The flying objects of the past few days and the invasion of Ukraine give me the impression that Russia and China want to see the weakness of democracies and are testing how far they can go. This can be explained in two ways.
In an authoritarian, dictatorial or theocratic regime, humans are at the service of the regime, the greatness and the glory of the ruler or of God. They can be ordered to fight and sacrifice, the unity of the group being far superior to individual desires and needs. The individual will be rewarded on the basis of his sacrifice to the common cause, whether here or in the hereafter. His rights are rarely in the foreground.
In a democratic regime, it is the well-being of the individual that is at the center of the system, which explains why we can criticize it and why, when we give a little to one or the other, no one is completely satisfied with the government in power, whatever it is. A majority will always have reasons to be dissatisfied with the regime, which opens the door to the risk of seeing a dictator elected one day, who will unite a majority of voters (not citizens) to his views. And dictatorial regimes know this very well.
There’s a reason they’re doing these destabilizing actions over North America, hoping it will push the Trumpist right to power and then drop NATO and focus on the America. It would suit China, Russia and a few other dictatorships just fine.
Imagine a Europe over which Russia would take the upper hand, an Asia under the Chinese yoke and an America that Trump or another ultraconservative would like to put in his hand […]. An American commentator has also said that we should invade Trudeau’s Canada, a new Cuba according to him.
Democracy must therefore defend itself while wanting to protect its citizens and the world from nuclear danger, while its opponents aim to defend the greatness of their autocratic leaders at the risk of their own lives, often on the sole promise of a paradise, that whether on earth or in the afterlife. There is like a mental imbalance due to great manipulation. Didn’t Marx write that religion was the opium of the people? The Russians didn’t retain that one.