Twenty Theses on Democracies’ Post-Russian Defeat Strategy—Part Three
The Long-Term Conditions of Our Security: 3. The Strategy of Re-Balancing the World
In front of the Church St. Michael, Kyiv, May 25, 2023. Picture: Nicolas Tenzer
This paper is the third and final part of a substantial three-part essay that sets out twenty theses on what should be the global strategy of the democracies for the world after Russia’s defeat. After the strategy of democracy and the strategy of deterrence, the last six theses presented here aim to make clearer why our strategy cannot be limited, in terms of liberation and justice, to Ukraine, to a narrowly conceived Europe, or to the Western world, but must be much broader in scope.
The voluntarism in the assertion of freedom and our resolve to use deterrence in all its facets cannot be seen as brutal assertions, expressed in the name of Western arrogance. Democracies must be on the side of the people, especially in those countries that are most vulnerable and subject to misery, natural disasters sometimes caused by human decisions and repressive and brutal governments. The West has often set the worst example by supporting such governments against their peoples, blurring and destroying their own legitimacy.
The oblivion of freedom: a brief history
It is this very “order”—in reality more of a disorder where rules are weak and inconsistent—that we can no longer allow to flourish unless we risk increasing suspicion of our own rules. A diplomacy that is too centered on states accentuates the risk even more. The betrayal of the peoples of the Middle East by Western democracies at the time of the Arab Springs and the uprisings in Iran, in the name of a supposed ability of strong governments to fight Islamic terrorism, as well as the abandonment of the Hong Kong protesters, were moments of broken trust. They weakened the democracies both in the opinions of the “South” and strategically. This was more than a missed opportunity for the democracies: it was a collapse of what little credit they had left.