- 14 Aug 2021 01:58
#15185294
Given the events that have transpired since Russia's indirect attack on American democracy waged through indirectly through it's proxy, Donald Trump and Russia's continued interference in U.S. elections, it has become apparent that a strategy that is being pursued by both China and Russia is making the world safe for dictatorships, tyranny and oppression. This means, for the Russian strategy, that it must do it's best to sow division in the U.S. through proxy politicians like Donald Trump in an effort to destroy American democracy.
If Putin succeeds in such a strategy, then he can further his ambitions of occupying and conquoring neighboring NATO member states that are enjoy EU membership and economic prosperity currently. Putin views the success of some of these neighboring NATO member states that are on their borders as a success to his personal power in Russia.
So, he wants to see these NATO member states occupied by Russian forces and their democracies and their economic success extinguished. That way the Russian people won't have anybody living close by them that they can look to and see they are living a better life and ask "Why can't we live as good as they are?" It assures that Putin remains in power and enjoys the trappings and privileges of power.
Meanwhile, China's Xi Jinping is pursuing a foreign policy designed to make China the world's number 1 economic and military power in the world. This assures that no border states near it's borders will be democratic in nature. It also beholden other democracies to China and China can use that leverage against those democracies to further the cause of tyranny and oppression. We are already seeing the results of the true motives of China in Hong Kong where it is currently crushing freedom and democracy in that country.
It is therefore incumbent on Americans who genuinely value freedom, voting and democracy to fight the strain of tyranny and populism that is currently going through the republican party. To fight voter suppression and to fight for democracy and freedom. Freedom around the globe, starts with fighting for freedom here in the U.S. against republican attempts at voter suppression and attempting to extinguish the will of the people. It is a fight here at home against people like Donald Trump who seek to become dictator of the U.S. with unchecked power and thus, whose goal is to destroy the U.S. constitution and the rule of law.
Putin and Xi Jinping have taken Woodrow Wilson's concept for the U.S. going to war in World War I to "make the world safe for democracy" and flipped it on it's head and are pursuing foreign policies to "make the world safe for tyranny, oppression and dictatorship."
I leave this post quoting from an article entitled "While Trump stands by, the world’s tyrants are trying to make the world safe for dictatorship" that was written in 2019 while Trump was still in power and before he was voted out of office in the 2020 election. But Trump still remains a threat to freedom and democracy here in the U.S. given that republicans have passed voter suppression laws and Trump seems intent on exploiting voter suppression laws to get elected and then stage a coup to tear up and destroy the U.S. constitution to install himself as dictator with absolute and unchecked power. Which would be good for other tyrants like Putin and Xi Jinping who want to stay in power in their own countries.
https://wapo.st/2VVD8YY
If Putin succeeds in such a strategy, then he can further his ambitions of occupying and conquoring neighboring NATO member states that are enjoy EU membership and economic prosperity currently. Putin views the success of some of these neighboring NATO member states that are on their borders as a success to his personal power in Russia.
So, he wants to see these NATO member states occupied by Russian forces and their democracies and their economic success extinguished. That way the Russian people won't have anybody living close by them that they can look to and see they are living a better life and ask "Why can't we live as good as they are?" It assures that Putin remains in power and enjoys the trappings and privileges of power.
Meanwhile, China's Xi Jinping is pursuing a foreign policy designed to make China the world's number 1 economic and military power in the world. This assures that no border states near it's borders will be democratic in nature. It also beholden other democracies to China and China can use that leverage against those democracies to further the cause of tyranny and oppression. We are already seeing the results of the true motives of China in Hong Kong where it is currently crushing freedom and democracy in that country.
It is therefore incumbent on Americans who genuinely value freedom, voting and democracy to fight the strain of tyranny and populism that is currently going through the republican party. To fight voter suppression and to fight for democracy and freedom. Freedom around the globe, starts with fighting for freedom here in the U.S. against republican attempts at voter suppression and attempting to extinguish the will of the people. It is a fight here at home against people like Donald Trump who seek to become dictator of the U.S. with unchecked power and thus, whose goal is to destroy the U.S. constitution and the rule of law.
Putin and Xi Jinping have taken Woodrow Wilson's concept for the U.S. going to war in World War I to "make the world safe for democracy" and flipped it on it's head and are pursuing foreign policies to "make the world safe for tyranny, oppression and dictatorship."
I leave this post quoting from an article entitled "While Trump stands by, the world’s tyrants are trying to make the world safe for dictatorship" that was written in 2019 while Trump was still in power and before he was voted out of office in the 2020 election. But Trump still remains a threat to freedom and democracy here in the U.S. given that republicans have passed voter suppression laws and Trump seems intent on exploiting voter suppression laws to get elected and then stage a coup to tear up and destroy the U.S. constitution to install himself as dictator with absolute and unchecked power. Which would be good for other tyrants like Putin and Xi Jinping who want to stay in power in their own countries.
Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post wrote:
A strange reversal is taking place across the world.
America — or at least, America’s president — is no longer trying to make the world safe for democracy. But dictators are working hard to make the world safe for dictatorship.
The United States is retreating, almost apologizing for ever having thought about promoting democracy. Everyone from Rand Paul to Bernie Sanders and many in between agrees we should stay home and mind our business.
But the result is not a world in which every country is free to go its own way.
Instead, the world’s tyrants — while still complaining about color revolutions and U.S. interference — roam far and wide, promoting their ideologies and their corporations, bullying and buying and burrowing and shooting their way to influence.
Russia and China, the loudest conjurers of imaginary CIA pro-democracy plots, have become the world’s most active underminers of democracy beyond their borders.
Russia clandestinely stokes racism and xenophobia in Sweden, as the New York Times reported. Far less covertly, as the Times also reported, Russians bribe candidates, stack rallies and buy TV ads to sway and undermine an election in the African island nation of Madagascar.
Sometimes the regimes deploy troops, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has done to keep Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power.
Sometimes they deploy corporations. When Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni feared a challenge from a suddenly popular opposition politician, his intelligence agency turned to China’s flagship communications company Huawei to help penetrate the dissident’s encrypted messages, as the Wall Street Journal recounted in August.
Other nations follow the lead of the big two. Dictators in Saudi Arabia and Egypt have sought to squelch democracy and bolster dictators in Sudan and elsewhere across the Middle East.
Sometimes the motivation is so mercenary that even United Fruit Co. at its heyday might have blushed. China’s Belt and Road Initiative aims to lock up natural resources and impose big infrastructure contracts on one-sided terms. Russia’s Madagascar dirty tricks were aimed at maintaining a stake in a local company that mines chromium.
But the world’s dictators also act to save themselves at home.
Not so long ago, democracy was ascendant, and the dictators felt threatened. One by one, past lies about democracy being a “Western” value were shattered: It turned out that Asians, Slavs, Arabs — indeed, all human beings — want to live in the dignity of self-rule.
The dictators responded first with desperate brutality against their compatriots — gunning down students in Tiananmen Square, murdering opponents in the shadow of the Kremlin, luring a freethinking journalist to be dismembered in a Saudi consulate.
But they realized that freedom beyond their borders could be a threat, too. Putin invaded and still occupies much of Ukraine, because a thriving democracy on his border gives his own people dangerous ideas. China bullies and threatens Taiwan, because self-governing Chinese citizens there put the lie to Communist propaganda at home.
Democratic governments also can use international pressure and institutions to press authoritarian regimes to honor universal human rights, emboldening and encouraging the citizens of unfree nations. By contrast, put Venezuela on the U.N. Human Rights Council, and you can be sure no autocrat anywhere will be made to feel uncomfortable. The more Venezuelas there are, the better Xi Jinping can relax.
Just look at China embracing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman not long after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — and the crown prince, supposed defender of the Muslim faith, in return actually praising China for its brutal repression of Uighur Muslims in western China.
Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton or George W. Bush would be speaking up against this authoritarian aggression and for the right of all human beings to live in freedom.
Today we have a president who prefers the company of strongmen — whether Turkish or Saudi, Russian or North Korean — to that of democratic allies. His presidency is both a consequence of Russian activism — Putin worked hard for Donald Trump’s election, after all — and its enabler.
We don’t know yet whether Trump will prove a historical aberration. His isolationism obviously resonates, and it amplifies a retrenchment that began, far more modestly, in the Barack Obama years. On the other hand, Congress continues in a bipartisan way to back the National Endowment for Democracy — which, in contrast to Russia and China, supports democracy overseas transparently, and without favoring any particular party or outcome.
More heartening: Even the dictators’ onslaught and American reticence cannot stop people from rising up and demanding their rights. Algerians, Lebanese, Armenians, Tunisians, Sudanese, Bolivians, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Hong Kongers, Ethiopians, Malaysians — these people all deserve more support than they are getting.
But they are not waiting for support, nor letting themselves be intimidated by the new imperialists of authoritarianism.
https://wapo.st/2VVD8YY
"I need ammunition, not a ride!" -Volodymyr Zelenskyy