Liberal Hubris: On Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes' "The Light That Failed"
Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes | The Light that Failed: Why the West is Losing the Fight for Democracy | Pegasus Books | 2020 | 256 Pages
The world looks very different than what many anticipated a mere thirty years ago. Back then, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, and the end of the Cold War were heralded as the beginning of an age of American-style and American-led liberal dominance. Democracy and capitalism were said to be the only viable political and economic systems; some theorists even triumphantly announced the end of history. Peace would replace conflict, free trade would unite the world. All would prosper, all would be well.
Of course, that is not the world we have lived in or live in now. Instead, we have suffered through 9/11, the second Iraq War, the financial collapse of 2008, a migrant crisis in Europe, a humanitarian nightmare in Syria, Brexit, the rise of a still-Communist and repressive China, and xenophobic populism in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and even the United States.
What went wrong? According to journalist Ivan Krastev and political theorist Stephen Holmes, the central problem has been liberal hubris, liberal overreach; what they label imitation of the West, which failed to take root in much of the world. Without the competing ideology of Soviet communism, according to the authors, Western liberalism became flabby and over-confident, and Western institutions such as the European Union and the World Bank blithely assumed an absence of alternatives meant they could impose American-style economies and political systems throughout central and Eastern Europe and in Russia.
The result? Virulent backlash.
Instead of cosmopolitan capitalism, Eastern Europe chose nationalism and ugly intolerance of minorities. Russia chose a strongman president, economic oligarchy, and international meddling, including the annexation of Crimea, intervention in Syria, and interference in American presidential elections—exactly the kind of interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation that Russia watched the United States exercise with impunity for decades, from Chile to Iran to Central America, thus emphasizing again the theme of imitation, this time Russia imitating America.
And, of course, the United States itself chose a president who endorses violence, ignores science, withdraws from international agreements, and rails against immigrants, minorities and (most surprising of all, especially for a Republican) free trade—all anti-liberal themes and policies. America First.
Why? How is it that the triumph of the West in the Cold War produced not victory for liberalism or internationalism but a series of defeats and disasters?
In a compelling if perhaps incomplete analysis, Krastev and Holmes see political and psychological identities as lying at the root of the problem. Liberal cosmopolitanism posed too much of a challenge to inherited, local, culturally conservative identities in countries such as Hungary, Russia, and even the United States. Western liberalism, at least as envisioned and theorized at the end of the Cold War, meant secularism over religion, multiculturism over localism and community, and wrenching cultural change (enter gay marriage). Although they do not put it this way, many ordinary citizens were simply not ready for this version of how life should be lived. In the United States, the white working class experienced a humiliating loss of jobs, income, and status and believed their country, as they had understood it for generations, was slipping away, in a process similar to developments elsewhere. Liberal cosmopolitanism tends to ignore the existence of culturally homogeneous and conservative regions, whether in Hungarian provinces or West Virginia, and capital cared not at all for such places, areas that could not compete or at least offer cheap labor. And so capital and the educated fled.
The result of all these liberal blind spots and mistakes? Backlash, a cultural and political backlash easily exploited by opportunistic elites such as Orban in Hungary, Putin and his oligarchs in Russia, and Trump in the United States.
There is a great deal of truth, and much to be learned, in this narrative, and the great strength of the book is the manner in which it demonstrates striking parallels between the United States and different parts of the world; this is a book well worth reading by Americans for these comparisons alone. In this narrative, as in the work of Masha Geesen, Trump is not an exception or an aberration; he is a logical outgrowth of the last thirty years, as is Brexit, a torturous process still unfolding.
Along the way, the authors consider questions of interest to political theorists and provide a great deal of food for thought. Democracy, the authors say, presupposes a bounded political community, whereas liberal theory emphasizes human rights transcending any border. Universalism, they say, “destroys solidarity.” If you are treated as a citizen of the world, or even of the European Union, what of your local and native traditions and community? And, they point out, private property is all well and good, but it encourages corruption.
Most important of all, liberalism ignores the social question—that is, questions of distribution and inequality. JFK famously declared that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” but that was sixty years ago; the world’s economy has changed almost beyond recognition. Capital and jobs move swiftly around the globe, and, as a result, millions are left behind. Yet free-market arguments and low-tax ideologies still prevail.
Although mentioning this “social question,” the flaw in the analysis is that the authors do not dwell on it. For a fact that has become crystal clear at least since the financial collapse of 2008 is that lightly regulated and unconstrained American-style capitalism produces massive economic hardship wherever it is planted, including at home. Where are the well-paying jobs that sustained a middle class in the United States in the years after World War II? They are in India and China, where the same jobs aren’t so well paid. It’s all well and good to talk about the importance of education, but who can afford college without massive debt? When taxes are cut, social services disappear or are inadequate (think many American public schools) and deficits balloon, creating dangerous cycles of boom and bust. The consumer goods and cultural rights that cosmopolitan liberals cherish may be vitally important, but what of the healthcare crisis that bankrupts ordinary citizens by the thousands, at least in the U.S.? The brute fact is that the gap between rich and poor has become a chasm and the middle class is rapidly disappearing.
Thus the problem with post-Cold-War liberalism is not merely, as the authors claim, liberal hubris; the problem is also that the capitalism that liberalism embraced was an extreme version, and simply did not deliver for huge segments of populations around the globe. The roots of that problem are a changed world economy and an absence of regulation and moderation, not the absence of a global adversary such as the Soviet Union. Even without a Cold War, a tamer capitalism is possible, as a reunited Germany demonstrates (even with its recent conflict over immigration).
The authors are more on target when they examine the manner in which unscrupulous elites have exploited the current economic and cultural insecurity in often cynical and brazen—and successful--grabs for power. And they offer an important insight when they explain that a demagogue such as Trump does not necessarily need or offer a coherent ideology; politicians can be intuitive rather than ideological, they explain, and political strategy can be instinctive. Trump may lie constantly and seldom sounds coherent to a liberal or to the college-educated, but he grasps, exploits, and reflects the feelings of humiliation experienced by a sizable portion of the electorate. Such feelings matter and register in politics.
And now? The authors conclude with a discussion of the rise of Chinese economic power, which they see as quite likely to replace post-Cold-War American dominance. In the one note of hope in their otherwise bleak assessment, they note that the current Chinese regime, while pursuing global economic power, is not particularly interested in exporting Chinese ideology, unlike the old Soviet Union. China, they say, has imitated Western-style economic growth and may be appropriating Western technology, but is not interested in importing Western ideology or exporting its own. Some comfort, in the end, but not much, for the liberal elites who predicted the end of history.