Alexander Rojavin, Law & Policy Scholar, JD Anticipated May 2020
The difficulty of writing a bi-weekly op-ed on some matter of policy is that since I began writing, several breaking news stories have shed new light on my subject. As I prepare to publish this, several more continue to break. Finding a moment’s peace from global developments has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for someone trying modestly to keep a finger on the world’s pulse. And yet, let us pause momentarily and turn our attention to the bygone times of one week ago.
On Sunday, November 10, Spain held its fourth general election in as many years, and while—once again—no party managed to secure a parliamentary majority, this election marked an unsettling development: Spain’s far-right, nationalist party Vox finally caught up to its European analogues and won a non-negligible fraction of the Spanish parliament’s seats (52 out of 350). Vox should evoke all of the same associations that parties like Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, France’s Rassemblement national (formerly Front national), and the United Kingdom’s UKIP evoke: degrees of Euroscepticism, various forms of xenophobia and chauvinism including but not limited to antisemitism and islamophobia, an expressed distaste for courtesy and decency, and campaigns and governing styles marked primarily by rank populism and demagoguery. Hope that Spain would be more resistant to such a shameless movement has proven false.
Indeed, the immune systems of many democracies are currently forced to grapple with such ideological viruses. And one of the major problems is that no democracy presently has a well-equipped leader at the head of its government to coordinate any coherent resistance to these far-right movements or to their far-left cousins. Democracies across the globe are either run by (1) autocrats and autocrat wannabes who are attempting (with varying degrees of success) to tighten their grips—think Hungary’s Orban, Chile’s Piñera, the United States’ Trump, Poland’s Duda, Brazil’s Bolsonaro—or (2) leaders who one way or another have proven feckless to stem the tide of political extremism. France’s Macron, despite implementing powerful laws against Russian disinformation and extensive, Russian-backed opposition during his presidential campaign, has now taken to opining that maybe Russia does belong back in the G7 and inviting Putin for friendly chats. Germany’s Merkel, despite being hailed by some as the new leader of the free world post-2016, has recently spent her time engaged in critically misguided endeavors, such as advocating on behalf of Nord Stream 2 directly against the interests of Western democracies. The UK’s political leadership is even more lackluster, with Boris Johnson on one side, avoiding the “far-right” label only because Farage exists on the same spectrum, and an opposition led by an anti-Semitic ditherer who believes that Evo Morales is a paragon of progressive splendor. These are but a few choice samples of democratic leadership in 2019—an exhaustive list would be too long and too disheartening for this post.
However, we should be wary of anyone decrying “the fall of democracies” and the “new era of autocracy.” Yes, the above list should give us all serious pause, but it does not mean that the broad desire for democracy is in retreat. The mere past several days have shown this: in Georgia, protests have flared up, with angry Georgians calling for new elections shortly after electoral reforms failed. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, democracy protests have been going on for several months, with a university campus now serving as the latest battleground in their resistance. Looking back at the past year, elections in Armenia, Ethiopia, and Ecuador have chosen leaders who champion—at the very least with their rhetoric—democratic processes and institutions. The hunger for democracy is still very much out there. What the above list shows is not that democracy has become less desirable—merely that democracy’s champions have lost their luster.
The desire for democracy is not the problem; proper, global leadership—or rather, its lack—is. European democratic leaders—the real ones—face increasing domestic distractions to allow them to champion democracy worldwide. While this is a gross simplification, the reality remains that African, Asian, and the few South American democratic leaders simply do not have the resources or the planetary bully pulpit to do so effectively. Throughout the last century, the mantle of global democratic leadership has fallen most readily to the head of the United States. The leaders wearing this mantle made many mistakes, but their shoulders have been the most usual home for the mantle. While the last three presidencies each uniquely damaged this reputation, they have not completely scourged the image of the US as the global democratic leader from people’s minds.
While the desire for democracy is still out there, it needs support, and any isolationist rhetoric coming from either end of the political spectrum does it no good. The United States must be prepared to carry not only the flag for the United States, but for democracies around the world as well. The sooner our politicians realize this, the sooner the United States can resume its quest to realize its potential and to lead the human race into a 21st century freed from its 20th-century demons.