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AFRICA, Europe, Mediterranean, Middle East, Uncategorized

Interview with Dr Maurizio GERI -“The South Flank, NATO’s role in MENA Region and Africa: future challenges and opportunities”

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Interview for the NATO Security Force Assistance Center of Excellence (July 2020)

What are the unstable situations in the NATO Southern Flank?

After the Arab springs, the various phases of Jihadist terrorism (from Al Qaeda to DAESH) and the civil wars (which later became proxy wars) in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, the MENA region, including the Sahel, is in a phase of constant instability, exacerbated by demographic and climatic changes and by competition between great powers. The African continent is projected to reach 4.5 billion people by the end of the century, with the largest population growth in human history (counting a fertility rate of 4.5 children, compared to other continents stabilized on an average of 2). At the same time, global warming will produce an ever-increasing desertification and scarcity of resources, primarily water and food, with the threat of natural disasters and new pandemics in Africa. Finally, competition between major powers in the region is in a new phase of “scramble for Africa” ​​with modern means, especially economic, but in some parts (Libya, the Sahel, the Horn of Africa) also military. The future of the South NATO region will therefore be played out on various aspects, which may produce complex challenges, but also opportunities for growth and stabilization, especially if international actors, primarily NATO-EU-UN-AU, provide long-term strategies with efficient and effective cooperation. In this context, Security Force Assistance, with its capacity building activities in support of local institutions, is an indispensable tool for promoting the stability of the MENA countries and Africa.

 

 

What role should NATO play?

The role NATO can play in the MENA Region is crucial to counter instability that may result in severe emergency situations and possible conflict escalation in several countries.

NATO’s role will be of crucial importance, in the coming years, in the MENA area and in Africa in general in combating regional instabilities. The Alliance will have a vital role in managing emergency situations and in preventing possible risks of escalating conflicts (with its two core tasks of crisis management and cooperative security), but it will also be crucial for NATO to work on the root causes of the instabilities and finally to contain the greater presence of other big strategic competitors. From this perspective, NATO has an important tool to manage and shape the multiple dynamics that, on the basis of their interactions, make the Region a hybrid and heterogeneous operational environment. The Projecting Stability concept, the importance of which was underlined by the NATO nations during the Warsaw Summit in 2016, provides NATO with a set of solutions, ranging from military actions to partnership cooperation and diplomacy, to intervene in order to mitigate or extinguish the outbreaks of instability present in the Region.

Such an approach has a twofold utility: on the one hand, promoting the stabilization of the Region and, on the other, furthering the security of the NATO borders. As stated by the Secretary-General of NATO recently: “if our neighbors are more stable, we are more secure, so we must do more for our neighbors and with our neighbors.”

NATO has already worked, respectively, with the North African partners, in the Mediterranean Dialogue since 1994, and with the partners in the “Gulf Cooperation Initiative in Istanbul” since 2004. Furthermore, NATO opened a center dedicated to the South in 2018 in Naples: the NSD-South Hub[3]. However, to achieve a greater role in the Southern Flank in the future, NATO will first have to increase confidence building measures, in order to mitigate the negative perception of the Alliance, by reason of certain European and NATO historical events.

In this regard, the support role of the NATO Centers of Excellence will be very important. In particular NATO SFA COE can play a very valid part in offering advanced education to NATO military and civilian advisors, but also to partner countries in the South region. Furthermore, with the promotion and coordination of efforts among all the main stakeholders operating in support of the assisted nation, SFA COE can improve the NATO image in the region and, therefore, further the building of trust, a requirement for efficient cooperation and stabilization. This approach is consistent with the NATO commitment to involve civil society, to better understand what the problems of the future will be and to determine what the solutions will be, listening to the needs of the populations, in addition to those of the states. Human security will in fact become increasingly important for NATO, alongside traditional national security.

How can SFA activities take concrete action in contrasting the trends/causes at the root of instability and on what levels?

Social level.  The demographic explosion will first of all have consequences not only for the instability of African countries (and MENA as a result) but also for mass migration in the coming decades. The demographic dividend at the same time will represent an opportunity for growth and technological innovation on the African continent, due to a more youthful and a more developed society. It will also potentially supply a qualified workforce for the countries with the highest rates of aging (primarily Europe, but also China and Russia).

Nevertheless, the strong urbanization that will accompany the demographic bomb in the African countries will bring greater instability, both social and economic, also due to the difficulties of states in providing transport, housing, work, health, education, justice and everything that a state must guarantee. A modern and efficient internal security sector will therefore be necessary. To ensure the development of such a security sector, it will be important for the international organizations, primarily the African Union (AU) and then EU / UN / NATO, to act synergistically. NATO, and in particular the SFA, will have a crucial role to play. Not only will it be important for the direct training of internal defense and security forces, but also for the indirect consequences of this training. In fact, the specialization of Local Security Forces (LSF) can lead to an increase in schooling, technical skills and also organizational and professional skills, which can benefit all of society. Actually, these skills and abilities will ultimately also be usable in the private sector. The principle of dual use will be encouraged and, in concert, the development of Civil Protection and Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) systems, with the use of new procedures and also new technologies. Although the domain of intervention of the SFA is mainly directed towards defense capacity building and the related dimensions of the Security Sector Reform (SSR), it also involves the civil world through governmental and non-governmental agencies (IOs and NGOs) in the broader scope of capacity building. SSR is a holistic concept that includes all the various disciplines and covers various sectors, including defense, justice, intelligence, governance and also the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) of armed groups.

The SFA will therefore be essential to face future social challenges, especially in the Southern Region where security forces are often considered repressive apparatuses in the service of dictatorships. The commitment must be aimed at making them efficient, respectful of the rule of law, and making them work at the service of the population, including in civil emergency operations to deal with natural disasters, mass migrations, pandemics, etc. This is part of the NATO “comprehensive approach” to crisis management and cooperative security, based on the integration of military and civilian tools, including gender mainstreaming in countries where it is not yet developed. 

Political level. The dictatorships and the various forms of autocracy in the MENA region and in Africa will have to deal with a great demand for democracy and freedom from the new generations (with the surge in youth due to demographic trends) which will call for reforms to promote democracy and economic development. Furthermore, the inefficiency of unprepared political ruling classes will not be able to effectively manage these requests and all future socio-economic challenges, which will also have a huge impact on politics. As mentioned above, it will therefore be necessary to intervene with governmental advisor programs at a ministerial level, not only in the defense sector, but also to support the administrative and political management of the state, for more transparency, the fight against endemic corruption and all other aspects of good governance.

From this perspective, the SFA is an excellent tool for conveying Building Integrity programs through its activities in favor of Local Security Forces. They in turn will act as a sounding board for civilian society.

Economic level. Apart from the economic crisis caused by the virus, the long-term economic development of the MENA / African region will be of crucial interest to the rest of the world. Although there will be a temporary de-globalization due to the crisis, in reality states will not be able to hinder the trend towards economic integration, especially regionally and especially in Africa, with the new Continental Free Trade Area. In this regard, NATO and the EU must overcome the internal differences and contradictions of individual members and adopt a shared strategy that compensates for the increasingly important role of China and Russia on the continent. Resources must be allocated and stabilization projects developed, with long-term objectives considering the development-security nexus, that is, the close link between the economic development and security of Africa, and therefore of Europe. NATO should also collaborate more with the AU, for example by creating new Crisis Management centers (there is already one in Mauritania) or even Centers of Excellence in partner countries of MENA in the future. This will have a multiplier impact, not only on security, but also on local politics and economies. NATO has committed to expanding cooperation with AU as early as 2016 and is gradually increasing its role, but it could do more. Firstly, it should cooperate with the Regional Economic Communities that also deal with security, as it is starting to do with the IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development, of the Horn of Africa) and, secondly, it should start to cooperate with the G5 Sahel, with which it has already begun interacting. The G5 Sahel in fact has economic and security development roles with the G5 Joint Force that the EU is already supporting with training and funds (EUTM Mali supports, for example, its operationalization).

By promoting security training with its implications on Building Integrity in the area of Anti-corruption and transparency on procurement procedures, NATO SFA COE will also contribute to greater stability in the region through the economic sphere.

 

Security level . At this level, of course, the SFA contribution will be decisive. As part of the SSR activities, the SFA will have to support political stabilization processes in countries that have come out of a conflict, or which are in any case fragile and with “weak states”. This will be done through coordinated actions of the various international actors: primarily the EU, the AU, the UN and, of course, NATO. As mentioned, the impact of SSR work will be crucial for the stabilization of these countries.

In fact, the SSR represents the restoration or transformation of the security institutions of a country that includes all the actors, their roles, responsibilities and actions. The goal is for the country to be managed effectively, legitimately and responsibly, more consistently with the solid principles of good governance and, therefore, to contribute to a well-functioning security framework. A key element of the defense reform is precisely the Security Force Assistance, one of the pillars of the military contribution to SSR with Stability Policing and DDR. All three activities are interconnected, although military forces generally support the DDR process in disarmament and demobilization, and rarely in reintegration, SFA may have a supporting role in reintegrating eligible former combatants to be incorporated into the security forces of the state, through the possibility of “Generate and Organize” SFA activities. Indeed, the SFA activities of “Generate and Organize”, based on transversal legislative and financial aspects, can have a positive effect on the good governance, through the involvement of military and civilian personnel as advisors for the generating function (for example, the use of defense administrative staff to advise on specific issues: procurement, infrastructure, hiring, the pension system, legal assistance, etc.). At the same time, by contributing to the restoration of law and order, Stability Policing strengthens ex-combatants to develop trust in the DDR and implementing organizations. This leads the host nation to take responsibility for DDR processes.

In summary, UN, EU, AU, regional organizations and NATO can play a concurrent and, at the same time, complementary role in DDR processes. For example, NATO could play a predominant role in typically military activities, such as disarmament and demobilization, while, at the same time, it could support the EU and other organizations in reintegrating eligible ex-combatants into local security forces.

Finally, all these operations, as well as the processes of securing or destroying mines and other dangerous weapons (as done by NATO in the past in Egypt and Mauritania), would help not only to increase the level of security, and positively impact the political, economic and social levels, but also to improve NATO’s reputation and endorsement in Africa.

What direct implications has the COVID-19 Crisis had on the Southern region and what should NATO’s role be?

The Coronavirus crisis has demonstrated that aspects of biosecurity, and in general of CBRN security have an impact on the stability of the Southern region. The main cases of contagion in the MENA region and in the enlarged Mediterranean have been in Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In MENA as in European countries, containment measures have had, and will have, long-term consequences, both economically and politically. In MENA, in addition to all the problems of the closure of the productive sectors, the tourism sector, already affected by terrorism, will be almost sunk by the pandemic, and the collapse of the oil price could have disastrous consequences, especially for the Gulf economies. In the political sector, in addition to the tightening and control over political life, lockdown, social distancing and fear in general have greatly restricted the space of expressions of dissent. So, a new Arab Spring as predicted by some parties (after protests in Lebanon and other countries) will be postponed, but perhaps not for long.

NATO can also support these countries in the context of biosecurity with the Joint CBRN Defense Center of Excellence, with task forces and various other related centers. But the fundamental point will again be the cooperation between these centers and the international bodies operating in the South region. NATO SFA COE can make its contribution thanks to its “best practices”, learned from the experience of the Allied countries in SFA activities or in medical capacity building. Furthermore, it can promote education and training by coordinating the specificities of the other COEs and integrating them into the NATO Mobile Education and Training Teams (METT) programs. In addition to supporting training and education, NATO SFA COE can develop interoperability and new concepts from lessons learned developed within NATO.

What should be the joint efforts between NATO and the EU?

The two organizations have 22 members in common, common values and identical threats and challenges, and have been cooperating for more than twenty years. In 2018 they signed a “declaration of intent”, agreeing to cooperate in various areas of defense and security, especially against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the fight against terrorism, and the strengthening of CBRN risk resilience. However, as we have seen during the recent coronavirus crisis, this latter point of resilience to biological risks must improve. In the future it will be necessary to have proactive, rather than reactive and supportive procedures for NATO-EU member countries in order to face these and other similar crises.

NATO-EU cooperation also promotes an integrated and complementary strengthening of defense and security capacity efforts with partner countries. At an operational level, for example, NATO and the EU operate together in various theaters in the Southern region: in the fight against human trafficking in the Mediterranean (Sea Guardian), in the stabilization of the western Balkans (from Bosnia to Kosovo to northern Macedonia), in Afghanistan, cooperating with the EU Rule of Law mission (EUPOL) and Iraq, where the EU works in the civil security sector while NATO works in the defense sector. But the EU and NATO have also worked together in the past in Africa, against piracy in Somalia (Ocean Shield) and Darfur. The EU is strongly present in the Sahel, with the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) missions EUCAP Sahel Mali, EUCAP Sahel Niger and EUTM Mali, to develop joint civil-military programs for the regionalization of the CSDP action in Sahel. In the near term, therefore, NATO could also support the EU in its civilian and military missions in Africa, and in reality it already does so indirectly because, while the political leadership is supplied by the EU, the technical and tactical-operational procedures are specific to NATO, given that European missions are conducted by NATO countries. But more needs to be done.

Also in this case, the NATO SFA Center of Excellence can provide a fundamental link in the standardization of procedures and planning of the SFA between the two organizations, further promoting their integration and complementarity, and also encouraging the cooperation of the other COEs and non-governmental agencies which work in the sphere of stabilization.

Americas, Asia, Europe, Uncategorized, World

East-West competition: is it good for human species survival?

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The battle between East and West has always been a battle of ideas, meaning a battle between civilization’s values and cultures, of which socio-political-economic models are an expression. Sometimes this battle becomes a military one, like in the past, sometimes an economic-political one, like in the present. In the future could be a battle for just a competition. To end in a great bargain.

The 21st century, and may be next one if we have enough time, will probably be the crucial century for the survival of humankind: while the Sixth Extinction is ongoing (called also the Anthropocene one, as made by the Humans eating the Earth slowly like a cancer) the Homo Sapiens Sapiens could be part of this extinction too, either for self-implosion, with a nuclear holocaust, speciation, with cyborg-humans creation, or for an external agent, with a meteorite or another alien invasion.

But this century will probably also see the final global hegemony and predominance of either the
“West” or the “East” of the planet, given the exponential technological grow, fast expansion of human activities and reduction of space and time on the terrestrial lives. The winner will almost surely be the social system that will master two main abilities: adaptability to change and collaboration in great numbers. These are the two factors that made our species evolve as Harari showed us, before winning against Neanderthal, and later empowering our brain development, teaching us to to cultivate, speak, write, and finally develop science and technology.

The problem we have today is that the East is more able to do the “collaboration in great numbers” side – the collective action problem solution is more an “Asian specialty”, with sustainable progress without internal interruptions – while the “adaptation/resilience/innovation” side is more a “West specialty”, with creativity and progress towards new futures and spaces (including a possible space conquer for the backup of humankind, making ours a “multiplanetary species”, coming mostly from the West mentality of scientific progress).

But as we need both to survive and make it to the future multiplanetary human civilization, why not to transform the competition in collaboration learning from each other? A great bargain for a great convergence, the “convergence of civilizations” (very different from the famous Clash one). It is not impossible. What we need is to imagine it, not because John Lennon said that, but because, as Harari again explains, imagination is what made our species to evolve with the two skills.

Currently this conflict, the so called “great powers competition”, see a slightly winning from the Asian cultures (Russian/Chinese) versus the West ones (European/American) because of economic pendulum going to the East (Esternization as someone says) and also because of the famous Sharp Power (of intrusion to destabilize, the divide et impera concept) taking advantage of the Western transparency and openness but also US/Western crisis, in particular of Soft Power (democracy appealing is reduced when there is no economic sustained growth). Nevertheless, this crisis too, as everyone, is a temporary one, waiting for the curve to go up again for a new Reinassance, that will come probably in less than a generation (as the crisis also arrived in last 20 years). The West has only to re-study the lessons learned of the past as recently Diamond argued.

First, the West will fight the “decline of its empire of ideas”, as Zakaria says, if it goes back to Classics (as we did in Florence to launch the Renaissance after Middle Age). What are the founding elements of our Western civilizations? Critical thinking, evidence-based science and individual empowerment based on liberation from tribal blocks and free experimentation. Putin involvement in Western populist movements competition (from Trump to Le Pen and Salvini) and the Jinping involvement in Western technological and infrastructural competition (from Wawei/Alibaba to BRI) is something that will not be eliminated until the West will recuperate its own “Transparent/Truthful Power”, that is Soft Power + science/facts based knowledge. This is the comparative advantage of the Western adaptation/resilience/innovation strength.

Second, the West will get another comparative advantage when will give individuals again the possibility to experiment what they want and are capable of. Meritocracy, based on the fight against corrupted bureaucrats and elites, and the moving of capitals among individuals will be the crucial elements. Following the American system, Europe should start cleaning its dirty public institutions, in particular political and academic ones, giving the new generations the possibility to grow based on their individual talents and not group belonging. Also, Europe should start a new credit system, again following the American one, with banks giving loans based on personal credit history and not family assets. Finally, Europe should bring back people to institutions, with inclusive participation coming from new movements and new technologies. The party system was good in the last centuries but now is blocking any change and make institutions slow as dinosaurs, in an age when things change very fast, with new communication and transportation possibilities (see Trump jumping from Japan to North Korea with a tweet).

This is what the West should do. And once the Renaissance arrived the West should have a long vision, not shortsighted, and launch the Great Bargain for the Planetary solution of our species survival. At that time also the South, meaning mostly the African continent, that by the end of the century will have almost 5 billions people – practically half of humankind – will be more developed and able to speak up about the future world solutions. It will probably represent the balance between East and West, being communitarian like the East but also creative like the West. It will be the glue between the East and West, helping them to master both the adaptation/innovation and the collaboration in big groups, for permanent solutions to climate change, peace and technological advancement. We must use this competition with also the “art of the deal”, that sometimes can be useful, for a final bargain to make the human experiment survive. We owe it to our ancestors, that brought us here, and our descendants, that could not exist without that bargain.

 

Europe, Uncategorized

The crisis of Western democracies continues: Post-Democracy in Italy. How the political-economic elite tries to transform a Parliamentarian system in a de facto Presidential one

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Populism

All institutions, being a product of human societies, have a birth, an evolution and a end: unless they reform themselves, they die. This include the nation states, that are passing through a transition from mono-ethnic to pluri-ethnic identities (see the new approach of the CDU in Germany to the concept of motherland, Heimat) and the democratic systems, being them based on Presidential or Parliamentarian institutions, that are passing today through a transition from representative to participatory democracy, still inside a Republican framework. As the transformation of nation states is happening mostly in the two countries that built them, France and Germany, the “reformation of democracy” is happening in the country that contributed to create it millennia ago: Italy (as Greece failed last year in his attempt).

Liberal Western democracies are in crisis since some decades already, because of the economic power dominating the political one, the inefficiency of the public institutions and the distance between establishment politicians and the people. But the recent migrations to Europe from the Mediterranean Sea and the economic crisis caused by the banks and the neoliberalism of the free markets, made it even worst. The Western elites, both in the economic sphere with the financial powers, and in the political one with the ruling powers, are trying to transform in de-facto oligarchies what were developed as democracies in the West. This is what a “post-democracy”, as Crouch defines it, is: elites taking the decisions and co-opting the democratic institutions for their interests. Last time that this happened, almost one century ago, and again with economic crisis and migrations, we went (as Plato foreseen in his system of 5 regimes) from democracy to tyranny, with the catastrophic consequences that we all know. Now we should have learned the lessons, but we don’t know yet what will happen. “We gave you a Republic, if you can keep it” as Benjamin Franklin said.

Many movements in the South of Europe, tried to push their Republics (or Constitutional Monarchies, like in Spain) to go from a representative to a more participatory democracy. All these processes have been defined often as “populism”, while should have been called more “classicism”, as all the new political forces are calling for going back to what were the ancient models of a more direct democracy (actually Renaissance of Arts and Politics in Florence happened because we went back to Classics, and so the same could happen for a Renaissance of Democracy today). The rebirth of democracy must come therefore from the reformation of its institutions, first the Parliament, an institution created in different moments in Europe, from the Senate of the Roman Republic two millennia and half ago to the Magna Charta in England 8 centuries ago, that should pass today from a mere representative to a more participatory one, using new tools like the internet and its e-democracy. But even if the people will try to control and counsel more their representatives, creating in this way a more “participatory democracy”, the oligarchies and elites will obviously not allow it easily.

The case of Italy is emblematic. What have been defined as “populist” forces, the political parties of 5SM and League, that in reality came from modern grassroots movements (based on Meetups or civil society meetings) came to power on the frustration of the people (who are also more informed and knowledgeable than in the last decades). They were able for the first time (differently from Greece, where they failed) to form a government that would have made interventions for the people against the elites, including re-discussing the European institutions that have been imposed on the people from top down. This not in order to destroy the united Europe, but to make it stronger, more felt by the European citizens as something in their hands, and not in the hand of the “Eurocrats” of Bruxelles. But the President of the Italian Republic, made it impossible, at least for now, not accepting the proposition for the Ministry of the Economy, who was on this position. This happened with the excuse of the fear of destroying the Euro, and so put Europe in crisis, with the new populist forces. In reality to ‘constitutionalize’ and ‘parlamentarize’ the so called “populists” would have been a way to moderate them, first of all obliging them to show if they were able to do something good and sustainable, as their campaign promises, or not. But to forbid them from creating a government can make people now even more angry and vote in stronger majority the populist parties next Fall. So, it is like a vicious circle: you try to avoid populism and, in this way, you make is stronger and more extreme. It is the error of the institutions and elites that cannot look outside their circle.

While Italy will go back to elections in Fall, “we’ll see what happens”, as someone on this side of the Atlantic constantly says, clearly showing the current inability of the leaderships in the Western democratic world to impact, or even to predict future trends and events (so differently from the Chinese, and other dictatorships’ visionary policies for the next decades). But one thing is certain, there is no going back: the representative democracy based on what became a corrupted party system in the West, slave of the economic and financial power, is dead. Now we need to create a new form of Res-Publica. And Italy is on the first line for this. But pay attention, as democracy can always degenerate in tyranny. That’s why in America someone in the past said, US is a Republic not a democracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKI-PfCeCQ4

Americas, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Uncategorized, World

The opportunities with the end of the World Liberal Order and Pax Americana

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Richard Haas in a recent article argued that the US retreat and the consequent end of the, Western built, Liberal World Order will make a world “that is less free, less prosperous, and less peaceful, for Americans and others alike”. This short article wants to challenge this conclusion, to say that it could, but it could also represent the opposite: it is a question of perspectives. To argue so we need to challenge its definition of “World Liberal Order”.

First of all, it was a “world” order as it was dominated by the Bipolarism and then by the Unipolar moment of the US, but both of this orders ended (the first for the collapse of one of the two empires and the second for the retreat of the one left, given the unsustainability of “imperial overstretching” for both). But in reality, the order had been created by the winner of WWII, UK and US, and it was led by the West (in primis US that is why many refers to it as “Pax Americana”) while today could become really more “worldly” because of multipolarism. Many countries around the world want to have their say today and it is their right, now that the “Rest” is catching up with the “West”. The “Easternization of power”, to say it with a recent book of Gideon Rachman, shows that the balance of military, political and economic power has shifted far away from the West to Asia and this has to be taken into account by the West. Not only China and India but emerging powers with primacy in their regions desire to become the stakeholders of future regional structures, from Turkey and Iran in the Middle East, to Indonesia and the Philippines in South East Asia, to Brazil and Andean countries in South America. Regional orders are becoming more and more important with economic integration and the so called “collective security communities”, the first and oldest one being NATO, that after ending its expansion is concentrating now on defense of its borders. But there are other collective security communities in formation, first of all the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with China and Russia leading it, the Association of South East Asian Nations, with Indonesia and Thailand at the center of the ring, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, with India and Pakistan, the Organization of America States, with Mexico and Brazil as top player. The other two regions, Africa and Middle East, must resolve their internal domestic problems, before to think about a grand bargain among the regional powers. This shift from world orders to regional ones will save the preponderant power, still the US, from the risk of “imperial overstretching” of the hegemon, even if there is always the risk of the lack of order with the lack of hegemony (see the Hegemonic Stability Theory).

Second it was “liberal” as it was based on liberal values of free market and democracy, but the beneficiary of this system were especially the political and economic elites, not so much the billions of people that still struggle to achieve their human security needs around the world. This liberal order based more and more, with the time, on extreme forms of neoliberalism, liberism, and crony-capitalism, was the reason that created the enormous inequality of today, that has not end in its raising. And to end such type of liberal order could mean to limit the top-down liberalism imposed on people for the interest of the banks and great corporations, to create a more “inclusive liberalism” at grassroots level, with more inclusion for people, especially of lower classes, ethnic minorities, or discriminated people because of gender, age or different abilities. Nevertheless first, this can be done only if we pass in the West from “representative democracy” systems, often corrupted and representing the interests of the few, to a more “participatory democracy”, similarly to the ancient direct democracy, now that we have the technological tools that can help us to do that. We can look at the new “Five Stars Movement” (5SM) in Italy, that always represented a country that anticipates the trends for the Western world, being the creator of that Western civilization, from the Republic in Rome two millennia and half ago, to the Renaissance in Florence five centuries ago, to Berlusconi that arrived to power almost 25 years before Trump. This movement, born online, is the first party in Italy, and is foreseen that will govern soon the country. Its first policies will try to reduce inequality, cutting high incomes of politicians and introducing a citizen’s basic income, and to reduce the corruption of representative democracy, cutting public funding, forbidding convicted representatives to be in Parliament and limiting the mandates of lawmakers to a maximum of ten years. This is how populism could be used in a good way in other democracies too, at least provided that people can vote with the head on their shoulders, and not with the guts and the fake news of today. The problem though is that the end of political ideologies gave people insecurity on how to choose the vote and so before to give the power of “direct/participatory democracy” to the people, if we want to avoid manipulation and possibility of going back to tyrannies we need to do a formation of the people, teaching in the schools political literacy and civic education for example, and before to vote the citizens should be informed on programs more than on Facebook likes (Trump docet). The US will learn from past errors and the lobby system as well as the informational wars are things that America will be able to deal with in the short future.

Finally it was an “order” as no major conflict among great powers erupted, but it was not an order for external smaller powers, from the hot long battled in South East Asia and East Asia to the violence inside many countries, full of intra-state conflicts, with minorities repressed and securitized and dictatorial regimes supported by the West destroying their people and arriving at genocide attempts while the great powers tried to not look (from Balkans and Rwanda, to Myanmar and Syria today). The end of this “international order” therefore, could facilitate more order inside the countries, if external powers stop to meddle in other’s sovereignty and start to support actions that address the root causes of internal conflicts, fist of all economic causes, followed by political and social ones. Great power rivalry also, doesn’t exclude the support in the long term to the smaller powers, on the contrary can make competition for soft power of attraction, more that for hard power of sphere of influence, positive for the countries assisted. This is how nationalism and retreat to our own borders, today, could be used in good way: not for invasion and meddling but for respecting the dignity of any state. Great powers could deter one another while cooperating to solve global security, environmental and economic problems, that are the most urgent problems we have as humankind, from international terrorism to illicit trafficking, from climate change to epidemics, from stagnation to still presence of strong poverty. And again here the leadership of the US could be crucial, at the end of the day administrations pass but country’s values and missions remain.

Therefore, as we can see if we want to understand the advantage of living in an era of transformation, we can help to build more “Inclusive Regional Orders” with the lesson learned from the past. We don’t need to throw the baby with the bathwater, many elements of the old World Liberal Order can and should be maintained but also improved, first of all the leadership of someone that take into account the needs of all the rest, like the US could and should do in the future as it did in the past. It will be a long gestation, but we owe it to our future generations, that will hopefully live in peace one day on this planet.

Europe, Uncategorized

Will democratic erosion in the West be saved by Internet? The Italian example of E-democracy resilience

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FILE PHOTO:5-Stars movement Di Maio looks on as he arrives for a news conference in Rome

According to Plato, who followed the theory of anacyclosis at the time of the struggles between Sparta and Athens, societies pass through five types of political regimes, always through the degeneration of the former. The first is the Aristocracy, with the philosopher king, then comes the Timocracy, with the owners as rulers, then the Oligarchy, with the rich in power, then Democracy, with power for all, and finally the Tyranny, when the anarchy created by the dysfunction of democracy is again managed by a strong leader to maintain order. If we look at today the eternal examples of Sparta and Athens may not be useful only for the Peloponnesian War, with the “prisoner dilemma” (Thucydides trap) at the basis of realism in international relations, but also for their domestic policy regimes .
Today, Western democracy is in decline, not so much because it is inefficient or dysfunctional, even if it has quite normal governance problems when we live “inside history”, but because first of all it became functional to the economic system, making political power a slave of the economic power, and second because we forgot that democracy is a process without end, which needs to be constantly nourished but also reformed, otherwise even the strongest, most stable and efficient institutions weaken and go into decline, returning as Plato said even to the possibility of Tyranny (as it happened a century ago with Nazifascism). The erosion in the Western world of representative democracy and its institutions, both from above – with supranational bodies such as the EU or with the corporations and the processes of globalization – and from below – with civil society, and all groups and individuals that erode the power of the state, from charitable organizations to criminal groups – shows an urgent need for reforms for the very survival of democracy. Democracy, with the liberation of the individual from the chains of stratified society, started already since the time of the Sumerians, continues its journey without stopping. But not without problems and not in the same way in every part of the world.
On the contrary, on one hand new dictatorships and increasingly strict autocracies, almost Orwellian as a Big Brother, are forming around the world, where information and communication are still completely controlled, from China to Cuba, from Russia to Iran. On the other hand, Western democracies are increasingly “participated”, people are increasingly empowered to “control the controllers”, those responsible for public affairs, primarily the politicians, being able to participate directly in the “market of ideas” within the public sphere. This is also and above all thanks to the increasingly transparent information and communication through the interconnected network, what is commonly called in English “Inter-Net”. So today we are passing through a phase of polarization not only within the countries between people of the old “left and right”, which today is actually more and more a division between “the cosmopolitans and the nativists” (given that this is the new division of the electorate and the people at the social, political and economic level) but also a polarization in the world between ever more “direct democracies” and ever more “controlled autocracies”.
So, what should Western democracies do to fight against this new 21st century ideological war, not so much based on two opposite economic models – such as communism and capitalism like in the last century – but on opposite socio-political models? First of all, they do not have to go towards “authoritarianization”. The parliamentary republics do not necessarily have to become presidential republics, to make governments capable of acting with more strength and agility in modern times, as the center-left government thought recently in Italy with the proposal to abolish one of the two failed chambers in the referendum. But they must become rather “popular republics”, rediscovering the importance of direct democracy, Athenian precisely, more than the British representative one, based only on the representative parliament, a very important tool for so many centuries, but today too obsolete. Some propose to return to the drawing by lot, just like in ancient Athens, similar to the Anglo-Saxon juridical system of juries (like my friend David Grant with his “Common Lot” http://thecommonlot.com ). Others, like the 5 Star Movement in Italy, propose to use the Internet for the best.

With this movement, born almost ten years ago by a strategist of the web and a famous comedian who protested for decades against the party system or “the caste”, for the first time in Italy, and probably in the world, a party born of civil society led online from a blog has come to become the first party voted in Parliament (and perhaps in the next election it will also come to form a government). Not only that but for the first time a party has allowed any citizen without a record to apply by registering online at the primaries for the Parliament for voting next March.
This demonstrates the power of the Internet to amplify the voice of the masses, as seen in the Arab Springs. But already for at least a decade there have been signs that the Internet gives political power to citizens and the masses. In fact, great social changes are often driven by revolutions in communication. Even with the Internet, people can access all the information in the world, but beyond that internet is changing human relations and therefore society, as did the press and television. Citizens can intervene directly in political decisions, commenting on them, protesting them, proposing them instead of having representatives who once elected could not be controlled by the represented (except in cases where the person represented was a powerful person). Internet will therefore bring more participation and direct democracy, at a local level certainly and perhaps also worldwide in the distant future, through movements from below that will connect on the network to decide on fundamental issues for the planet such as energy, food, health, environmental protection, technological development. And maybe it will also help to reduce “identity politics”, policies based on identities like nationalism and nativism, making human beings more and more as planetary citizens. This is the way in which Western democracies can recover after the weakening caused by inefficiency and the attacks they are receiving from “eastern” dictatorships, using the internet as an instrument of democracy instead of as an instrument of control or repression, as they do the autocracies (from Russia infiltrating the policies of Western democracies to China by controlling protests on the Internet).
We do not know how it will end but in the meantime a government in Italy (which created Berlusconi long before Trump and Renzi long before Macron, so always showing the path as usual with Italy for the good or the bad) based on the E-democracy, like a government of the 5 Star Movement, could be an example of good practice for other Western democracies. Posterity will judge. As Dante said coming our from the Hell: “To see again the stars”… next spring?

Translation for my Italian friends who don’t know English or how to use Google Translate 😊

L’erosione democratica in Occidente si salvera’ con Internet? L’esempio Italiano della resilienza con la democrazia digitale

Secondo Platone, che seguiva la teoria dell’anaciclosi ai tempi delle lotte fra Sparta e Atene, le societa’ passano attraverso cinque tipi di regimi politici, sempre attraverso la degenerazione del precedente. Il primo e’ l’Aristocrazia, con il re filosofo, poi viene la Timocrazia, con i proprietari come governanti, poi l’Oligharchia, con i ricchi al potere, poi la Democrazia, con il potere per tutti, e infine la Tirannia, quando l’anarchia creata dalle disfunzioni della democrazia viene gestita di nuovo da un leader forte per mantenere l’ordine. Se guardiamo ad oggi gli esempi eterni di Sparta e Atene potrebbero non essere utili solo per le Guerre del Peloponneso, con il “dilemma del prigioniero” (Thucydides trap) alla base del realismo nelle relazioni internazionali, ma anche per il loro regimi di politica domestica.

Oggi la democrazia occidentale e’ in declino, non tanto perche’ e’ inefficiente o disfunzionale, anche se ha problemi di governance abbastanza normali quando si vive “dentro la storia”, ma perche’ prima di tutto e’ diventata funzionale al sistema economico, rendendo il potere politico schiavo del potere economico, e secondo perche’ ci si e’ dimenticati che la democrazia e’ un processo senza fine, che ha bisogno di essere costantemente nutrito ma anche riformato, altrimenti anche le istituzioni piu’ forti, piu’ stabili ed efficienti si indeboliscono e vanno in decadenza, tornando come diceva Platone addirittura alla possibilita’ di Tirannia (come e’ successo un secolo fa con il nazifascismo). L’erosione nel mondo Occidentale della democrazia rappresentativa e delle sue istituzioni, sia dall’alto – con organismi sovranazionali come l’UE o con il potere delle multinazionali e dei processi di globalizzazione – che dal basso – con la societa’ civile, e tutti gruppi e gli individui che erodono il potere dello stato, dalle organizzazioni benefiche ai gruppi criminali – dimostra un urgente bisogno di riforme per la sopravvivenza stessa della democrazia. La democrazia, con la liberazione dell’individuo dalle catene della societa’ stratificata, iniziata gia’ dai tempi dei Sumeri, continua il suo cammino senza sosta. Ma non senza intoppi e non in maniera uguale in ogni parte del mondo.

Al contrario, da una parte nel mondo si stanno formando dittature e autocrazie sempre piu’ rigide, quasi Orwelliane, da grande fratello, dove l’informazione e la comunicazione sono ancora troppo controllate, dalla Cina a Cuba, dalla Russia all’Iran. Dall’altra le democrazie occidentali sono sempre piu’ partecipate, le persone hanno sempre piu’ forza per “controllare i controllori”, i responsabili della cosa pubblica, in primis i politici, potendo partecipare direttamente al “mercato dell idee” all’interno della sfera pubblica Questo grazie anche e soprattutto all’informazione e alla comunicazione sempre piu’ trasparenti attraverso la rete interconnessa, quella che viene chiamata comunemente in inglese “Inter-Net”. Quindi stiamo attraversando una fase di polarizzazione non solo all’interno dei paesi fra persone della vecchia “sinistra e destra”, che oggi in realta’ e’ sempre piu’ una divisione fra “i cosmopoliti e i nativisti” (dato che questa e’ la nuova divisione dell’elettorato e del popolo a livello sociale, politico ed economico) ma anche una polarizzazione nel mondo fra democrazie sempre piu’ dirette e autocrazie sempre piu’ controllate.

Cosa devono fare quindi le democrazie occidentali per combattere contro questa nuova guerra ideologica del 21 secolo, non tanto basata su due modelli economici opposti – come il comunismo e il capitalismo nel secolo scorso – ma su modelli socio-politici opposti? Prima di tutto non devono andare verso l’”autoritarianizzazione”. Le repubbliche parlamentari cioe’ non devono necessariamente diventare repubbliche presidenziali, per fare governi capaci di agire con piu’ forza e agilita’ nei tempi moderni, come si e’ creduto in Italia con la proposta di abolire una delle due camere fallita al referendum. Ma devono diventare piuttosto “repubbliche popolari”, riscoprendo l’importanza della democrazia diretta, Ateniese appunto, piu’ che quella rappresentativa britannica, basata solo sull’importanza del parlamento rappresentativo, uno strumento importantissimo per tanti secoli, ma oggi diventato troppo obsoleto. Alcuni propongono di tornare all’estrazione a sorte, come appunto nell’antica Atene, un po’ simile al sistema giuridico anglosassone delle giurie (come il mio amico David Grant con il suo “Common Lot”, Lotteria comune, http://thecommonlot.com). Altri, come il Movimento 5 Stelle in Italia, propongono di usare Internet al meglio.

Con questo Movimento, nato oramai quasi dieci anni fa da uno stratega del web e da un comico famoso per protestare da decenni contro il sistema partitico della casta, per la prima volta in Italia, e probabilmente nel mondo, un partito nato dalla societa’ civile guidata online da un blog e’ arrivato a diventare il primo partito votato al Parlamento (e forse nelle prossime elezioni arrivera’ anche a formare un governo). Non solo ma per la prima volta un partito ha permesso a qualunque cittadino incensurato di candidarsi iscrivendosi online alle primarie per il Parlemento per le votazioni del prossimo Marzo.

Questo dimostra il potere di Internet di amplificare la voce delle masse, come si e’ visto nelle Primavere Arabe. Ma gia’ da almeno un decennio ci sono segnali che dimostrano come l’Internet dia potere politico ai cittadini e alle masse. Di fatto i grandi cambiamenti sociali sono spesso guidati dalle rivoluzioni nella comunicazione. Anche con l’internet le persone possono accedere a tutte le informazioni del mondo ma oltre a quello internet sta cambiando le relazioni umane e quindi la societa’, come hanno fatto la stampa e la televisione. I cittadini possono intervenire direttamente nelle decisioni politiche, commentandole, protestandole, proponendole invece di avere dei rappresentanti che una volta votati non potevano essere piu’ controllati dal rappresentato (a parte nei casi in cui il rappresentato fosse stato una persona potente). Internet portera’ quindi piu’ partecipazione e democrazia diretta, a livello locale sicuramente e forse anche a livello mondiale in un lontano futuro, attraverso movimenti dal basso che si connetteranno sulla rete per decidere su tematiche fondamentali per il pianeta quali l’energia, il cibo, la sanita’, la protezione ambientale, lo sviluppo tecnologico. E forse aiutera’ anche a ridurre le “identity politics”, le politiche basate sulle identita’ come il nazionalismo e il nativismo, facendo degli esseri umani sempre piu’ dei cittadini planetari. Questa e’ la maniera in cui le democrazie occidentali possono risollevarsi dopo l’indebolimento causato dall’inefficienza e gli attacchi che stanno ricevendo dalle dittature “orientali”, usando l’internet come strumento di democrazia invece che come strumento di controllo o repressione come fanno le autocrazie (dalla Russia infiltrandosi nelle politiche delle democrazie occidentali alla Cina controllando le proteste in internet).

Non sappiamo come andra’ a finire ma nel frattempo una governo in Italia (che ha creato Berlusconi molto prima di Trump e Renzi molto prima di Macron, mostrando il cammino agli altri come sempre succede con l’Italia, nel bene e nel male) basato sulla democrazia digitale, come un Governo del Movimento 5 Stelle, potrebbe rappresentare un esempio di buona pratica per altre democrazie occidentali. Ai posteri l’ardua sentenza. Come disse Dante uscendo dall’Inferno: “a riverder le stelle”…in primavera?

 

 

Europe, Middle East, Uncategorized

Ethno-nationalism on the march. Next stop Europe?

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The referendums of Lombardia-Veneto in Italy and moreover Catalonia in Spain (with voices of new referendums in the UK), on the wave of the referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, show that nation states are in a transition phase in Europe. The nation state, born four hundreds years ago and reinforced through the centuries, traditionally based on a very centralized state and an homogeneous nation, is changing skin, being eroded from above and from below. And the citizens of these nation states, at least in the so called “West” part of the world, seems to want to change their national identity skin, and in the process trying to rewrite the social contract with a new self-determination wave.

The European cases are different obviously from Kurdish one, as in Europe there are democracies, there has been no decolonization or genocide attempt against these minorities and autonomies are already strong, both in federated states like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or Belgium, but even in non-federations such as Spain, United Kingdom, or Italy (with regional assemblies for special regions) that can be defined as “asymmetric federalism.” But new nationalism, based on ethnicity as in the Catalan case, are on the rise as reaction to globalization, migrations and new identities, and politicians are using that narrative together with populist attitudes to capitalize political power.

But changing borders is not a game and can end up with fatal consequences. The are several separatist movements in Europe and beyond. If all of them seek independence that would create a big mess in world politics in terms of humanitarian consequences and economic costs. An independent Catalonia for example could shake the foundations of the European Union. Should Sicily and Lombardia seek independence after that? If we witness an increasing of ethno-nationalist wave, we will have serious problems in the European integration, even if we will not go back to the Europe of fifteenth century.

The self-determination is the right of the people to determine their own political status without external interference but is becoming more and more a complex and delicate issue. Self-determination is mentioned only two times in the United Nations charter, in the context of developing “friendly relations among states” and “equal rights.” Even if during the 1960s it was interpreted as the right of colonies to become independent, distinct ethnic groups within colonies did not have a right to separate. Since the 1990s—under international law—this right is tangled with human rights and democratic norms. And today it is not free from political manipulation, with interests that go beyond the “autonomization” of nations, ethnic groups or cultures, as we saw with recent referenda.

Many compare the case of Kosovo with Catalonia. Kosovo is the newest European state to have gained independence, but the country did not just decide to secede for no reason. Independence was essential for the survival of its people who were being ethnically cleansed, persecuted, and tortured for decades. Kosovo and Kurdistan are much more comparable cases, even if Kosovo is a sui generis case: the only time when the West initiated a military humanitarian intervention to prevent another Srebrenica. This is not to say that Catalans or Venetians do not deserve more autonomy or even independence in the future. The argument though is that the world is evolving and so is the understanding of self-determination.

Nation states are not eternal. But monoethnic nation states are not the solution. Few countries in the world are ethnically homogenous and will be less and less in the future. Pluralistic nation states, with federations, autonomies, decentralization, and even cities included in the participation to the national “public affairs”, the Res-publica, are more successful, democratic, and stable. Independence and secession should be the extrema ratio for self-determination of the people. The normal process should be the negotiations, the eternal “market of points of view” that would allow to respond to the needs of all parts in a consensual decision making.

Real democracy, substantive, meaningful and liberal democracy means power “from by and to” the people, and so inclusiveness of all parts of society. Level of inclusion, through “autonomization” of regions that feel repressed and people that feel not recognized should be the criteria to measure democracies. This for both authoctonous and new minorities. Immigrants arriving to a new country should be granted if not citizenship at least the status of refugee, and their children given the jus solis principle of citizenship based on birth.

But we need to take care of political strumentalization in the process. Referendum can be a great instrument of democracy (like the ones asking on civil rights) but also a great instrument of manipulation. We have seen them used as power tool in many countries, from Venezuela to Ukraine, from Turkey to Europe today.  Constitutions are still the main social contract that state must abide to. If new sensibilities and social change require to change Constitutions that must be done with negotiations.

The world, and states in particular that don’t represent their diversity, because of their history of conquer, nationalist institutions and politics of repression, from Middle East to Africa to Europe, are in great distress. But we need to take care that this process doesn’t become a tragedy for the people, manipulated by political forces. The real solution is dialogue. Spanish and Catalan representatives, as well as Italians and Venetians or British and Scottish, should negotiate and reach a compromise, probably a federalized state structure, for the satisfactions of all the parts and the continuation of the important European integration that is under stress from above and from below.

Visar Xhambazi and Maurizio Geri

 

 

Europe, Uncategorized, World

The crisis of post-modernity in liberal Western democracies: second Italy.

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Italians voted no to the proposition of institutional and constitutional reforms, which was agreed by the Italian Parliament for the first time after almost 70 years since the “Costituente”. The Italian Parliament was following the strong acceleration of a post-ideological modern Government, again the first of such governments in Italian recent history. But in a time of increased transparency, empowered individuals and bottom-up democratic tools (first of all the use of referendums) the confidence of some Western leaders to appeal to popular support in order to increase their legitimacy has turned to be a big mistake. From Cameron to Renzi, leaders European leaders believed that they could bring the people on the ship of their vision for the future. But they forgot about one thing: the deep culture and identity of their societies. Exceptionalism for British people and conservatism for Italians. Who will be next? We hope no Merkel even if we are not so sure (Hollande avoided such risk with his recent decision to not seek re-election).

Italians don’t like change, they live in open sky museums, adore their traditions and have a culture of self-governance and “make do” that survive better in government instability than in the opposite scenarios. Italians, even if they always criticize the politicians for being corrupted and not wanting to change, prefer weak corrupt governments that keep the things as they have always been (that’s why Berlusconi reigned for around a generation) than  strong stable governments that could really change the things, including asking the citizens to behave. Besides that, Italians have always been afraid of Communism, before with Fascism demonization and after with the one of Christian Democracy, making a left or liberal government, almost impossible to survive for long time in the country. That, together with the economic stagnation and the manipulation of information in a post-truth, post-fact society, fueled by opposite politicians with a hate narrative rarely seen before, made the result of referendum. But how Italian referendum result enters in the long run of Western liberal democratic crisis?

As said in the previous article on the US, the three “Ps” are very evident also in Italy: increased Poverty, with inequality and intellectual unemployment (involving in particular the middle class); extreme Polarization, in particular between nationalist and cosmopolitanists (not much between Leftist and Rightist that is not anymore the real division of the socio-political spectrum in Western democracies); and spread Populism, or anti-establishment feelings (in particular distrust for corrupted and distant elites). These phenomena are growing in the Italian society since almost a decade. Since more less the Euro consequences (in particular the raised prices) started to couple with the economic crisis, the migration crisis arrived, and the social media technology started to empower individuals and at the same time polarize them. The populist feelings in particular against the corrupted party system in Italy, the “casta”, started to be channelized in particular by the 5 Star Movement, a bottom up movement that is using Internet as E-democracy already since 2005 with the blog of a Comedian, Beppe Grillo, and the use of Meetups (using the American born Meetup idea) and arrived to be the first party voted in the Parliament (even if not the first represented because of the electoral law, another degeneration of the electoral system, like in the US)

Besides these “first layer” reasons the democratic crisis in Italy can be seen also as an identity crisis, as said in the article on US, because of increasing immigration, women empowerment and international integration. Italy, like the rest of Western rich countries, started to be afraid of having to share the wealth with poorer people, first of all economic migrants but also refugees, and risk its identity dilution with the creation of a melting pot society (and in the last 3 years the number of immigrants in Italy increased exponentially with the Middle Eastern refugee crisis). Italian men, ruling the country, its families and its society since the Latin times (similarly to the rest of Europe) started to be afraid of having to share the power with women (and this actually was the first government that among other things had 50% of women). And the Italian nation state in itself, existing since 4 century (since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648) started to be afraid of having to reduce its sovereignty with new supranational actors, first of all the EU (this was one of the most pro-EU governments, accepting the decisions from the EU even if using the rhetoric of anti-austerity) reducing therefore its ontological security.

Therefore in Italy as in the US we are on the right track towards the democratic natural crisis. We need to see how we use this crisis for the good and not for the bad, not only in Italy but in Europe. Even in the worst case scenario that the EU will fail and disintegrate in the next decades what is important is to know who will take the lead for future new alliances and integration processes. We will not have a pre-WWII scenario because of economic integration and because Russia will always be there to make European continent cohesive (hopefully with the constant support of NATO). But as a recent article on Foreign Affairs said: “Populism is gaining ground. Around the world, economic hardship and growing unease with globalization, immigration, and the established elite have propelled such movements into power, leading to a groundswell of public support for parties and leaders viewed as capable of holding the forces of cultural and social change at bay.”[1]

What we know is that strong leaders will not make a democratic renaissance against the establishment, as they promise, on the opposite they will deepen the democratic crisis, gradually eroding the liberal elements of our countries, as expert populists around the world from Chavez, to Erdogan to Putin, showed. This is the risk in our liberal Western democracies crisis too, at least until the citizens will not take back the lead of the future in their hands through their civil society, with new associations, movements, parties and organizations at grassroots level, and not lead from top-down. The political establishment has to be checked and controlled by these civil society associations to reduce corruption and increase vision, even if cannot disappear as representative democracies needs politicians. But these politicians can be more “representative” of the people, more “spokespersons” like the 5SM try to build. Otherwise we will have fake democracies with strong leaders, that will hide what they really are: autocracies, or as Plato said, new tyrannies.

[1] Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz. How Democracies Fall Apart. Why Populism Is a Pathway to Autocracy. Foreign Affairs, December 2016.

 

Americas, Europe, World

The crisis of post-modernity in liberal Western democracies: first of all the US.

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Will the United States show again that is still one of the healthiest, besides one of the oldest, democracy in the world? Will be able to reform its too old institutions and reconcile its too polarized people, in a society that destroyed many moderate spaces of discussions in the public sphere, from education to media? The prospect of the new elected President doesn’t seem enlightened. Bill Clinton had to move his party to the center, to win two elections. Trump moved the party that hijacked to the extreme right, after the Tea Party and beyond the Alt-Right. Electing Trump the American democracy just chose to take a stop in leading the planetary future. After the first black president of its history, the US didn’t elect its first woman president and instead went towards the most macho chauvinist joker and ignorant president could find, because in the post-modern liberal democracies leaders don’t guide masses: they mirror them. The US went towards a cultural reaction that could reverse the country, and also the West, to a past of racism, nationalism, sexism, and many says Fascism. So apart all the issues on economy, anti-politics and fragmentation these elections have been also about culture, identity and post-modernity.

At a superficial level it seems that three main processes are happening today in the US but also in Europe and so in general in the Western liberal democracies: increased inequality, spread populism and extreme polarization. These trends are caused mainly by three factors: unregulated market and banking systems together with economic globalization as degeneration and contradictions of neoliberal extreme capitalism (see “Capital in the Twenty First Century” by Piketty); focus on technical and scientific education abandoning the liberal arts and humanities (see on this “Not for Profit”, by Martha Nussbaum); and the information technology transformation, including biased private news outlets and uncontrolled, instinctual, post-fact and post-truth social media information (see on this “The Filter Bubble” of Richard Sennet).

But at a deeper identity and cultural levels, and inside a longer historical view, four reactionary processes in reality are happening in the US and the West against the very fast progress that we lived in the last decades: sexism, nationalism, racism and religiophobia (mostly Islamophobia as Islam is the world religion with most impact on the daily life). These identity trends, present in particular among people living isolated and not used to socialize and so create trust, in rural areas more than urbanized centers, represents our ontological insecurity reaction to four changes: the starting of end of patriarcate, nation state, monoethnic and secular societies.  We are starting to live in the post-modern societies (not only “Post-modern States”, as Robert Cooper defines the West) with a more equal relationship between men and women, a more broad sense of belonging to an international community, a mixing of races with increased migrations and a return to religion as a political tool. The last one is happening first of all with Islamism but also, as a reaction, with the Christian right wing political stands (especially in the US) making us starting to live in post-secular societies (as defined by Habermas) that fight between religion in politics and religiophobia.

To use the words of Thomas Kuhn, we are living in a “paradigm shift”, not so much in the sciences (that evolve when society evolves) but in the society, in particular in the creation of a new planetary society. Our human nature is struggling on the tension between fear and mistrust on one side of its spectrum and love and trust on the other (see “Love and Hate” by Eibl-Eibesfeldt, the founder of Human Ethology). It is natural and it is good we could say. We cannot only progress going forwards otherwise only chaos will be in our future. The arch of history is always bent towards justice, as Marti Luther King said, but it progresses going forwards two steps and going backwards one. Now we are in the backwards one. The risk is that if we don’t control it, it could be a step back so big that would represent a giant leap towards darkness. An epochal crisis of our civilization. We don’t want that, but human nature sometimes has been ruled by irrational behaviors, and cycles of history repeat themselves, making arise and decline of societies and civilizations. As Plato’s five regimes teaches us after Aristocracy, Timocracy and Oligarchy there is Democracy, but after Democracy we go back to Tyranny and the cycle starts again. So we need to ask us today: which culture we want to choose for our future generations, the one based on liberal values or the one based on authoritarian values? Do we want a Renaissance or do we want to open the doors to a new “Middle Age”, the age in the middle between the enlightened times.

“An ignorant people can never remain a free people” said Thomas Jefferson. “We will give you a Republic, if you can keep it” said Benjamin Franklin. But to keep the ability to manage a Res-publica, the “public thing”, we need to fight ignorance, as ignorance breed polarization, populism and finally authoritarianism. This is one of the deepest crises of American and Western democracies: the increasing ignorance of a fast consumerist but slow (and superficial) thinking society that produced a lack of real knowledge, culture and so wisdom. All the rest comes as a consequence. Therefore to chose the path of evolution we need to go back to read books and travel, instead of googling everything, we need to go back to talk to each other’s in the streets, instead of staying closed inside our houses and cars, and we need to recreate that social capital and human trust that is the foundation of any functional society, in particular a liberal democratic one.

Post-modernization and global/glocal-ization contributed to create this superficialization. It is a physical law: if you go horizontally you cannot go vertically, if you expand you become more superficial. There is a superficialization in many spheres: there is a reduction of general power (see “The end of power” by Moises Naim); there is a reduction of the “public sphere”, as Habermas called the space for social life (instead we created superficial, fragmented and polarized networks); there is a reduction of the importance of the mediation of elites (with anti-establishment sentiments against the casts of politicians, the oligarchies that became our democracies); there is a reduction of differences (from languages dying every day to ethnic mixing); and there is a reduction of active political life respect to economic and social automatism and conformism (see already “The Human Condition” by Hanna Arendt).

Also, post-modernity and globalization destroyed the organized and clear life we had in the past creating a life based on thousands of possibilities but also contradictions. We can, but more “we have”, to choose everything in our life, from the type of morning coffee to the health treatment for our lives, from deciding to marry or not (and at which age, with who, for having children or just for having a life in two and so on) to should I answer to this message or not. So our time is constantly interrupted, our space constantly disturbed, our identity constantly recreated in a process of choices, including political choices that resemble more and more a gigantic shopping mall instead of a reflected decision for our future, because we are living in a post ideological society. But this doesn’t make us happier, on the contrary worsen our satisfaction, as we cannot have the pleasure of surprise or calmness, the  “creative idleness” (otium) of the ancient Latins, and we rise expectations and alienations with more disappointments and frustrations (see the TED talk “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less” by Barry Schwartz).

Our post-modernity is living in constant change, constant crises. Zygmunt Bauman calls our society the “liquid society.” Antonio Gramsci, last century, called the social crisis we were going to live the Interregno “Inter-kingdom.” He argued that the crisis of change consisted precisely in the fact that the old was dying but the new could not be born; in this phase a great variety of morbid symptoms and chaos appear. We know from where we escape but not where we are running. That is what is happening to the US and Western world right now: we know from where it escapes from but not where it is running. Nevertheless as again Latins said: dium vitam et sursum corda, long life and lift up your hearts! As the evolutionary trend of the human specie is what makes its survival. And the optimist trends of modernization and improvement of human life around the planet (from increasing literacy to reduction of extreme poverty, improvement of health and individual empowerment) are there to demonstrate it.