Editor’s note: This commentary is by Stanley R. Sloan, of Richmond, who is a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, has taught in the winter term at Middlebury College for 14 years, following a career of government service at the Congressional Research Service, the CIA and as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. His latest book, the basis for several recent presentations in Vermont and in Europe, is “Transatlantic traumas, Has illiberalism brought the West to the brink of collapse?”
[I]’m guessing you perhaps didn’t think we were at war, or that your service was required. If I’m correct, I apologize for being the one who brings you the bad news.
The United States and many of its fellow democracies are under attack. The enemy is taking advantage of the failures of our liberal democratic system – you know, the form of government that is designed to ensure democratic freedoms, individual liberty and equality under the rule of law. Unfortunately, that system hasn’t been working so well in recent years, leaving us vulnerable to demagogues calling for new “illiberal” approaches to governance.
The failures of liberal democracy have many people feeling disenfranchised and disadvantaged. They haven’t been helped much by the recovery from the great recession while the super-rich and major corporations have been doing very well. They feel that decisions made far away – in Washington for us or in Brussels for European Union voters – are increasingly made without reference to their interests.
Some political leaders have recognized the need for reform. But others, including our current president, have taken advantage of the failures to begin installing an illiberal approach to governance.
The process, which has been seen before in history – Nazi Germany comes to mind – begins with attacking the free press and continues with undermining the independent judiciary and weakening the rule of law. It relies heavily on the fear factor, often with barely disguised racism: convincing people that they should be very afraid of terrorism, refugees and the like, and therefore should put power in the hands of a right-wing savior who uses religion as a false flag to attract true believers. Such leaders argue that “only they” can solve the nation’s problems and ask us to trust them. That is happening today in the United States, led by President Donald Trump, aided and abetted by many congressional Republicans and perhaps even by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
The covert Russian activities that our intelligence community says were aimed at electing Donald Trump undoubtedly continue today. Moscow also works behind the scenes to help illiberal politicians in other democratic states, particularly targeting the political systems of our European NATO allies and European Union members. In addition, the brazen terrorist attacks by Islamist radicals are ironically aimed at achieving the same goal as the Russian actions: disrupting Western liberal democracies.
These enemies of our democratic systems help create fertile ground for politicians here and in Europe who claim that if the people only give them carte blanche power, they will, in their infinite wisdom, protect us from ourselves. In fact, these politicians who have been described as representing the “populist radical right,” then align with similar politicians in other countries under the banner of what one of them, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, has advocated as “illiberal democracy.” It sounds to me a lot like an autocratic system in which citizens have a vote but not much choice.
In my new book, “Transatlantic Traumas,” I argue that those who believe in liberal democracy need to find a strategy to turn back the noxious tide of illiberalism that has washed onto our political shores in recent years. Talking to an audience in London a few weeks ago, I faced a logical question from a Kings College graduate student. He asked what the average citizen who believes in liberal democracy can do to keep us from heading into a new dark age in which right wing autocracies like Putin’s in Russia rule in once-free nations. The same question has been asked of me after book presentations here in Vermont.
For me, the question was given even more meaning when I recently participated in the celebration in Pilsen, the Czech Republic, of the liberation of that city by American troops at the end of World War II. After the Czechs restored their democracy at the end of the Cold War and then joined NATO and the EU, the citizens of Pilsen began marking the liberation by honoring the few surviving American and Belgian troops who entered the city on May 6, 1945. They organize a parade of restored U.S. Army vehicles and mock Army encampments, all portrayed by locals who dress the parts accompanied by popular American music of the time.
Joining in this celebration convinced me that there is still something worth fighting for – for both Europeans and Americans who face this challenge from those who would steal our liberal democracies.
The answer to the question therefore is simple and clear: political action. The first step is to remove radical right populists from power by use of the rights given us under our liberal democratic systems. The second step will be to reform our systems to deny these anti-democrats the appeal to Americans and Europeans who have felt left out and in need of representation. Radical right populists have used our democratic freedoms to attack and try to subvert the system. Those of us who still believe in the core values that define “the West” must use it to turn them back.
