Global flux: Can a spate of deals transcend a clash of convictions?

Mint

14-05-2025

After a tumultuous month, the US and China seem headed for a trade deal, with Donald Trump probably dreaming of billions more as he lands in the Gulf. Once upon a time, human rights, advancing democracy, peace and security would have been foremost on the US president's agenda. But the world order has changed abundantly since the defining moment of post-modern history, 12 June 1987, during the dizzying heights of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union. It was on this day that Ronald Reagan uttered perhaps his most famous words, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Fast forward to 1989: the Berlin Wall crumbled and brought the Iron Curtain crashing down with it. America, it appeared, had emerged as the winner of the Cold War together with capitalism and liberal democracy. Communism as a political ideology was debunked and disparaged. Pieces of the Wall went on sale at huge prices in what seemed like a celebration of capitalism's victory over communism. The uprising in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June that year added to the impression that the days of totalitarianism were numbered.
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Earlier that year, Francis Fukuyama had presciently summed up the moment in his article, The End of History? Human social evolution in which rival ideologies marked the development of history, he argued, was now at an end. He was inspired by Hegel and Marx, who had both written about their competing versions of the pinnacle or 'end' of human development. Now totalitarian states had been shown to fail, while the political and economic principles of liberal democracy thrived, Fukuyama noted; hence history was over.
The Soviet Union split up in 1991. But history was not over. The era of identity politics had just begun. Identity-based pre-colonial political yearnings, which had been quashed under uneasy Cold War alliances, increasingly resulted in separatist movements, violent upheavals and sometimes new borders. The bipolar world may have faded, but the new world left in its aftermath, it seemed, was not going to be united peacefully under capitalist and democratic ambitions.
In 1992, Samuel Huntington published The Clash of Civilizations? Throwing down a gauntlet to Fukuyama, Huntington theorized that the fault lines of humanity were drawn along cultural fault lines and no longer along state lines. The Balkans war, 1993 World Trade Centre bombings and genocide in Rwanda lent credence to his theory; yet, it was staunchly resisted by the liberal intelligentsia.
Modernization, Huntington claimed, had eroded traditional values and created a void among citizenry. That, coupled with rising disenchantment with Western hegemony, had fanned fundamentalism. History had not ended, but history as we knew it had.
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Post 9/11, Western academics accepted some hard truths in the Clash thesis. But they clung firmly to two axioms that were influential in driving Western foreign policy for the next few decades. The first was that democracy in itself was a goal worth fighting for and the second was that free market success would entice citizens in illiberal repressive regimes to democratize.
The hope was that the two would co-exist and reinforce each other. Containment gave way to economic engagement, as the West tried to foster market economies and strengthen democracy in states of the former Soviet Union, among others. Bringing China into the World Trade Organization was part of this strategy.
While economies did indeed grow, in some countries, the free market's 'invisible hand' inspired no democratic revolution. Instead, the Iron Curtain gave way to an Iron Vault. Massive profits from trade with the West, instead of ameliorating the quality of life of the average Russian, Venezuelan or Zimbabwean, enriched and strengthened autocratic leaders and their cronies in these countries.
Anne Appelbaum calls them 'Autocracy Inc': a group of strongmen 'bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power." In this, they are complicit with an international network of ultra-rich friends, lawyers and financiers who help them make deals to sidestep sanctions, evade taxes, launder assets and manipulate the media.
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The biggest threat to such autocracies are democratic laws that protect free speech, civil liberties and due process. Such strongmen abhor institutions that observe, respect and enforce these inalienable rights, domestically or internationally. Their weakening of such institutions is deliberate and intentional. Attacks on political opponents, universities, multilateral organizations and branches of government that seek to protect the law are part of their trademark playbook.
Today, even as trade deals are in focus, a new clash is at play: a clash of convictions. On one side is liberal progressivism, marked by a belief in the rule of law and civil liberties dating to the Code of Hammurabi, idealized by Locke and Voltaire and encompassing a belief in constitutions, international law and a multilateral world order.
On the other side are autocratic and quasi-autocratic regimes where laws are manipulated, where science, the arts and education are co-opted to promote a particular narrative, where civil liberties are selectively enforced and where might, money and messaging triumph. Hearteningly, people in Canada and Australia recently voted resoundingly for the former to protect their democracies against the remotest threat of the latter.
History isn't quite over, but the future of democracy hangs in the balance.
The author is a former World Banker and writer.