Authoritarian tendencies pose a major threat to the liberal world order

Rayhan Ahmed Tapader :
The nation-state that emerged in Europe through the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was not established as a single political system.

Europe, which is practicing the nation state system, introduced colonialism and imperialism in the world through the hands of Europe and gradually made this regime more powerful.

On the one hand, the modern nation state system and on the other hand, the colonial regime were common.

Millions of people in Asia, Africa, Latin America have been crushed under the yoke of colonial rule for centuries.

That colonialism also collapsed once. But it can be seen that more major changes took place through this nation-state system, behind which there were several European-centered wars.

In Europe, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I and World War II were triggered by the nation-state system.

As a result, the nation-state system could not take a truly global form.

However, from Asia to Africa and Latin America, nationalist struggles, politics, and philosophies inspired by modern polity emerged in different parts of the world.

The common people of the world are worried about the rise of global authoritarian regimes. Because authoritarian tendencies pose a major threat to the liberal world order, the orderly order.

The wide gap between the values Western governments claim to uphold and what they actually do creates a crisis of credibility that threatens the liberal world order.

What we say about our values and how we articulate our foreign policy objectives matters. More importantly, what do we do afterwards or in reality?

Humans have eyes and ears. They lose faith when they see the opposite of reality. This is what is happening in Western rhetoric and actions in the case of Israel and Palestine.

Of course, this discrepancy between what they say and what they do is nothing new, where the great liberal promises of the West have done great harm. Afghanistan has faced disaster not once, but twice.

After the 9/11 attacks, the United States moved from one war to another. It was then that Western liberalism began to lose credibility faster than they had imagined.

They left behind a wreckage of chaos, bloodshed and hollow promises of democratization and liberation. This led others to question the Western word and its validity.

The wars were so devastating that the ensuing struggles were widespread and reached the media long after reconstruction funds had run out. Hot hashtags and emotional posts continue.

The post-war trauma continued in the region for generations. When Russia’s war against Ukraine began, I saw from experience how the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and other Western countries tried to convince many in the developing world that they should not stand for aggression. They must not be on the wrong side of history.

The UN Security Council could not pass any resolution due to Russia’s veto.

The West therefore has to carry out a massive political campaign for a resolution in the UN General Assembly in support of Ukraine.

Its purpose was to show the world that everyone agreed but Russia was vetoing it. Then the Gaza war started.

Incredibly, when the Security Council was asked to adopt a resolution calling for an end to the bloodshed from Gaza, only the US veto blocked that humanitarian resolution.

More UN workers have died in Gaza than in any other conflict in months, a UN report found. The West, historically the champion of multilateralism, did nothing to stop it.

Even UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was forced to invoke Article 99 in early December. This is done only when international peace and security is threatened.

Despite this, the West did not take any action; conversely, the United States vetoed subsequent proposals for a humanitarian ceasefire in the Security Council.

Even after that, the proposal raised in the General Assembly with the support of 153 countries, the country vetoed it. The UK abstained in both cases. The feeling is like that, let it sink.

This incident is more unpleasant than Russia’s veto in the Security Council. Begs the question, do the United States and the United Kingdom impose sanctions against individuals and countries for human rights violations?

How can the rest of the world trust the self-proclaimed values-based leadership of the West when countries like the US and the UK side with the aggressor without fulfilling their responsibilities?

The West speaks of a commitment to human rights and democratic values; at the same time providing Israel with full diplomatic support and impunity for its mission to kill as many Palestinians as it wants.

This is why Israel has the audacity to kill thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, in the name of self-defense. By this, the West is acting contrary to its values and principles of multilateralism.

They are also going against the principles on which the United Nations is founded.

The West has a role to play in protecting human rights. But it is also known that the Western world shows a clear disdain for these principles outside its own sphere.

They are mistaken in thinking that their job is to maintain the position of countries on some historically established issues. This is the wrong approach to policy making. It is not about holding positions, but about maintaining values.

Leadership requires the strength to stand not for historical positions, but for justice and truth. Now we see a whole new dimension in the world system.

With the emergence of several new economic powers, along with the military rise of China and India, it became clear at one point that the world had entered a multipolar world order.

This became evident especially from 2015-16 onwards. As a result, there is very little room for debate about a multipolar world.

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the Taiwan crisis, the ongoing crisis on the Korean Peninsula and the ongoing diplomacy in the Middle East prove how much the idea of multipolar influence has changed in the world today.

Research and analysis in this regard is very important. Because, the kind of challenges that have come forward in world politics, especially the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the hostility between the United States and China, the Covid-19 epidemic, the challenges faced by the world, the crises in various important areas including the Indo-Pacific region, East Asia, and the Middle East can be seen, the world is situated in a multipolar system.

Here the superpower or superpower mindset is completely incompatible and inconsistent.

(Writer: researcher and columnist
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