1. The assertiveness of autocratic states is a challenge to the West, but isolation and abasement are not ways to respond.
After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Francis Fukuyama, the American political thinker, wrote a celebrated essay proclaiming the end of history. The failure of Marxism marked “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution”, in which the spread of Western liberal democracy became the final form of government.
The triumphalist notion of the inevitability of democracy, or even just of the rule of law, has long since been superseded. The great geopolitical fact of the early 21st century is the rise of nations that do not embrace liberty, but that trend is not historically determined either. Western liberal societies may merely hasten the shrinking of democracy if they lose confidence in the justification and the resilience of their principles.
Emerging economies, and China most of all, now run persistent current account surpluses. The standard of living of American consumers depends on attracting funds from China and oil-producing nations.
The wealth of these nations, invested in special vehicles called sovereign wealth funds, puts immense economic influence at the disposal of mainly non-democratic governments.
While China’s rise demonstrates that economic liberalism does not necessarily produce political liberty, this would still be a hugely self-defeating course.
The gains from open trade and investment are measured in enhanced productivity and higher living standards. And because markets are decentralised forms of decision making, they also hold out the hope, though not the certainty, that they will carry with them the logic of decentralising political power as well.
After Fifa’s perverse decision, some embittered commentators in the UK blamed not those who took the decision but The Sunday Times and the BBC for exposing the cynical manoeuvres that lay behind it.