- Prelims: Current events of international importance, decolonisation, ASEAN, NATO, right-wing etc.
- Mains GS Paper II: Bilateral, regional and global grouping and agreements involving India or affecting India’s interests.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
- Russian invasion of Ukraine and rise of right wing around globe particularly Sweden and Danish are assumed as disasters this year.
INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE
Context
What is the Conflict?
- Contestation about post-Cold War central European territoriality and resurrecting a burnished Russian past is at the core of the Ukraine crisis.
- Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership and Russian interests in the Black Sea accompanied by the protests in the Ukraine are the major causes of the ongoing conflict.
Present developments around Ukraine:
- Russia retreated from Kherson, which it recently proclaimed as an integral part of Russia.
- This withdrawal weakens Russia’s hand in any peace negotiations with Ukraine and the US
Right Wing:
- Right-Wing politics is centered around beliefs that certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable and natural, with this belief being supported by natural law or tradition.
- Conservative: Right-wing politics are more conservative.
- Right-wing politics is characterized by ideas of:
- Authority
- Hierarchy
- Tradition
Recent development of right wing politics:
- Swedish social democrats: They followed Danish colleagues who won national elections by accepting the right-wing arguments on:
- Refugees and police batons
- Welfare for the “real Danes”
How Leftist social democrats are countering rightists?
- Ethnic nationalism with radical economic and social policies.
Why is it ineffective?
- Democratic decisions towards such policies have been undermined by global neoliberalism.
Present issues:
- Russian aggression in Ukraine
- S.’s interventions
- Supporting the struggle for rights and democracy as in Turkey and Kurdistan
How to address present problems?
- Russian imperialism must be contained and the countries nearby(including Sweden) which feel threatened, need to coordinate their defense.
- Basic problems need to be addressed, beyond NATO’s provocations and Putin’s tsarist dreams.
Conservative national aggression worldwide:
- Identify politics: In favor of nativist and identity politics
- Freedom and rights: Against democratic freedoms and rights
- The rule of law
- Dissidents, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, women, and immigrants, within and beyond national borders.
Reason for rise of Rightwing:
- Reaction to the downsides of the third wave of rights and democracy in the context of neoliberal globalization.
How did democracy rise?
- The third wave of democracy began among liberals and social democrats in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America in the mid-1970s.
- It spread to Africa and Asia and was reinforced with the fall of the wall in Berlin and the Soviet Union.
How liberal democracy was undermined?
- Advance of neoliberalism combined with the enduring imperial western interests
- Continued dominance and corruption of elites in the Global South
- Capacity of liberal democracy to offer ordinary people influence as well as justice and prosperity.
- Attempts to spread democracy by military means, as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, have failed.
The rise of right wing around the globe:
- Vladimir Putin fostered Russian nationalism, won elections and the support of the Church.
- Right wing in India
- Rodrigo Duterte and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines
- Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil
- Donald Trump in US and attack on Capitol hill
- Brexit and neo-nationalism in Europe.
Way Forward
- Invitation of Asian allies against Russia and China to the NATO meeting in Madrid: It epitomizes the rise of a new worldwide Cold War along with rearmament, nuclear threats, proxy wars and support for authoritarian allies at the expense of human rights, democracy, welfare, and the climate
- Non-aligned countries in the South may hopefully be able to initiate peace negotiations, do everything to combine the defense against Russia’s aggression by countering its root causes.
- The principles of liberal democracy: They can only be defended and deepened as part of a broad, social, democratically-oriented countermovement that combines support for pro-democrats
- Reforms for sustainable development that are based on productive and participatory welfare reforms
QUESTION FOR PRACTICE
Q. The USA is facing an existential threat in the form of China, that is much more challenging than the erstwhile Soviet Union.” Explain.(UPSC 2021) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)
