He said the choice was also between moving forward, which had brought about the greatest developments since the change of political system in 1990, or back to the government that led to the bankruptcy of 2002-2010.

Referring to former Socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsny and the opposition parties, he said politicians who destroyed the country want to regain power.

Gulys insisted that the united oppositions prime ministerial candidate, Pter Mrki-Zay, had shown himself during the campaign to be unfit for the job of prime minister.

He also accused the opposition of making statements that, if they were government policy, would make Hungary a warring party.

He pledged that a Fidesz government would preserve the countrys peace and security.

The minister said that the government at the same time had implemented a policy of strengthening Hungarys armed forces, so their defence capabilities are significantly higher than before. Alongside the security guarantee of NATO membership, we can provide the highest possible security for the country, he said, adding that Mrki-Zays words and actions, by contrast, endangered Hungarian security.

Referring to peace talks, the minister said: The Istanbul talks are perhaps the first ray of hope.

Gulys said Hungarys standpoint on the war was grounded in international law. Russia has attacked Ukraine, violating international law and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia recognised Ukraines territorial integrity, he said.

Citing international violations that Ukraine had previously committed against national minorities, including the Hungarians, he said the war had not changed Hungarys stance. We still expect Ukraine to restore regulations on the use of the mother tongue in education, he said.

On the subject of European Union funding, Gulys said Prime Minister Viktor Orbn fought for more than 100 billion forints in direct aid to Hungary in Brussels last week. He added that Brussels would stop breaking the law and we can agree on a recovery fund after Sundays election.

Regarding the seven-year budget, he said Hungary was doing well, and constructive negotiations were taking place.

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Meanwhile, referring to the opposition, he said: In 2020, the left aimed to rid itself of Ferenc Gyurcsny and quarantine Jobbik; today Gyurcsny is the leader of the strongest opposition party and wants to assume power in alliance with Jobbik. This, he added, demonstrated that the opposition lacked principles and the ability to reinvent itself.

featured image via Tibor Rosta/MTI

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PMO Head Gulys: "Democracy is Alive and Stronger" with Fidesz - Hungary Today

It is impossible to forecast how the war in Ukraine is going to end: current events are fast-moving. Given the inhumanity of it all, it is important to consider the resulting uncertainty and implications for the entire world.

Uncertainty about the global ramifications of the war clearly has driven world prices of liquified natural gas (LNG) dramatically higher over the past several months. These price increases have not hurt Russia: In fact, they have helped to finance its war effort. Rapidly climbing LNG and oil prices, however, have, hurt much of the rest of the world, as supplies of LNG have been gobbled up swiftly by the highest bidders with the largest appetites. Those most hurt by all this live in other developed and developing nations all around the world. And even in many European countries and the United States, those with limited means already are suffering.

So what can be done? Any first-year student of economics knows that increasing supplies from all non-Russian sources of energy could work over time, especially in concert with efforts to reduce demand. These are good ideas, of course, but the devil is in the details. There are at least two distinct options:

Option 1: Invest in opening untapped supplies of petroleum and natural gas, drill for more of both, operate existing distribution infrastructure at its fullest capacity, and build more as quickly as possible; or

Option 2:Two complementary parts, here: (a) invest in expanding diverse and decentralized non-fossil energy systems; and (b) invest in R&D on new technologies that can smooth the demand-side transition to using electricity, technologies such as electric vehicles.

The European Union recognizes that the choice is not binary. The EUs announced plan is designed to reduce dependence on Russian LNG as quickly as possible by expanding access to reserves from the United States. a component of option 1. It seeks to do so while making simultaneous longer-term investments in frontloading renewable energy and improving energy efficiency (the very spirit of the dual supply and demand approach of Option 2).

Poland and Belgium already are expanding their LNG terminals, and Greece and Germany have each recently approved construction of three new terminals. Germany has committed to independence from Russian LNG by the middle of 2024. The U.S. has agreed to supply an additional 15 billion metric tons of LNG this year, and the EU will work to promote substitution to LNG to the tune of 50 billion metric tons per year an effort that will require increased supplies from many places.

But what about the longer term? Details matter there, too. Should the developed world expand the status quo as described in parts of option 1, or should it accelerate its movement toward the environment-friendly structure of option 2? Future investment should favor the latter, and not simply because it would promote a less hazardous climate future. Given the events of the past several decades, it is important to note that doing so would strengthen democracys place as a fundamental principle of modern government.

Mr. Putin has successfully invaded sovereign nations whenever his hope of resurrecting the old Russian Empire has been threatened by independence movements within former Soviet satellite states. This time, however, he has encountered a country and population not easily subdued.Ukrainians are fiercely and effectively using weapons and training from the West to defend their way of life. Ukrainians have reminded the planets population that democracy is worth fighting for to the last breath, if necessary.

Putins war has pushed world energy markets to inflection points. It has created a perhaps once in a generation opportunity to reorganize and transform global markets toward renewables and thereby reduce the worlds dependence on fossil energy from countries with leadership antithetical to democracy (not just Russia). Investing aggressively in energy option 2 would reduce the political power of major fossil fuel exporting nations with authoritarian leaders.Why?Because rapid transition to Option 2 undermines the ability of autocrats to maintain their extraordinary market clench over supplies of scarce and essential commodities. Such a transition would undermine their access to money from the rest of the world money they use to fund inhumane oppression at home and unlawful and immoral extracurricular aggression abroad.

Shrinking such gains derived from formidable market power would strengthen the hand of democracy not by making democracy work better (it will always be messy), but by diminishing the use of fossil fuel energy to bankroll wars and hold energy-needy countries hostage. Constraining dictators and autocrats power over energy issues can help both to forward democratic principles and to help propel progress toward a cleaner and more healthy global environment.

Gary Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He served as convening lead author for multiple chapters and the Synthesis Report for the IPCC from 1990 through 2014 and was vice-chair of the Third US National Climate Assessment.

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Energy transformation can strengthen democracy and help fight climate change - Yale Climate Connections

The court, without oral arguments or a full set of briefs, effectively created a new standard for minority representation: Less is better. More is suspect. Taken together with a recent decision in a redistricting case from Alabama, its yet another warning that this court remains determined to shred even the tattered remains of the VRA and leave voters unprotected as GOP legislatures nationwide seek unparalleled control over elections.

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This most recent case began when Wisconsins Democratic governor and Republican Legislature deadlocked over new state senate and assembly maps, and the state Supreme Court stepped in as referee. The court set one key criterion: a map that made the least changes from the current one, which effectively locked in a GOP gerrymander, often called the nations most extreme.

A bipartisan 4-3 majority on the state court determined that Governor Tony Everss proposal which granted the GOP a 60-39 edge in the state assembly, but contained several more competitive seats than the Republican submission was vastly superior.

The Evers map preserved almost all of the existing GOP gerrymander. But for state Republican lawmakers and their colleagues on the Supreme Court that wasnt enough. The GOP filed suit, calling that new minority opportunity district a 21st century racial gerrymander. And the US Supreme Court which in 2018 preserved the brutal partisan gerrymander that kept the Wisconsin assembly in GOP hands even when Democratic candidates won hundreds of thousands more votes suddenly discovered a district it could not countenance.

The law around race and redistricting can be complicated. Yet none of this follows precedent. Indeed, its not even consistent with a decision the court made last month in a redistricting case from Alabama except in how it narrows the Voting Rights Act, limits the voting power of racial minorities, and entrenches Republican political advantage. It effectively ruled that Wisconsin could not create a seventh majority-minority seat without first proving that some smaller number would not be good enough. It reduces the VRA, our most powerful civil rights legislation ever, to grudging obligation.

The raw power play is apparent when compared with a decision last month from Alabama. In Merrill v. Milligan, Black voters sought a second majority-minority congressional district. Black voters make up 27 percent of Alabamas population but have been cracked and packed in such a way as to have a chance to elect a member in only one of seven districts. The plaintiffs submitted detailed maps showing how easy it would be to draw a second majority-minority district. A lower federal court decision delivered by two Trump-appointed judges found it a slam-dunk and ordered a new map drawn immediately.

A 5-4 Supreme Court majority, however, stayed that decision and ordered full arguments to be heard in fall 2022 in a case that threatens to further weaken Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits voting procedures that discriminate on the basis of race. Here, the extra work the court wanted to see from Wisconsin proving a minority district was warranted had been done. So the conservatives changed the rules: In Alabama, they ruled that it was too close to the November elections to change the map now. Yet the court had no trouble demanding a new map in Wisconsin, even though it was six weeks closer to the midterms.

The Roberts court ensured this redistricting cycle would be savage when it closed federal courts to partisan gerrymandering claims in 2019. This is also the first cycle without the preclearance previously required by the VRA, which has made it easier for lawmakers in Texas and elsewhere to lock in white political power even as minorities drive the nations population growth. Several conservative justices even want to strip the power of governors and state courts to have any say over redistricting and election procedures at all.

This is hardball politics divorced from history, consistency, morality, and precedent. The court is actively hollowing away the small-d democratic authority that binds a nation together.

David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesnt Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy.

Originally posted here:
The Supreme Court is playing hardball politics, and democracy is losing - The Boston Globe

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Evan McMullin in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021.

| March 31, 2022, 2:00 p.m.

Former President Donald Trump has waged war against democracy from the very beginning, but in the run-up to, and aftermath of, the 2020 presidential election, his conspiracy theories and anti-democratic actions became more dangerous.

From the January 6 insurrection to malicious lawsuits intending to overturn a democratic election, Trumps efforts showed just how fragile democracy can be if it isnt guarded carefully. But while the guardians of democracy succeeded this time, our next government may have other goals. Far too many Republican elected officials have pledged undying loyalty to Trump, even to the point of ignoring the will of the people, displaying remarkable contempt for democracy itself.

Nobody exemplifies this authoritarian sentiment better than Utah Sen. Mike Lee. Lee has made no secret of the contemptuous attitude in which he holds democracy. In fact, on October 8, 2020, this self-described constitutionalist tweeted, Democracy isnt the objective We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that. (The tweet is still public, by the way; hes made no effort to delete or retract it.) With statements like this, its no surprise that Lee has supported Trumps efforts to overthrow democracy. Lee poses a great danger to our very foundation of democratic government.

Only one candidate in 2022 can defeat Lee and protect our democracy against his (and Donald Trumps) attacks Evan McMullin. I do not agree with McMullin on a great many issues, but on the greatest issue for our republic democracy itself we are in complete accord. And, in the 2022 election, that issue will decide the future of our country, including if it will continue to exist.

The Utah Democratic Party should not endorse a candidate in this race. McMullins electoral chances rest on three key pillars Republicans who see the damage that Mike Lee is doing to democracy, independents who align with McMullins policies or desire to break the two-party hold on Washington, and Democrats who recognize that the most important issue in this race is the preservation of our democratic system. By endorsing a candidate, the Democratic Party signals its opposition to McMullin and increases the likelihood of Lees reelection.

In discussion of this issue, one point seems to resurface repeatedly that the Democratic Party should, in the interest of strategy, support someone running as a Democrat. But this belief is, though well-intentioned, mistaken. Kael Weston, the sole candidate running for the Democratic nomination, has to this point run only one campaign before. He lost the 2020 election for Utahs 2nd Congressional District 59.0%-36.6% a 22.6-point margin, underperforming President Joe Biden in the district.

Now he is running for U.S. Senate, a seat which Cook Political Report calls solidly Republican. He himself has not said that he believes the race to be unwinnable that would be unthinkable for a politician but looking at his history as well as this current race, he clearly doesnt mind a forlorn hope. For endorsing a clearly losing candidate, the party wouldnt gain anything of significance.

By endorsing Weston, the Democratic Party risks the one thing that it truly depends on democracy. If Lee succeeds in his goal of destroying democracy, the Democratic Party will no longer be able to have any chance of getting any candidates elected. The Democratic Party should not endorse anyone in this race, not only in the interest of democracy but in the interest of the Democratic Party and its policies all are jeopardized, as well as the very process they depend on if Lee is reelected.

Sen. Mike Lee poses an existential threat to democracy by his own admission, he opposes the very existence of democratic government. But he has not succeeded in destroying it yet. Utah must vote Lee out before he succeeds in robbing that power from us. Republicans, independents and Democrats must all put aside differences in policy to defeat Mike Lee and save our republic. Otherwise, we may soon find that 2022 was our last chance.

Atticus Teter is a student at West High School in Salt Lake City.

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Lee is a threat to democracy and McMullin is the only chance Utah voters have to defeat him. - Salt Lake Tribune