Autocracy, democracy and the power of grand narratives

The full scale of the hacking of the US government’s cyber systems is now becoming clear. What was first identified as a successful attack on the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and parts of the Pentagon has now also been traced to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, America’s nuclear weapons design centre. The security breach was not identified by any federal agency but by a private cybersecurity firm, Fire Eye; and, while Donald Trump was railing about the hack that wasn’t – the manipulation of votes in the recent presidential election – he has been notably reticent on the comprehensive penetration of his government by a foreign power. The embarrassment of the US administration is complete.

The attack has been widely ascribed to Russia and certainly it is the Russians who have been the serial offenders in attacking the American federal/industrial complex during the 25 years that cyber warfare has been part of the currency of international competition. But this attack was of a different order. Whereas past attacks have been characterised by crude, direct assaults at a single point, this operation was undetected at multiple, simultaneous points of entry, and, once inside the US systems, concentrated only on the most valuable targets. If this attack had been mounted in the material rather than the digital world, or if positive attribution were not so notoriously difficult, it would represent a clear act of war – but that’s a risk the perpetrators seem happy to take.

At the same time, China is also acting in an increasingly bellicose manner. Not only has it steamrollered over treaty protocols and international law by turning the East and South China Seas into domestic lakes but it has also deliberately picked fights – one lethal, one rhetorical – with India and Australia, while shrill wolf warrior diplomacy carps from the sidelines in support. This is simply not the way it’s supposed to behave. Conventional sinology has it that China avoids direct confrontation and pockets its micro-victories until, in aggregate, they represent overwhelming advantage. For a civilisation that offered the view in the late 20th century that it was too early to judge the outcome of the French Revolution, this is precipitate and perhaps reckless behaviour. So what’s going on, what is encouraging acts that are at best provocative and at worst potential casus belli and are they the result of accident, desperation or supreme self-confidence?

Grand Narratives evolve organically but are maintained deliberately by the self-interested political elites that are their bi-product. They define what political and social systems stand for and so shape the identity, sense of purpose and values of nations and individuals. If you have won a world war, created the United Nations and the Bretton Woods architecture, lived through 40 years of constantly improving living standards and seen your mortal enemy’s political system collapse, you have reason to feel good about yourself. And the West did. The Grand Narrative of Western liberal democracy matured throughout the second half of the 20th century and created and sustained a value system that by 1990 felt invulnerable. Francis Fukuyama’s (often misinterpreted) End of History was seen as the postscript of an era and the end note of the triumph of the West.

That was then and this is now. And in between injudicious adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, falling living standards for the lower paid, a financial crisis, culture wars, a badly handled pandemic and bizarre political leadership have intervened. Just as liberal democracy prospered organically on the back of history, so it is declining by the same mechanism and despite the attempts of its political clients to shore it up by invoking the supposed self-evident benefits of democracy or resorting to populism.

It could be worse. The Stab in the Back Grand Narrative that emerged in Germany as a national pretext for defeat in the First World War perverted the value system of perhaps the most civilised and politically mature country in Europe. Deliberately maintained by race theory and propaganda, what started as democratic process ended in Auschwitz and catastrophic military defeat. History does not bear witness to any more salutary example of the power of Grand Narrative to both inspire and corrupt than the brief interlude of Nazi Germany.

Seen from Beijing, a new Grand Narrative is now taking shape. The largest economic growth spurt in history has taken China from bare subsistence to world leading prosperity within 40 years, a century of humiliation has been expunged and a 3,000 year historical legacy, the mandate of heaven and the manifest destiny of the Middle Kingdom have all been restored. The example of Russia is less clear cut, but from having been on the ropes in 1990 to being the lead external power in the Middle East, an unchallenged irredentist in Eastern Europe and a force in global politics is a signal act of national reinvention.

Taken together, China and Russia have created a composite Grand Narrative of purposeful autocracy that is the antithesis of liberal democracy. Their social contract requires certain freedoms to be suspended and for some to forfeit them altogether, but strong, centralised and self-perpetuating leadership offers security, prosperity and the restoration of national dignity in return. Although Russia nods in the direction of representative politics, the bread and circuses of liberal democracy is seen as oversold and the evidence is there for all to see: why is China largely Covid free and prospering while America is recording thousands of deaths a day and economically prostrate? This is not simply polishing a self-image; rather it is burnishing the credentials of an alternative world view that is being pitched to countries like Hungary or Turkey that have a propensity for strongman government; countries like Poland and Kyrgyzstan that might miss the certainties of a previous regime; countries like Zimbabwe or Mali that find the advantages of democracy illusory; or countries like Saudi Arabia and Laos that simply do not require a democratic mandate. In those biddable nations beyond the Western European and North American liberal democratic heartland, a global contest of competing Grand Narratives is underway and the West is probably coming second.

Not only that but China and Russia have perfected the techniques of supporting their Grand Narrative in the hurly-burly of international competition. As the West – particularly America – spent its power in the Wars of 9/11, both countries were able to take a long, cool look at the strengths and vulnerabilities of Western political/military systems. Concluding that fighting America on the conventional warfare ground of its own choosing would be suicidal, they have developed hybrid techniques that employ economic, cultural, psychological, legal and criminal instruments to gain local advantage. At the same time both have developed highly sophisticated air defence systems, perfected long range and terminally guided missile technology, modernised their nuclear inventories and developed space and artificial intelligence for offensive use. The continuum from local tactical engagement by novel means, through a capacity for regional conventional warfare to doctrines of nuclear warfighting – all in seamless support of a unified world view – is being consolidated all the time. And, in China’s case, the Belt and Road initiative and the creation of the largest navy in the world serve a single, indivisible purpose: the prosecution of Chinese power on a global basis.

Only a fool would dismiss the United States as a busted historical flush. The ability for America to reinvent itself is the defining national vocation, but there’s a lot to do. The virtues of liberal democracy are no longer self-evident, America’s soft power is declining while its hard power looks brutish and over-militarised in comparison to its competitors. Above all, the continuity and coherence of a Grand Narrative at the top of a national prospectus through descending layers of instruments to support and propagate it no longer has the compelling clarity it once enjoyed and others might be offering a better deal.

So what’s going on, are Russian cyber adventurism and Chinese bullying accidents or evidence of desperation? No, they are acts of supreme self-confidence.

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