The geopolitical editor at the Economist, David Rennie, recently interviewed Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, where they discussed Mr Stubb’s “plan to save the liberal world order” (link). Richard Cullen pens a brief report card highlighting some of the challenges facing this worthy rescue mission.
WE KNOW THAT the enduring heartland of liberalism is the Western world. So, how does it look today?
- The Global West is led by an Orange Emperor who rashly rules from the Hill Billy White House (link) with a cabinet featuring a team of money-baron buddies who look like they stepped out of a menacing, satirical political novel (link).
- That remarkable leader is in charge of what is now the world’s paramount hoodlum democracy, as it swaggers from one side of the globe to the other, transcendentally bombing, killing and destroying on an extraordinary scale while also applying homicidal levels of economic strangulation to its anointed foes (and certain allies, if needs be) (link).
- Meanwhile, the US and most of its pilot-fish muchachos have teamed up with an extremely violent terrorist state in the Middle East, to embrace and fuel the Gaza genocide so that, for the rest of the world – beyond their sinister Western-bubble – Gaza looks as emblematically wicked as Guernica in 1937 but many times worse (link).
- And, most recently, we have heard a powerful argument from the US Secretary of State explaining to the Global South how the white man’s burden remains a primary Western responsibility (link).
Unhelpfully for Mr Stubb and the Economist, all this enduring, massively destructive, homicidal Western adventurism continues to be heavily marketed as advancing democracy, punishing human rights abuses and crushing repression (link).
Good luck to President Stubb who clearly still believes the patient is not beyond saving.
Richard Cullen is an adjunct law professor at the University of Hong Kong and a popular writer on current affairs.
To see a list of articles he has written for this outlet, click this phrase.