Like hobbits, we Kiwis tend to see geopolitical turmoil as remote and beyond our influence. But, like Tolkien’s fictional ‘War of the Ring’, events like those in Ukraine and the South China Sea have global implications. We can ignore those events with hobbit-like complacency, but we cannot avoid their ramifications.
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is now in its third year. Meanwhile, China’s Xi Jinping casts his gaze towards Taiwan, sizing up the willingness of the US and its allies to defend the island he regards as a rightful part of his empire.
Putin and Xi rule their respective countries with despots’ tools – fear, repression and political violence. The comparative freedom and prosperity of the world’s democracies stand as living refutations of their authoritarianism. So, they do all they can to seed instability in democratic nations.
We can all contribute to thwarting their shared project to undermine democracy – and unlike Tolkien’s diminutive heroes, we need not undertake dangerous quests to do so.
A first step might be to better inform ourselves. In our domestic world news this morning I saw nothing on the imminent transit of the Taiwan Strait by German warships. There is one short article on Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, with equal column space devoted to Kamala Harris’ fashion choices. I recommend New Zealand veteran Ben Morgan’s Substack for excellent analyses of the Ukraine war and Pacific security matters, including China’s influence.
We can also all play a personal part in shoring up democracy. Across the English-speaking world, democracy is threatened by polarisation. The divisions in our political culture are partly driven by bad actors online—and some of those actors, whether human or AI bots, are in service of Putin and Xi. Cultivating more respectful ways to disagree would go a long way towards defeating their aims.
In Peter Jackson’s film version of Tolkien’s tale, the hobbit Pippin, disheartened by the perils they are facing, worries that they are just too small to make a difference. His friend Merry’s reply makes clear their responsibility to do what they can:
"The fires of Isengard will spread. The woods of Tuckborough and Buckland will burn. And all that was once green and good in this world will be gone."
Complacency is not an option.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
Putin and Xi rule their respective countries with despots’ tools – fear, repression and political violence. The comparative freedom and prosperity of the world’s democracies stand as living refutations of their authoritarianism. So, they do all they can to seed instability in democratic nations.
We can all contribute to thwarting their shared project to undermine democracy – and unlike Tolkien’s diminutive heroes, we need not undertake dangerous quests to do so.
A first step might be to better inform ourselves. In our domestic world news this morning I saw nothing on the imminent transit of the Taiwan Strait by German warships. There is one short article on Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, with equal column space devoted to Kamala Harris’ fashion choices. I recommend New Zealand veteran Ben Morgan’s Substack for excellent analyses of the Ukraine war and Pacific security matters, including China’s influence.
We can also all play a personal part in shoring up democracy. Across the English-speaking world, democracy is threatened by polarisation. The divisions in our political culture are partly driven by bad actors online—and some of those actors, whether human or AI bots, are in service of Putin and Xi. Cultivating more respectful ways to disagree would go a long way towards defeating their aims.
In Peter Jackson’s film version of Tolkien’s tale, the hobbit Pippin, disheartened by the perils they are facing, worries that they are just too small to make a difference. His friend Merry’s reply makes clear their responsibility to do what they can:
"The fires of Isengard will spread. The woods of Tuckborough and Buckland will burn. And all that was once green and good in this world will be gone."
Complacency is not an option.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
5 comments:
We have one political party, Te Pati Maori openly against democracy, wanting to replace it with a repressive dictatorship of themselves. We also have Labour, the Greens and the Mainstream Media pushing the same direction but not so openly. We also have a brainwashed public as a result of the media and education system.
We certainly have no reason to be complacent. The end of meaningful democracy in NZ is possibly only one election away.
Michael, perhaps it's time to face reality! Nz a peaceful country? It perhaps was, but hasn't been since 2017. Have you seen the amount of crime that happens here? How many murders have there been this week alone?
Until this govt reverses the rot Ardern and Co implemented we will never get "the shire" back.
The threat is from within. Until we hold the far left accountable then we have no hope imo.
There is no real popular sovereignty anywhere in the world, be it in Russia, China, or the so-called "free" West. The difference is, people in China and Russia know this, while we in the West delude ourselves into thinking that our leaders do what we want, rather than the truth which is that our leaders do what they want and then convince us through a complex media system that what they are doing is actually the will of the people, free agents acting in their own best interests.
In Russia and China, the rule by elites is explicit; in our society, the rule by elite is an open secret that nonetheless is papered over with a thin veneer of falsehood.
"Democracy" is always typical the casus belli that is rolled out whenever a war of aggression on someone whom the Judeo-Americans disfavour, but it is always just a facade and the justification for exercising power which, at the end of the day, is the sole end of politics.
As an example of our hypocrisy in the "free" and "democratic West, "just in the last few days, the CEO of the social media app Telegram has been arrested and detained in France. His "crime"? Running an app that doesn't allow Western intelligence agencies a backdoor that lets them know everything about what Telegram's users are saying and to whom, like they do with every other app used by 100s of millions of Westerners. The similar furore over TikTok is the same type or misdirection, where what was painted as a data security issue was really about stopping people freely criticising what Israel is up to.
The implication? We aren't really free and sovereign at all, when the powers that be think they have a right (and in most other cases, effectively exercise this "right") to tightly manage what people say, see and think.
Russia and China are being treated as much of a muchness here, which is incorrect. Russia introduced a Western-style democratic system just before the revolution but the communists put paid to that. China did so too but that was the Republic of China which was driven into exile by the communists and still exists in Taiwan. However, the Russian governmental psyche is fundamentally a European one (Graeco-Roman via, inter alia, the Napoleonic reforms) whereas the mainstream Chinese governmental psyche remains firmly rooted in Confucian totalitarianism (the Communist Party vehemently denies this of course, but benefits immensely from it). Russia has a great deal more in common with Europe than with China and a great deal more to gain from an alliance with Europe than with China and North Korea. That is the angle we in Western Europe should be pursuing (Eastern Europe is already halfway there attitudinally). WIthout NATO and the Washington warmongers, the Kremlin would see which side their bread is buttered soon enough. It would moreover enable them to ease up on civil liberties at home - a country under siege always clamps down on those.
You kicked a hornet’s nest on this one Dr. You must have forgotten the brutal tyranny our Marxist Govt introduced during the Scamdemic? ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’. And I’m not all that certain that the present mob are all that much better.
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