Two men on the wrong side of history

Amid the torrent of news and comment out of Washington surrounding efforts by the White House to rope in national leaders to discredit the Mueller Inquiry, speeches by the two main protagonists at the United Nations have been largely passed over.

United States President Donald Trump and Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov gave widely varying accounts of how they saw the world, but their addresses to the General Assembly had one thing in common — neither had any relation to reality.

Trump concentrated on the “spectre of socialism — the wrecker of nations and destroyer of societies”.

Referencing Venezuela, he described socialism and communism as “being about one thing only: Power for the ruling class”.

He claimed the United States Democrat Party was embracing radical socialism, and called upon Americans to “defeat rising socialism in the US”.   

Lavrov used his address to take aim at the ‘West’ (by which he means the United States and its European allies), saying it held to a dated philosophy that was out of step with present-day realities. 

“It is hard for the West to accept seeing its centuries-long dominance in world affairs diminishing. It is trying to impede a polycentric world,” he said.

Interestingly he also chose Venezuela as an example, saying that under Western intervention that country’s statehood “was destroyed before our eyes”.

Trump’s attack on socialism fails to recognise the many socialist governments that have existed around the world in the 20^th and 21^st centuries which have neither wrecked their nations nor destroyed their societies.

The United Kingdom’s Labour Government of 1945-51, the most socialist administration the country has had before or since, was instrumental in setting the nation on the path to recovery after a ruinous war.

Socialist governments in Europe and elsewhere were often at the forefront of legislation that has been of immeasurable benefits to their citizens – universal health care, affordable education, support for the less fortunate.

Those European socialists never, as many doom-sayers predicted, lapsed into authoritarianism, even when the Soviet Union’s communist-controlled clients were on their doorsteps.   

Lavrov is similarly mistaken when he talks of the ‘West’s’ out-of-date philosophy.

The rise of right-wing elements in Europe is a challenge to traditional liberal democracy, but by no means signals its destruction.

Trump himself is a challenge to the traditional order in the US, but a country that has survived a civil war, two world wars and decades of racial unrest, will not easily succumb to the eccentricities of one man, even if he temporarily holds the most powerful office in the land.

Liberal democracy has weathered much worse, survived and prospered.

Indeed, Lavrov is guilty of wishful thinking by seeking to draw a firm division between Russia and his West. There is no definite line, it is at best blurred.

Liberal democracy infiltrated Russia after the fall of communism and despite the best efforts of President Vladimir Putin, refuses to be put back in its box.

Attempts by the Kremlin to play the Superpower game will eventually founder in an ageing nation with an economy no bigger than that of Spain. Signs of dissent are already apparent in Russian cities and are only likely to grow.

There is no doubt a regression has occurred among some of the world’s leading nations.

Politicians with dreams of self-grandeur have resulted in an Emperor in China, a Czar in Russia, and a President in the US whose fondness for adoring rallies and distaste for the truth provoke dark echoes of the 1930s.

Their antics have produced a rash of minor imitators from Turkey to the Philippines, but they will not prevail.

At the UN it was Trump and Lavrov who were on the wrong side of history — and history, while patient, is eventually unforgiving.