The sudden death of favouritism for friendly authoritarianism spelt : No narrow escape

It would be equally interesting and curious some day to go down the lane of history, and having reflections on how the Vietnamese society struggled its way through during the communist years. Vietnamese society still beat a path through all the red tapes of communist bureaucracy, in many sectors outperformed with a high degree of liberalism with open-minded, forward-looking and friendly people; and spawning businesses; proud shops and streets. Growth was set in such a motion that any slowdown would be quickly reverted and come back in full forces with spurts. Society is performing well at least compared to others in the region. Unfortunately, it is being rule by a single-party regime, a ruling communist party must be living fossil of global politics with only few exceptions in North Korea, Laos, China, and Cuba. The positive societal dynamics are attributed to the separation between the separation between the government wing and the party wing, such a concept introduced by Prof. Carl Thayer. The government wing will be composed of officials who pushed through the economic reforms to spur growth. There are the diplomats who are technically communists, however, showing their expediency in understanding western culture and policies. The Party wing, on the other hand, will be tasked with keeping the whole system in line. Any deviations from the communist doctrines will be probed and eradicated before it took roots inside the system, "political evolution" is seen as the number-one enemy of the regime. To a certain extent, the regime's political ecosystem is sustained by a balance line between the government wing and the party wing, whereas the government wing will undertake reforms within the redlines, and the party wing will carefully regulate liberalism allowed inside the regime and society. Until quite recently, this parallels system suddenly came down in paralysis with the rise of To Lam, the former police boss, as the state president and party's secretary.

The police has been a major force employed by the party wing to execute the political purges. Needless to say, the rise of a police boss to absolute power revealed the demise of the parallel system. In other words, the regime could no longer sustain between liberalism and party doctrines. There has obviously awareness that liberalism finally lead to the collapse of the communist party. It justified the grabs of power of the police force, which portrayed themselves as the most reliable guardian of the Party. Even prior to that, the administration of the regime has been taken down in paralysis owing to the waves of anti-graft campaigns leaving any administrative executions susceptible to being probed and criminalised by the Party. The long years of mismanagement has made all the political decisions short-sighted ad temporary cures, corruption plagued the system in a way all the sections of the government and their activities will be potentially linked with corruption.

Whilst it might take lengthy words to dive in the internal political situation of the communist party which I'd rather not (as an outsider to the system), it would be worthy understanding the nature of such party-government division. This does not denote any clear segregation of power and authorities in a way one could understand, rather an adaptation with the Western foreign policies which are favouristic towards "friendly authoritarian regimes". The regime has staged up a government wing which offer a relatively "friendly" facet to the West and make some limited commitments in social and economic reforms in exchange for endorsement by the West, through the entry to WTO, elevation of partnerships, associated with foreign investments and business opportunities. It took advantage of the weakening international institutions and law, and Wester favouritism towards "friendly authoritarian regimes" to persecute human rights defenders, political and rights activists without any sanctions. There it goes, as long as you are a nice guy, and you do not pose a threat to our laws and order, we will not care about what you do in your own yard. But as the Ukrainian war came to spell an end to this favouritism , the whole regime came to realise it would be no longer sustainable to teeter between these two wings. In short, liberalism is no longer attached with the friendliness, but adherence with human rights and universal values, and integration would no longer the mono sides of economic operations without common values and basis. Interestingly, things are yet to see if To Lam takes hard lines and adopted fully hostile rhetorics towards the West and softened himself and continues pledging from more reforms and integration. It would of course defeat the whole purpose of why he came to power. However, any leader of small authoritarian states which are heavily reliant on trade and foreign investments would grasp that it is both impractical and suicidal to overturn the momentum of liberalism which in this context means commitments to economic and social reforms.

Yes, Putin war against Ukraine just called a sudden death of favouritism for "friendly authoritarianism". Favours are granted based on adherence to universal rights. And it put under review how the world should integrate and engage and call the existence with the authoritarian regimes into question. Putin sent back a moment of shivers to the globe when waging a physical war with Ukraine, as the number of death tolls and casualties went up, the whole democracy world ran panicky, and we saw the comeback of expansionist nationalism. Putin's nationalism is one of its kind, the oldest and most outdated form of nationalism we might be able to trace back as far as times of the 17th century thirty year war, which deemed to be the most destructive war in Europe (blame me for my ignorance of European history). It would be justifiable to wage wars against one another, as bigger fish would eat up smaller ones. Peace was tactically restored based on the round-up of major powers and temporary and unfair resolutions rather than a process of realisation about peace as a conditioning material for democracy and human rights to flourish.

I don't mean to narrate all the accounts of history which I'm not proficient in or cover all the significant political movements that took on. Rather, I tried to shed some light on nature of Putin's nationalism.

The early years of the 19th century saw the full establishment of the colonial system worldwide following the expeditions of major European powers who came to conquer, rule and divide. We might talk a lot of the colonial legacies. But in a way, colonialism temporarily deflected conflicts away from the old continent into the land-grabbing wars among the colonizers in the colonial countries. Colonial system was sustained until the new hegemons demanded to re-make the global boundaries including the colonies. Wars came back to Europe. I would not dive into the democracy movements within the Western societies including the establishment of the parliament, demise of the monarchs and autocrats, extension of voting rights, and women's liberation, etc. These democratising movements finally resulted in the cleave between democracy as a model widely accepted, and old ideology of supremacism. A pause of 25 years passed before the breakout of the second world war. The whole Western World suddenly realised that they were fighting not something paradoxical, but a monster within their political ideologies. This monster has been at the helm of the West for centuries, the same logic used to justify colonialism is now deployed to rationalise the disastrous war between European nations. Therefore, the defeat of Hitler also saw the collapse of the colonial rules across the World.

Nationalism in present-time political context, however, came with the notion of being inward looking, backtracking from international engagement, tapping into the grievances of left-behind populations. The Western nationalists might be hesitant from the criticism of Putin's bloody wars and appear to be his sympathizers. There might be evidence of Putin's regime attempting to fund the nationalists and populists or come to their aids solely to undermine Western democratic institutions. But Putin and Western nationalist parties are of two different origins and natures. Putin's ideologies are by no means of our values and ways of life. It is indeed barbaric to our way of life. As many problems with our current political order we could complain about, Putin's ideologies that fueled the war, though, came from the the outside of our integrated international order. Of course, it also shows the lack of effective mechanisms to hold the culprits of human rights and war criminals accountable existing in our rules and order, on the other hand. The "international community" fell as silent when Putin waged against against Georgia, as when it announced the annexation of Crimea into Russian territory. Putin behaved as a regional warlord who ruled his own sphere by imperial laws and was ready to deploy the force against "satellite" nation-states at his own mercy. It was such an entitlement for Russia that any interference from the Wester would be dismissed by his giant propaganda as "hypocritical", "double-standard". And the West itself at the time of such invasions found themselves embattled in internal issues. There came a series of backslides such as Brexit, election of Donald Trump, entries of the populist parties into the parliaments across Europe. Putin's supremacism and expansionist nationalism is a ruinous fossil from the outside that we did not have chance to clear, albeit being by no means even something from the within. Rather it laid bare Western failure to make human rights and democratic values truly "universal". Not all expansionism is detrimental , so much hesitation from Western groupthink to accept the fact that the "expansionism" of universal human rights and democracy as the only political model for the member states of the international community is not only desirable, but a necessity.

The West has been pursuing a foreign affair doctrine which is interesting and complicated to analyse. The flush of events in 1990s spelt the end of Cold War in which authoritarianism was still known as a major force to be reckoned. The communist states fell down with some coming out as success stories of democratic transitions, some sliding back into dictatorship. However authoritarianism diminished into the fragments of regimes, insignificant enough in power and small enough in size to be ignored. The West extended cooperation with Russia, or China as long as they showed "friendly sides" to the West, and do not appear to challenge our "Wester laws and order". Deng Xiaoping famously put it "hide your strength and bide your time" to describe his approach of China in foreign policies.

As for Putin's case, remember Putin began his political career by embracing the West, and things only turned sour following the occurrence of Ukrainian EurMaidan. EuroMaidan rose as a movement to protest the decision to deepen the ties with Russia and back away from free trade agreements with the EU by the then president Yanukovych. Perhaps, it was perceived as a direct challenge to Russian hegemony in the region, or perhaps, it raised a dire alarm of what to come in the foresight, sweeping democratisation across the former Soviet block, not only challenging the Russian hegemony, but the hold onto power of Putin and his dictatorial regime as well. But obviously a sense of ideological confrontation was felt in the air, perhaps leading Putin to begin holding an anti-Western view. It was disappointing that the Western politicians took poor readings of this development though, too much weighing and fixation on their own security issues, too much realistic calculation, which utterly drove them away from hearing the voices and dreams of Ukrainians who did not just strategically choose to be closer to the EU and away from Russia, but also decisively making up their mind about choosing democratisation moving forward. They saw the integration with the EU nations and refusal to fall back under the Russian Empire in parallel with the guarantees of continual democratic institutional reforms, free elections, and speeches, stronger embraces of democratic cultures and universal values. It is not a strategic choice, but inclined to be ideological. As opposed to the Western realists whose purely saw the mono economic sides of integration as appeasement to tame authoritarian regimes, as long as they remain friendly and harmless, it would be great for the status quo, and the greater economic integration, the greater benefits it would be. But this purely dismisses the sheer extent political suppression and human rights abuses under the authoritarian regimes. All these blatant violations of universal political values were overlooked under the so-called "non-interference" principle.

The Ukrainian War as we saw today came as a result of utter failure to address to question of how to integrate and engage in the World of democracy as the major political model. The Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 broke out where we failed to resolve a matter that matters. Fortunately though, Ukraine showed resilience of a young democracy to squash Putin's ambition for swift military victories. They swiftly pushed back the Russians from Kyiv, and Kharkiv, and even marched into the Russian borders in recent days. The war in Ukraine might end soon with Russian humiliating defeat. It might be followed with a period of foreign policies which are guided by human rights and universal values enshrined in the international laws and conventions. We should not have a system which rendered ourselves toothless in hanging the human right abusers and war criminals out to dry. History does not repeat itself, but it reverberates. We might be on the eve of a big moment of authoritarian downfalls.

The political triumph of the former police boss in Vietnam, who is perhaps a representative of the "party wing" inside the regime is not necessarily the victory of political extremism. And his grip on power might be as short-lived as the remaining time of the communist regime. This time around, their escape is not simple and easy as their escape of typical Western sanctions on human rights abuses, if what to come is not tactical. There has been a tropical storm in motion to sweep through.

(Shaun- 8-September-2024)