Power´s Degradation and the Russian Threat.

Power´s Degradation and the Russian Threat.

By: Erreh Svaia

Caprine Dispersion

“Knowledge is Power.”

Francis Bacon

There are many books that have left a deep impression on me, I can tell you about Friedrich Nietzsche's The Antichrist (which made me question myself about moral), Raymond Aaron's The Opium the Intellectuals (with venerable truths on the nature of some “intellectuals”, Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny (a timeless book on authoritarianism), Mark Lilla's The Reckless Mind (again on the contradictions and fallacies of some intellectuals), Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile (a great book on resilience) or Gabriel Zaid's Oppressed Businessmen (a new and creative vision on entrepreneurism), recently I finished reading The End of Power by Venezuelan writer Moisés Naím, and quite an epiphany it was, nothing new if you think about current news, but an spectacular ensemble of how things slowly start to build a big picture and what looks familiar ends up acquiring a new dimension, The End of Power is about power's current degradation, and how is becoming harder to keep it, it was written a couple of years ago (2013) but it is more contemporary now than ever, you can witness some of the ideas in the book just by watching around, in Mexico we saw the "end" of the "perfect dictatorship ",as Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa described it, or as Mexican historian Enrique Krauze described it, the "Imperial presidency", in Mexico, in the year 2000, the dictatorial and authoritarian hegemonic political party the PRI lost the presidential elections after more than 70 years in power, a couple of years before, president Ernesto Zedillo started making arrangements for the political crash, purposely weakening the president 's role while transferring power to the state governors (a process that ended up in big corruption crisis in several states), the PRI had already some agreements with the right wing party the PAN since 1988, agreements in the style of the ones Lech Walesa used in Poland in order to subtract power from the communist regime, so Zedillo also made arrangements with the left wing, helping Andres Lopez first become president of left wing's biggest party, the PRD, and then again helping Lopez to become major of Mexico City, without even completing the minimum of time to live in the city in order to become a candidate, the setting was ready for the big lose, but that setting proved to be disastrous for the upcoming governments, Vicente Fox inexperience as politician became evident, and the already distributed power made it difficult for Felipe Calderon to run a broad coalition, so power was fragmented, it was easy for opposition to block every initiative and the country suffered a big political crisis which created a stagnated state, economical progress was halted and reduced to minimum levels, very much needed structural reforms were blocked until many years later also reducing their impact on economy, the country experienced a difficult moment in which our young democracy saw the fragmentation of power, represented before by the PRI, and saw the rise of powerful agents, like the opposition, capable of making advances impossible for the government in turn (a lesson our neighbors from the north quickly learned when they paralyzed the congress during the Obama administration, in México, the political landscape became more diverse, but it became very difficult to the upcoming presidents to create consensus or to build coalitions, as power became more fragmented than ever, now in 2018, we will witness a presidential candidate probably winning by a 30% of the vote, with a 70% of the vote against him, making his administration powerless and wit little space for maneuver during the next six years.

Europe suffered a dreadful crisis in 2008, the decaying welfare state was not enough to keep the continent a float, and countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece suffered the consequences, others like the Nordic countries were already turning from social democracy into Centre right economic models, even countries like Germany and France were affected by the economic struggle, as a consequence, populism started using the cracks in the system to give strength to their political ambitions, nationalist populism grew big in several European countries, a fact that gave an idea to Russian Czar Vladimir Putin, a man scared by the color revolutions and the Arab Spring, who decided to seize the opportunity, and get advantage of the moment of anger, distrust and the power vacuum to exploit one of Europe´s main ballasts, nationalism, so Putin set to use backwards the George Soros´ book of freedom funding and he created his own Populist International, in order to fund almost every radical sort of political movement in the world, from Greece´s radical left wing party Syriza, to far right Golden Dawn, Italy´s The Northern League, Hungary´s Jobbik, Austria´s FPÖ, Spain´s Podemos, France´s National Front and the UK´s UKIP, (some may even see some connections with Catalonia separatist movements), as the UK remained as one of the European Union main financial centers, it was a key position for Russia to launch an attack, the Russian oligarchs presence in that country may have made things easy, let´s not forget that Román Abrámovich, a close friend of Putin is the owner of the Chelsea Football Club, and just as the UK was just leaving an economic recession, nationalists saw the chance to spread all sort of fake information in order to create chaos and plant the seeds of disintegration, misinformation was clue in order create a society division in which old and young generations clashed and the European Union received a powerful blow in the form of Brexit, the separation of the UK, from one of the biggest and best creations in human political history, the European Union, a group of countries that disappeared the borders and created a common currency, the power of the European Union was such that it prevented wars for decades and turned the region into one of the biggest economic successful experiments in the world, but as the EU grew, Russia felt its ascendance as a direct treat, so the Brexit, or exit of the UK from the EU was an enormous success for Putin.

In this game of power degradation, Nigel Farage was a clue figure in the Brexit movement, it’s even suspicious that he appeared once again during last year’s presidential campaign in the USA, another place where political power was also quickly becoming hard to keep, traditional parties saw the arrival of an external element in the populist media show and businessman Donald Trump, who few people imagined could even make it as the definite Republican candidate, again distrust and “divide and conquer” strategy was put on display in the USA, as a more extensive propaganda attack was launched on internet sites like Sputnik or Russia Today, that and an invasion by subjects like the so called Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg, supposedly created to intervene on social network in order to create  bad image of North American traditional politics, democracy and political candidates, in the middle of all that havoc, it was easy to exploit fear and anger in the USA population, a propagandist strategy was easily put in action as Putin an KGB might have recalled the was Soviet agents used propaganda in order to brake the trust in democracy and politically conquer countries in east Europa that would become USSR´s satellite states, the same strategy was used not only in the USA, but also in France, in the Netherlands and in Germany recently, power becoming harder to keep and easier to disrupt, fear of uncertainty becoming easier to exploit by authoritarians who demanded less civil freedoms in exchange of supposed security and stability, but just as we are seeing a weakening of our democratic systems, lack of trust, anger, and a degradation of our civil societies, countries, once full of promises for the future like Poland, Turkey and Mexico are now under the threat of authoritarianism, but as history is teaching us, this might not be happening for a long time, in the end, they also won´t be able to keep power for so long, and again democracy and free people will have the last word.