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52 Opinion
it is not just America and China: it’s broader. It's the West
vs the Greater Eurasia,” says Nikonov, who followed up by pointing out that Western values didn't prevent the West attacking Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Visibly angered, Schultz shot back: “What is the decline of the West? What is the West? It is not only a geographical topic. [Author Francis] Fukuyama talked about values as the definition of “the West.” The freedom of the individual and human rights, and so on. The West is an idea. The war in Iraq was a US project and rejected by the UN and my country Germany. But part of the values is countries have to have their own sovereign right to decide their own policy,” said Schultz, who missed the irony of his own statement as it is precisely this right to make up its own mind that Russia cites in objecting to the Western criticism of its actions.
This outbreak of fencing highlighted the misunderstandings and resentments on both sides in what have become prickly relations between Europe and Russia in particular. Nikonov says the West is hard to negotiate with as there is an presumption that its position is a priori the correct one,
but that Russia was willing to negotiate and on the basis of shared values, as Russia remains a European country.
Shada Islam, director for Europe and Geopolitics at Friends of Europe, an influential NGO in Brussels, came to the rescue with a pragmatic solution: “The important point in this debate is that the European values are actually universal values. They are the fundamental rights values. Europe has adopted them particularly forcefully, but all the countries of the world have signed up to the Declaration of Human Rights. We all have these values in common.”
VIENNEAST COMPASS:
bne November 2019
Islam went on to point out that Europe is splintered at the moment. It’s not a question of binary choices, but a multiple vector choice with lots of moving parts.
Islam suggested that we get rid of the G7 as it has “passed its sell-by date”. “We need to reinvigorate the G20 and make it into something more substantial than it is at the moment as it is just some sort of crisis mechanism at the moment,” Islam observed.
She also suggested that we need to “abandon the arrogance” that Europe “owns” the job of head of the IMF while the US “gets the World Bank.”
“And most important we have to abandon this unreliable partner, the transatlantic alliance, and commit ourselves to Asia – and beyond that to Afro-Eurasia,” said Islam. “Actually I am energised. Moments of transition lead to change. It’s not the decline of the West but the rise of the rest and it could
be that we are on the verge of reorganising the world. But it is important that we in Europe don't hold power. We have to share it with the rest of the world.”
Ramos concluded that the challenge faced by the world, and the West in particular, is not the issue of there being a binary world or ideological clashes, but the fundamental problem of a model that does not deliver on its promises to people and thus drives the rise of the right and populism.
“We need to rethink our priorities. We need a new model that doesn't only embrace economic growth, but also the needs of the people and the planet, a model that is inclusive and not exclusive of everyone,” said Ramos.
How do illiberal economies attract so much FDI
Marcus How of ViennEast in Vienna
On October 13, on either side of the Tatra mountains, Central Europe’s “illiberal democrats” faced their latest litmus tests.
In Poland, voters decided whether to support the Law and Justice Party (PiS) and give it a second term in government, following a politically turbulent four years in which it embarked on an ambitious project to remould the country, its legal system, its media landscape, its political economy and, above all, its society.
In Hungary, where Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has conducted constitutional reconstruction works for nearly a decade, local elections were held.
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These were bitterly fought contests. Islands of liberalism emerged across Hungary, with 10 of its 23 major cities rejecting Fidesz, including Budapest, which “did an Istanbul,” and handed the mayors office to the opposition. Yet in Poland, PiS succeeded in retaining its historic absolute majority in parliament’s lower chamber, in addition to increasing its share of the vote to a record level. Varied though the results were, there is little doubt that Fidesz and PiS will retain overall control of their respective countries.
Brave new world
Foreign investors will have to accommodate the populist nationalism and statist illiberalism for at least another half-