Monday, October 14, 2019

The Alternative to Hegemony isn't Peace

The Alternative to Hegemony isn't Peace
EXCERPT: "We face behemoth rivals in Russia and China, rivals that are structurally hostile to us. By structurally hostile, I mean that to survive, these regimes must discredit liberal democracy. Why? Precisely because illiberal democracies are genuinely democratic. Someone like Putin, for example, cannot afford to just let us be, because Russians vote.... Information enters the country; Russians travel abroad. If the Russian people come widely to believe that liberal societies are vastly more successful, they will insist upon Russia’s liberalization, which would spell Putin’s doom. Chaos and dysfunction in liberal democracies are necessary to the argument the Kremlin makes to the Russian public; to wit, that liberalism does not work there, and it will not work here....This is why, as it is all-too-slowly dawning on us, Russia spends billions to influence the West’s information environment. The goal is just to create the biggest mess he can create. The West must be in a state of chaos and dysfunction."

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