Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Who would’ve thought that the Soviet Union would rise from the ashes and re-establish itself in Eastern Europe once again?
It’s now clear that is exactly what Russia President Vladimir Putin wants to do. He has reportedly said the Soviet Union’s fall was “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century” and his actions are speaking louder than his words. So far, he has invaded the former Soviet “possessions” of Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, and Ukraine in 2022.
It’s an opportune time for his ambitious expansion; the U.S. is in a weakened position, both internally and externally, as is NATO and the European Union. In the great global conflict between democracies and autocracies, democracy is losing.
Democracy has been in decline worldwide for years now, while authoritarian leaders like Putin have been on the rise. Putin has been rebuilding Russia’s power for more than two decades now by strengthening its military and undermining democracies all over the world — including ours — with cyber-based attacks on the processes that keep democracies alive.
Putin’s Russia has now undermined two U.S. elections in a row, and instead of fighting them off, we’ve turned the fight inward. Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election helped elect Donald Trump, who in turn embraced Russia’s misinformation campaigns and took them to the next level by claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him. It’s a testament to Russia’s effectiveness that so many Americans believe Trump’s baseless contention that the election was illegitimate.
So now we’re struggling just to hold our democratic processes together, not because they’re broken, but because the seeds of doubt have been planted. The fact that about a third of our U.S. population doesn’t believe in the legitimacy of President Biden’s election shows just how weak our democracy has become.
And it’s worse in other parts of the world. According to Freedom House, a nonprofit that studies and advocates for democracy, freedom and human rights around the world, only 20.3% of the world’s population lives in a free society. What’s even more sobering is that, in 2005, that number was 46%, or nearly half the world’s population living free.
A big reason for that dramatic decline in democracies comes from a rise in what Freedom House calls “the promotion of autocratic norms” in places like China, which tightened the screws on free speech last year and is using its sphere of influence to encourage other countries to do the same.
Moreover, the economic sanctions being imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine will be offset by China’s willingness to buy Russian wheat, thereby offsetting, at least to some degree, the West’s sanctions against Russia. In other words, Russia’s gas supply line into Western European may soon be inhibited by sanctions, but that sale of wheat will help prop up the Russian economy anyway.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is disturbing for democracies all over the world. It’s the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II, and if Russia succeeds in taking Ukraine, it could encourage other autocracies to expand their territories as well. If Russia gets away with it, China might feel emboldened to take Taiwan; after all, China Communist Party leader Xi Jinping sees that nation in much the same way that Putin sees Ukraine, as rightfully theirs.
Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at: