It is a common truth, that the world these days isn’t a safe place to live in anymore. We have had several wars in the recent years, several crisis and a lot of fights over power, but it all has seemed to be cooling down. US troops are leaving Iraq, the Balkan is quieter than ever and even Zimbabwe has resolved it’s internal issues. But this might be deceitful, a shadow is lurking in the east and the middle-east. According to Edward Lucas, a correspondent for the Economist, says in his book The New Cold War that the new cold war has already started and the outlook for the the western liberal democracies to win it seems pretty bleak. That said we must console that he might be wrong. He might just be another one of those analysts who gets everything wrong because he bases his reports on the stories by Nostradamus. But he isn’t, simple as that. I’m not saying that he’s the cleverest man alive, but all his statements are well supported by facts. The purpose of this post is unfortunately not to retell the book, but just to state my view on the matter, so I am not going to go in depth on this topic.
Let us talk about communist crimes for a change. Everybody in Estonia, at least in the Estonian cultural sphere, understand that Estonia was occupied and most of us lack the words to describe the atrocities that happened during the Soviet years. It is also clear to all, that the people in the Russian cultural sphere do not have the same interpretation of the history of the 20th century. So why come up with populist statements like “Denying soviet crimes should be illegal”, which get a tremendous amount of support. I understand that most of us, even I, mourn our ancesters, but is it going to bring anyone back to life? I agree with the prosecution of people directly involved with the deportations, but there should be higher priorities.
As I mentioned before, Russia has become a direct threat to the security of the EU, especially the eastern countries, so why not deal with the threat? Why not say that we will not be toyed with? Is gas a good reason? Oil maybe? No. All of you people, who spend a lot of time thinking about the past are forgetting to look to the future. We cannot fight on two fronts, especially when one of the enemies we’re trying to beat is actually dead and buried. So there obviously isn’t any point in spreading the knowledge of communist crimes in western Europe, because all the time we are lobbying there on some lost cause, we could be spending on preparing ourselves for further action from the east.
At this point, we need to be looking towards the most powerful country in the world. No, I am not actually speaking about Latvia, but the US. It is certainly an anxious time for the Americans, as the presidential elections are nearing. I think that by now, almost everybody knows that I am a keen McCain supporter for certain reasons, but I’ll explain why sometime later. It is America and its role as world police, that is worth scrutinising this time.
The world is like an average kindergarten group. There is a group of guys who are always up to something bad, there is the guy who is stronger than others, but doesn’t really abuse the power, there is a girl, who for some strange reason always cries and of course, the guys who just play with their fancy toys and try to be cooler than others. USA is the big kid that helps others, Russia is the wannabe-cool guy and of course there also is Iran, who just pretends he has cool toys and actually borrows them sometimes from the wannabe. The world is also like a see-saw, there just never is balance. But if there is a really big kid with loads of cool stuff trying to keep the others in air, there just has to be the good “hey-I’m-gonna-grow-up-to-be-a-policeman” guy, who helps the others have fun too.
So why is it so necessary to take democracy and all the freedoms to the people who do not have them? Simple, it is mostly just better for the receivers. Take Iraq for example. Well, it was not the best decision in the world to go there and have a war, but hey, the people are happy. The people are tasting the fruits of freedom and they like it, by now at least, because for the first time in decades the different ethnic groups are finally sort of getting along.
There are other advantages to democracy than just friendship within the country. I for one, like having a conversation with an Arab or a Chinese guy. Then why, you might ask, should we change them and not us? Is it not a bit selfish to think of ourselves as the people who have the best system in the world. It is known that most of the people do not even want to have democracy, they love being governed by a random bloke who has the necessary ambitions. So, when is the process, we today know as spreading democracy , justified? When do we have the right to interfere in sovereign states’ politics?
The answer is not very simple. We have to take into account the International Law, relationships (both diplomatic and economic) between different countries and the consequences to our actions. So is it then fair to use military force to take down, for example, Kim Yong-il? Yes it is, because for one, the situation is terrible for the citizens, the state is a threat to every developed civilisation on planet Earth and they constantly abuse our kind-heartedness and mistake us for fools. I tend to believe the philosoph of John Stuart Mill on this one. If war and some losses is something we have to pay to prevent a catastrophe then the sacrifice is justified, especially when the people in the country get all these bonuses that western liberal democracies have. So, no more sweatshops for you mister Yan, help could be on the way.
At the same time we have a nice little country, Iran, that sort of has democracy, but their leader, Mahmud Ahmadinejad is an anti-western man. By that I mean that he is like a Kim Yong-il, but a bit more democratic. The problem is, that he sort of still is a danger to the western civilisation. In my sincere opinion, if Iran didn’t have Russia as its friend, the threat should be eliminated. It might be difficult to understand, why do I then support Georgia, if I don’t do the same with N. Korea and Iran? Georgia is different, as it is not a threat to Europe, America, Japan and others. Georgia is in our cultural sphere and it sure is a pity that we have left our ally with so little help.
So what can we do about these problems? What can I do about these problems? Nothing, most probably, but we, I and all the other nice pronouns can share our ideas with the world. We can support big ideas and hope that all goes well and those of us, who will take up politics will use their mandate to make a difference.
What we can do in the wider perspective, is to pressurise the countries that are potentially dangerous to us. The EU is more powerful than we can imagine and the same goes for the US. We must employ further trade embargoes, in Russia’s case, we can stop the WTO-Russia and EU-Russia partnership talks. We must have a tighter grip on those states or else we are going to pay dearly.
hn.
