‘Repressive regimes are now in the ascendant and open societies are under siege. Today, China and Russia present the greatest threat to open society,’ said billionaire philanthropist George Soros on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, ...
Russia invaded Ukraine. This has shaken Europe to its core. The European Union was established to prevent such a thing from happening. Even when the fighting stops, as it eventually must, the situation will never revert to what it was before.
Other issues that concern all of humanity — fighting pandemics and climate change, avoiding nuclear war, maintaining global institutions — have had to take a back seat to that struggle. That’s why I say our civilisation may not survive. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the tide began to turn against open societies. Repressive regimes are now in the ascendant and open societies are under siege. Today, China and Russia present the greatest threat to open society.
These developments have had far-reaching consequences. They have sharpened the conflict between China and the United States. China has turned its tech platforms into national champions. The United States has been more hesitant because it has worried about their effect on the freedom of the individual.
For his part, Xi resolved to hold the Olympics in spite of the Omicron variant that was just beginning to spread in China. The organisers went to great lengths to create an airtight bubble for the competitors and the Olympics concluded without a hitch. He has carefully choreographed a process that would allow him to fulfil his life’s ambition, and everything must be subordinated to this goal.
Putin could not afford to accept defeat and changed his plans accordingly. He put General Vladimir Shamanov, well known for his cruelty in the siege of Grozny, in charge and ordered him to produce some success by May 9thconcentrated his efforts on the port city of Mariupol, which used to have 400,000 inhabitants. He reduced it to rubble, as he had done to Grozny, but the Ukrainian defenders held out for 82 days and the siege cost the lives of thousands of civilians.
The US has also done its best to reduce the financial gap between Russia and Ukraine by getting Congress to allocate an unprecedented $40-billion in military and financial aid to Ukraine.Recently, European leaders went even further. They wanted to use the invasion of Ukraine to promote greater European integration, so that what Putin is doing can never happen again.
It will take a long time to work out the details, but Europe seems to be moving in the right direction. Putin expected to be welcomed in Ukraine as a liberator; Xi Jinping is sticking to a Zero Covid policy that can’t possibly be sustained. The RePowerEu program announced last week reflects these fears. Olaf Scholz is particularly anxious because of the special deals that his predecessor Angela Merkel made with Russia. Mario Draghi is more courageous, although Italy’s gas dependency is almost as high as Germany’s.
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