Valentine

The new world order? Every man for himself Now that America has hung up its hat when it comes to championing democracy, it is springtime for tyrants By ALEC RUSSELL of the Financial Times Kofi Annan had a favourite put-down for people who tried to argue that an autocrat could be the right answer for a weak or troubled state. “That’s Johnnie Walker talking . . . ” he would say, recalling how he and friends used to respond in Ghana when he was growing up and someone made an outlandish claim. Autocracies were “built on sand”, he believed; the only way to nurture a nation was via good governance; you just had to keep working at it. I heard the late UN secretary-general deliver this gentle “Johnnie Walker” rejoinder on a tour of Tanzania 15 years ago. It was a time when the post-cold war teleology of hope had run its course. And yet an aspirant breeze of democracy was blowing across much of the developing world. How dispirited Annan would be now. Authoritarianism has of course been on the rise in great powers, such as China and Russia, for over a decade, and in “middle powers”, from Turkey and the Gulf to India, and more recently and quite rapidly Indonesia too. But now that America has decided to hang up its hat when it comes to championing democracy, there is a broader springtime for tyrants. From Zimbabwe to Myanmar, thuggish autocracies seem emboldened to do pretty much what they like without fear of even a rhetorical reproof. As for Tanzania, the authorities have just suspended a newspaper for daring to report on possible tension in the government. A decade ago such an act would have led to pressure from western donors. How liberating it must be for intolerant politicians to be able to clamp down on the media with no fear of sanction . . .  Some will be tempted to riposte that this is nothing new: since when has America been a paragon of virtuous behaviour? It has, after all, always been self-interested and hypocritical — as have all dominant powers over the years. When Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, lambasted the idea of the American-led “rules-based global order” as “pleasant fiction” in January, his critique found particular favour in the global south. Many there have long resented the west’s inconsistencies. Exhibit A for the prosecution: Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in the cold war. He was a king of kleptocracy, yet he and other despots were cosseted by multiple US presidents as anti-Soviet pawns.  And yet, unfashionable as it is to defend America’s record on the world stage, that’s not the whole picture. Over the post-1945 decades there were many countries in which beleaguered opposition parties and news outlets were kept going by the support of the US state department and its agencies. In the early 1990s, when correspondents of the US government-funded Voice of America travelled to Angola, a one-party state opening up to the world, they were hailed as legends, such had been the impact of their broadcasts. Well that was then. Voice of America was closed by the Trump administration last year. Democracy promotion is off the US agenda. When last month allies of Zimbabwe’s president Emmerson Mnangagwa forced through a new law to extend his term, in breach of the constitution, there was not a chirp of protest from America. Other western countries too seem to have lost their spine. Britain and France are focusing on debt relief for Zimbabwe while saying nothing about the power grab. The financial savings from this retreat and a broader disinvestment in soft power are a rounding error. But the impact on opposition parties is dire. It is also short-sighted. Beijing is filling the soft power vacuum. In Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa’s backers are calling for him to stay on as a de facto president-for-life. He has just promoted 10 of them to be senators. He is said to have drawn heart from Trump’s offhand past suggestion that he might seek a third term. And so a tyranny takes root. Some talk despairingly — and inaccurately — of a return to “the law of the jungle”. When Rudyard Kipling, the chronicler of British imperialism, coined the phrase as the title of a poem, it was a compliment. He was saluting the way wolves worked together; his law of the jungle was about community, not chaos. “For the strength of the pack is the wolf,” he wrote. “And the strength of the wolf is the pack.” Carney implicitly invoked this “pack” spirit as a source of inspiration when he talked about middle powers needing to work together to keep multilateralism alive. Sometimes this will happen. The idea of plurilateralism — ad hoc coalitions on specific issues — is gathering fans, as is flexilateralism, whatever that may mean. But overall the global zeitgeist is “every man for himself” — or what is, yes, commonly understood as the law of the jungle. This is a cut-throat age when you can ruthlessly pursue goals. UN officials talk despairingly of how as many as 10 countries are fuelling the war in Sudan, all feeling assured of impunity. Supporters of America’s disengaged approach talk of a long-overdue return to realism. The world has changed, they say. That is true. But the end of US interest in spreading enlightenment ideals comes at a high price.  Annan would have known how to respond to anyone seeking to defend the prevailing cynical disregard of the merits of democracy. Quietly but firmly he would have ridiculed the notion, saying: “That’s Johnnie Walker talking.” And he would, of course, have been right. [email protected]