Tag Archive for: Democracy

The West’s crisis of confidence

The US president warned of a crisis of confidence, with ‘a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media and other institutions.’ He cautioned that ‘the erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America’ and was ‘a fundamental threat to American democracy’ that had ‘come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.’

The warning was given to the United States not in 2025 by Joe Biden but in 1979 by Jimmy Carter, who died last month, aged 100.

Known as the ‘malaise speech’, it blamed the country as a whole, including its leadership. Now a failure of leadership is driving a failure of confidence that’s at the heart of the current era of crisis of the democracies, including in Australia.

It’s a crisis of confidence in who we were, are and will be as liberal democracies. It’s a loss of confidence that we can always have a better future if we are willing to stand up for it. The Western world came out of 1945 never doubting that 1955 and 1965 would be much better, though it well understood that sacrifices might have to be made to achieve that.

Now we seem to be so embarrassed by some of our history—for example, wrongs committed in colonialism—that we lack interest in our achievements. In watching the wrongs of other states, we fall into lazy and false moral equivalency, as though all countries were as bad as each other.

Meanwhile our adversaries (mainly China but also Russia) have no such doubts. They gain strength by ambitiously seeking a future that relives their past.

It will take leadership to bring us out of the malaise and lead us back onto a secure path fortified by our democratic principles.

Similarities between now and 1979 should be clear, and the response that followed it—peace through strength by the administration of Ronald Reagan—should be studied and repeated.

In 1979, as now, people were angry about inflation. Internationally, extremism in the Middle East was rising, fired up mainly by Iran. Great power competition was rising: in 1979, the era of US–Soviet detente ended with the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Today, the dire state of the liberal democratic world looks like the US’s malaise 45 years ago. Rivals have sensed the chance to overtake the US as the global superpower.

The Biden administration implemented a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a sign of weakness that must have encouraged Putin to think he could get away with invading Ukraine. And when he did, Western support for Ukraine came too hesitantly.

Now many fear Trump will turn the US inward. Yet American and global security requires him to return it to its leadership ambition in which it is proud of its history and striving for a better future.

The crisis of confidence we face today is worse than that of 1979. Back then, an adversary as powerful as China did not exist and the West was not taught to despise itself—by education curriculums, much of the media and, sadly, even national leaders.

Carter said, ‘as a people we know our past and we are proud of it.’ Now, too many Western leaders resign themselves to what former Australian prime minister John Howard described as a ‘black armband view of our past’.

Australian diplomats are now reluctant to use the term ‘the West’ or even to advocate democracy. The formerly named Strengthening Democracy taskforce in the Department of Home Affairs has been subsumed into another area, effectively neutering its intent with lost focus and leadership.

Some loathers of the West within the West disdain the very concept of the West. Others say we must not upset authoritarian regimes or people who proudly proclaim to be of the Global South.

Meanwhile, Russia has been ravaging Ukraine for three years, and, though we have helped Ukraine survive, we have neither put it in a position to win nor deterred Putin from his hybrid warfare of foreign interference, sabotage and propaganda.

Australia and others have returned to a failed engagement strategy with Beijing, tolerating its gross human rights violations, breaches of international rules, and enablement of Russia’s war. We’ve done that in return for the economic benefit of trade with China. And we hope China will inflict pain on others more than us until the problem is one for future governments.

The Australian government’s standard line on the relationship with China has been that we will ‘cooperate where we can and disagree where we must.’ It’s become an excuse for concessions. They include succumbing to Beijing’s claim that Australian citizen Yang Hengjun is not wrongfully detained. Yang has been in a Chinese jail for six years.

Confident leadership demands ministers standing front and centre in telling the public about our difficulties with China. Instead, they minimise annoyance to China by delegating the task to officials—as when intelligence agencies call out China’s relentless cyber attacks on us.

The Australian government and too many others don’t have the confidence that democracies can stand up to China. Instead, they are resigned to such fatalistic attitudes as one that Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has expressed: ‘China will do what great powers do.’ That implies some moral equivalence between the US and China. In an earlier, more confident age, leaders would express the situation more simply: China is a national security threat.

The government has instead found an easier target, one that is more agreeable to those who disdain the West. It is forsaking Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, one that, to our great benefit, is almost single handedly fighting Iran and its terror organisations. Terrorism is on the rise globally, including in Australia, where the threat level is back up to ‘probable’.

Islamist ideology is the source of the greatest terror threat, yet the government lacks confidence that it can say so without dividing society. In fact, people would appreciate hearing the truth, even if they can already pretty well see it themselves.

In the malaise speech, Carter said, ‘The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers.’ In blaming the US’s leadership as well as the public, he took some responsibility, but he had few answers for regaining national confidence. The Iran hostage crisis was the nail in the coffin of his presidency. But out of Carter’s demise America rose.

We now need leaders who are up front in a new era of conflict and who bring the public with them in ensuring we do not succumb to the authoritarian regimes who want to change our way of life. And it needs to be genuine confidence borne of pride in one’s own nation, history and future.

Reagan said in his 1980 campaign against Carter:

I find no national malaise; I find nothing wrong with the American people. Oh, they are frustrated, even angry at what has been done to this blessed land. But more than anything they are sturdy and robust as they have always been. Any nation that sees softness in our prosperity or disunity in our sometimes noisy arguments with each other, let such nations not make the mistakes others have made; let them understand that we will put aside in a moment the fruits of our prosperity and the luxury of our disagreements if the cause is a safe and peaceful future for our children.

Reagan was correct: the malaise was within leadership, as it is now across so much of the liberal democratic political class, including Australia’s. Where are the leaders who would forgo the fruits of prosperity to secure our future? Our national future, in the Indo-Pacific and within the Alliance, AUKUS, the Five Eyes and with our NATO partners and beyond, depends on them.

Information, facts, journalism and security

(A speech by the executive director of ASPI to the Media Freedom Summit, hosted by the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom in Sydney on 14 November.)

 

I want to start by citing the Guardian’s latest pitch for support from its readers. As most of you will know, the Guardian asks readers to pay rather than forcing them to do so through a pay wall. One of the ads that runs at the bottom of every Guardian story reads as follows:

This is what we’re up against …

Bad actors spreading disinformation online to fuel intolerance.

Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see.

Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and other established science.

Authoritarian states with no regard for the freedom of the press.

The first and last points are the most pertinent to me as head of ASPI. Bad actors are indeed spreading disinformation, and authoritarian states indeed have no regard for the freedom of the press.

And here’s why, as a national security guy, I like this pitch: because a society in which people want to pay for quality news is also a society that will be more resilient to disinformation, misinformation and the gradual erosion and pollution of our information environment. This resilience is a key pillar of our security; you might say it’s the strength on which all of our other capabilities are founded.

It points to a society in which people want to understand complex issues by engaging with facts.

It points to a society in which people want to do the hard work of exercising their critical-thinking skills so that they can evaluate for themselves what they’re being told, so they have healthy scepticism about political and social orthodoxies, not conspiratorial mistrust of traditions and institutions.

Those skills are built up through education—that includes formal education, life experience, auto-didacticism such as reading newspapers, and community and civic engagement. In other words, life in a vibrant and well-functioning society.

And let me stress, self-education through reading and viewing material online is a perfectly legitimate pursuit. But it doesn’t mean believing everything you read, nor selecting your own preferred facts, nor wrapping yourself in a comforting bubble of online fellow travellers who agree with you and validate your views.

What’s at stake here is that democracy, and in my view the functioning of society more broadly, depends on how we, as participants, recognise facts in a sea of information, and how we sort and prioritise those facts into an understanding of the world that we can use as a basis for action—including how to vote and how to perform all the other functions that engaged citizens perform in a democracy.

People will apply different weights, importance and context to facts based on the values those people hold. As long as the facts, or at least the majority of them, are agreed, people with differing values and world views can have a meaningful discussion. This is the foundation for even the most impassioned debate: people drawing on a common set of facts to arrive at different but nonetheless legitimate opinions.

Journalists and news organisations should hold privileged positions in the information environment based on the credibility they build up over time. However, to earn and hold these positions, journalists also have a sacred responsibility to report fairly, accurately and objectively in the public interest. What we can’t afford is for news organisations to retreat into ever more polarised political positions.

Media are vital to moderating and holding together public conversations even on the most difficult and controversial issues. That means leading civil debates on sensitive social issues, respectful debates and disagreements on very emotive foreign policy issues such as the war between Israel and terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah and, yes, how Australia engages constructively with the new Trump administration.

Public institutions need to accommodate different points of view. Rebuilding trust in those institutions, such as the government, the media and higher education, is not helped when they create a sense that open debate will be quashed and dissenting views will bring damage to a person’s reputation.

Through these debates and (civil) contests of ideas, democracy enables us to make adjustments to the way we collectively run our society. All the knowledge and day-to-day life experience of adult citizens are fed back into decision-making by the elected executive. This happens through elections, through citizens’ engagement with the institutions that implement policies and sometimes through less formal means including public protests—hopefully peaceful and lawful ones.

Though imperfect, it has always worked. But it has been dramatically disrupted by the roughly three decades of the popularisation of the internet, and the roughly 15 years of the popularisation of social media.

Yuval Noah Harari in his most recent book, Nexus, about the history and future of information networks, coined the phrase ‘the naive view of information’ to describe the false expectation that if people have access to ever more information they will, per se, get closer to truth. A related misunderstanding is the so-called ‘free market of ideas’—one of the popular beliefs back during the heady and utopian early days of the internet.

The hope was that if all ideas, good and bad, could be put on this intellectual market, the best ones would naturally compete their way to the top. But we’ve quickly learnt that the ideas that are the stickiest, the most likely to gain traction and spread, are not necessarily the most true, but more often the ones that are most appealing—the ones that give us the most satisfying emotional stimulation.

Far from being a functioning open market, it takes an active effort to create and share information that is directed at the truth. Journalism is one such effort. News media that is not directed at the truth but at social order or the creation of shared realities isn’t journalism; it’s propaganda.

Now, why is all this such a worry to the national security community?

Because it makes us deeply vulnerable. In telling ourselves that government involvement in the digital world would stifle innovation, we have only stifled our own ability to protect our public and left a gaping hole for foreign predators. Inevitably, the absence of government involvement leads to security violations. Instead of calm, methodical government involvement we then get rushed government intervention.

Powerful players such as China and Russia can use their resources and capabilities to put their finger on the scales and influence a society. Disinformation can shape beliefs across wide audiences. This can change how people vote or erode their faith in institutions and even in democracy itself. It can turn people against one another. It can impact policymaking and leave us less safe, less secure and less sovereign. It is one thing for our own politicians and media to influence us, but it is a national security threat that we are being influenced and interfered with by foreign regimes, their intelligence services and their state-run media.

I happen to believe in higher defence and security spending not because I seek aggression, conflict or war, but to deter it—because I believe that we keep ourselves safe by being strong and making it clear that we are strong. I also believe that with all the defence spending in the world, if your society is divided against itself to the point of dysfunction, you eventually have to ask yourself: what exactly are you protecting? And that’s why the information domain is as important as traditional military domains to a sensible national security practitioner.

An adversary doesn’t need to invade you or use coercive force to shape you if they can influence you towards a more favourable position through information operations. It costs billions, maybe trillions of dollars to invade another country, overthrow its government and install a more friendly one. Why do that if you can shape the information environment so that the other country changes its government on its own, for a tiny fraction of the price? The AI expert Stuart Russell has calculated that the Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election—which was a bargain for Moscow at a cost of about $25 million, given the massive disruption it’s caused—could be done for about $1000 today thanks to generative AI.

Solutions and responses 

So, what can we do about this? I don’t need to tell you that the business models of the news media are under enormous stress. Ask the person who wrote that eloquent pitch for support for the Guardian.

It’s easy to look around and feel despondent about the scale of the challenge. But it’s worth remembering we are still really in the early stages of the information revolution.

My submission is that the best way to create sustainable business models for strong, independent journalism is to foster societies in which people want to pay for this journalism, because they see value in having high-quality information. And they want this information because they recognise that it empowers them. It does not shut them down. There are rules and accountability but not censorship. Importantly, this requires our politicians, security agencies and the media to protect all views, not just ones the political leadership or journalists agree with. Too often I see genuine debate shut down, resulting in fear and self-censorship by those who might have a different view. For example, there is unquestionably a growing fear in our society from people wanting to support Israel. Shutting down legitimate views just because you think it is for a good cause does not make it right.

If our societies, including our media, focus their demands for accountability upon those countries and governments that cannot extract a cost from us (such as harming us economically as China has done and could do again) and if we hold only democracies to a high standard, we leave ourselves and our sovereignty vulnerable.

We should want to be a society open to ideas, views and debate. That is a foundation for resilience and security. Strong national security starts with a strong society aligned by a common set of principles, and resilient to different ideas.

So, we need to build our resilience to disinformation and the pollution of the information environment, as well as our appreciation of the importance of democratic values and freedoms. That means education throughout life, civics classes, digital literacy and support for civil society dealing with technology and democracy.

It means the government helping to create incentives for media to act as sheriffs in the information wild west (rather than those that abdicate any responsibility). That includes everything from content moderators on social media platforms to hardcore investigative journalists.

Conclusion

This is why I strongly believe that journalists and the national security community have many more aspirations and interests in common than they do natural tensions. And I want to dispel the idea that there is an inherent trade-off whereby the goals of one will necessarily come at the expense of the other.

It worries me when national security is seen as a potential threat to democratic freedoms and liberties, privacy being the most common example. This is the wrong framing.

Sometimes, the national security community gets things wrong. It makes mistakes. From time to time, officials might even behave unethically or, in rare cases, illegally. These are, for the most part, legitimate matters for journalists to pursue.

There is a lot of other national security work that simply needs to remain secret and non-public. That’s the nature of most intelligence work, significant portions of defence work, some diplomacy and some law enforcement.

A responsible national security leader should welcome scrutiny of shortcomings in conduct or competence in their agency. And a responsible journalist or editor should want to live in a functioning society in which national security agencies are able to do their work to protect us and our democratic freedoms. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are, after all, cornerstones of our democracy.

And in a well-functioning democracy, national security is about protecting our freedoms, never about curbing them. CCTV cameras on the street protect your right to walk safely but are not used to profile minorities as is the case in authoritarian countries.

National security agencies that are accountable to oversight by various watchdogs, and ultimately by the elected government and parliament, keep us safe not just in the sense of our physical bodies and lives, but also our society and our democratic way of life.

As part of this, it is vital that media not regard changes to national security policy or legislation only with respect to their impact on journalists. Just as there is a difference between something in the public interest and something publicly interesting, there is a distinction between restricting press freedom and restricting the press.

Government requests for understanding and cooperation in terrorism investigations or measures to prevent public servants leaking classified information isn’t a violation of press freedom.

To decry every government demand or expectation for journalists to exercise responsibility risks desensitising the public to those few occasions which do cross the line of freedoms.

This is why I support the work that Peter Greste and the Alliance are doing to clearly delineate the true work of journalists in gathering, carefully assessing and responsibly reporting facts from the reckless behaviour of those who believe that all secrets are sinister and should be exposed on principle.

Julian Assange, for instance, should never have been viewed as a journalist, but as someone who ultimately put lives at risk in the name of press freedom. Similarly, so-called whistleblowers who only target the secrets of open, rule-abiding democracies are actually doing the work of the Russian and Chinese government and other authoritarians, and they reduce the ability of our agencies to protect the public, including journalists.

Attempting to argue security laws have a chilling effect on sources leaking classified information will not be successful as that is not an unintended effect—it is the point.

Yes, we must hold ourselves and our democratic governments to account. But freedom of the press and freedom of expression are not enjoyed where one is only free to actually harm our own societies.

Political differences managed and resolved through open debate are a good thing. Political and social divisions driven by fear are toxic to our open societies.

You can’t have a free media without a strong democracy, and you can’t have a strong democracy without a free media. Those truths lie at the heart of the common mission between national security and journalism.

Polish democracy’s winter of discontent

One year after a coalition led by Donald Tusk defeated Poland’s right-wing ruling party, Law and Justice, the mood in the country is subdued. While a victory by pro-democracy parties in a free, but decidedly unfair, election was necessary, it was not sufficient to eliminate the illiberal populist threat. Prying Law and Justice’s tentacles out of every nook and cranny of the state is proving to be a much longer process. In the meantime, Law and Justice is seeking political advantage from the opposition benches.

Were another election to be held today, an estimated 47 to 48 percent of eligible voters would go to the polls, which would be one of the lowest turnouts in the last 20 years, and far lower than the record 75 percent turnout last year. Such findings stand in stark contrast to those of a year ago, when young people voted in droves, particularly young women, and proved to be the decisive factor in Law and Justice’s defeat.

Almost nothing is left of this previous mobilisation. Half of those recently surveyed (51 percent) identify fairly or very little with the government’s program and message. Worse, Law and Justice has retained its support, and support for the far-right Confederation alliance has doubled over the past year.

Many Poles still remember that Law and Justice oversaw a wide range of financial transfers, including large child support and pension payments. A fresh election, according to current polls, would probably replace Tusk’s government (which has around 28 percent support) with a coalition of Law and Justice (30 percent) and the Confederation (15 percent). Around 31 percent of Poles who intend to vote in the next election would choose differently than they did last year.

Even more important than any snapshot are the broader trend lines, which increasingly favour the Confederation and disfavour two parties in Tusk’s coalition: the Left and Third Way. Although Tusk’s Civic Coalition has gained a strong base of voters, the Confederation’s gains have been bigger. While 61 percent of those voting for the Confederation in 2023 want to do so again (and 59 percent for Law and Justice), only half of Civic Coalition and Left voters are willing to double down on their choice.

Supporters of the Left and Third Way are the most disappointed in the results of their victory a year ago. For example, typical supporters of the Left are dismayed that the government has merely introduced administrative changes to decriminalise abortion, rather than legalising it. This issue matters, because it has become a key indicator of whether Poland is advancing as a modern country or returning to its benighted Catholic past. It doesn’t help that the co-ruling Left is dominated by men, despite relying on a predominantly female electoral base.

Other segments of the Civic Coalition’s electorate are disappointed by the lack of progress in restoring the rule of law and holding Law and Justice politicians accountable for abuse of power. Most of these efforts have been blocked by the Law and Justice-linked president, Andrzej Duda. Moreover, the state’s dwindling coffers make it difficult to offer any quick material benefits to Polish voters, as Law and Justice did.

Third Way, for its part, is experiencing a crisis of both engagement and leadership, and it comprises two parties that ultimately are incompatible: Sejm Speaker Szymon Holownia’s Poland 2050 party and Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz’s conservative Polish People’s Party. Each is threatened not only by demobilisation of their traditional voters, but also by Tusk’s party, Civic Platform, and the Confederation.

The Confederation’s leader, Krzysztof Bosak, is increasingly popular across many segments of the electorate, commanding the support of half of all men under 40. The party did, however, make a serious mistake by nominating Slawomir Mentzen as its candidate for the presidential election next year. As a party leader, he is popular with the rank and file, but not with the broader public.

Unlike Law and Justice, the Confederation has the potential to attract disillusioned voters from almost any party. It offers a more honest version of right-wing conservatism than Law and Justice does, and it is unencumbered by the former ruling party’s innumerable scandals. Some two-thirds of those recently surveyed, including one-third of Law and Justice voters, believe that at least some Law and Justice politicians or officials deserve to be in prison. Among the top names on the list are former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (who 34 percent think should be prosecuted); Law and Justice’s longtime leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski (30 percent); and former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro (19 percent).

But Tusk is not blind to the threat that the Confederation poses. His new immigration policy—which temporarily prohibits asylum in Poland for applicants from Russia and Belarus—is meant to head off the far right.

Moreover, a happy ending to the story remains possible. The next presidential election must be held by 18 May 2025, and it could remove the biggest obstacle to the government’s progress. The clear frontrunner is Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski of Civic Platform, who is polling at around 33 percent, whereas no other candidate exceeds 8 percent. His election would be the breakthrough that Tusk and the rest of Poland’s pro-democracy coalition need.

The West’s undermining of democracy

With great-power rivalries again at the centre of international relations, democratic governments have been relying on secret statecraft to shape or sway regimes in weaker states, including by supporting or aiding regime change. Far from advancing democracy globally, these efforts are exacerbating its vulnerabilities at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise.

To be sure, local militaries—with or without external backing—remain the leading drivers of regime change. In Pakistan, for example, the military reasserted its traditional dominance over government in 2022, when it engineered the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan. In Bangladesh, the military recently took advantage of a violent student-led uprising to compel Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country, before installing an interim civilian-led administration headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

But external powers also often play a key role in driving regime change. Yes, the mechanisms remain murky. Since strategic skullduggery rarely leaves any political fingerprints, intervening powers can plausibly deny involvement, leaving independent analysts struggling to distinguish fact from fiction.

Nonetheless, it is usually fairly easy to see where an external power gets its leverage. China, for example, is the world’s largest trading economy and official creditor for developing countries. While the details of China’s loan agreements are far from transparent, there is no doubt that it attaches many strings to its funding, which increase its leverage over borrowers, possibly even driving them into sovereignty-eroding debt traps.

The United States, for its part, dominates the international financial architecture, enjoys considerable leverage over traditional lenders like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and issues the world’s main reserve currency. With these levers, it has significant power to reward or punish countries, including by imposing painful economic sanctions.

The US has long been accused of—and sometimes admitted to—helping to topple or prop up foreign regimes, including by meddling in elections or aiding uprisings, such as the ‘colour revolutions’ in some post-Soviet states. Some have even alleged that the US played a role in the recent overthrow of Khan in Pakistan and Hasina in Bangladesh, though US officials have denied any involvement.

The question is what a democracy like the US hopes to achieve by contributing to regime change. The answer cannot be lasting democratic breakthroughs, which rarely arrive in the wake of popular uprisings. Instead, countries are likely to face political instability, social disorder, and economic disruption. That is certainly the case in Bangladesh, which is now facing chaos and violence, with mobs burning down factories, hospitals, hotels, and homes.

A more likely explanation—for which there is ample evidence—is that Western powers are seeking to advance their own geopolitical and economic interests by supporting ‘friendly’ regimes and driving out ‘unfriendly’ ones. The regimes’ democratic credentials (or lack thereof) seem to matter little here, though Western powers do prefer that there is a pretence of democracy.

This helps to explain why military takeovers are often followed by elections or the installation, as in Bangladesh, of a government with a civilian face: military leaders hope to bolster the new government’s international legitimacy and, in many cases, retain access to Western financial assistance. After all, the US is legally required to cut off aid to a country after a coup. After the military junta returned to power in Myanmar in 2021, US President Joe Biden’s administration imposed stringent sanctions on the country and, later, began providing non-lethal aid to anti-junta forces.

But US leaders take great care in deciding which military takeovers to label as ‘coups.’ Of the more than two dozen military coups or indirect takeovers that have taken place in the last 15 years, the US refrained from condemning about half, because it considered the regime change favourable to its regional interests. In this sense, the US has often sacrificed democracy at the altar of geopolitics.

Elections alone—even if competitive—do not guarantee popular empowerment or adherence to constitutional rules, especially when the military holds decisive power. While the international community might view a civilian-led government positively—even if it is merely a facade for continued military control—domestic legitimacy may well be lacking, even when the coup-makers shed their uniforms and rebrand themselves ‘civilian’ leaders, as the Thai army chief did after seizing power in 2014. He remained in office as the country’s ‘civilian’ prime minister for nine years.

Democracy is in retreat globally. Many populations are facing the erosion of their political rights and civil liberties. Even the world’s leading democracies are suffering from low public trust in governments and bitterly polarized politics. And closed autocracies now outnumber liberal democracies. By accepting or tolerating military rule—even behind a civilian facade—Western powers will only accelerate this trend.

A reprieve for Israel’s democracy

Last week, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on two major bills pushed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government as part of its judicial overhaul. The decision to strike down the first and delay activation of the second until after the next general election delivered a historic victory for Israel’s democratic forces.

The first bill would have eliminated the Supreme Court’s power to block ‘extremely unreasonable’ government decisions. The second bill, explicitly tailored for Netanyahu, who currently is on trial for corruption, sought to bar Israel’s attorney-general from declaring him unfit for office if he attempts to interfere with the criminal proceedings, and stipulated that the prime minister could be declared incapacitated only for health reasons. Both bills were approved by the Knesset during the summer as amendments to Israel’s Basic Laws, which serve as the country’s de facto constitution.

These rulings mark a watershed moment for Israeli democracy. By striking down the government’s judicial overhaul, the Supreme Court rejected the notion that wartime unity necessitates tolerating Netanyahu’s erosion of democratic norms. In a narrow 8–7 majority, the court upheld the reasonableness standard, rebuking the ruling coalition for causing ‘severe and unprecedented harm’ to Israel’s democratic character.

Moreover, 12 of the 15 justices ruled that the Supreme Court has the authority to review and even strike down Basic Laws that undermine Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. This amounts to a rejection of the government’s argument that Basic Laws should be exempt from judicial review, even if they were passed by a simple Knesset majority.

That said, the court’s decision represents a radical departure from its traditional reluctance to rule on Basic Laws. Because Israel doesn’t have a formal constitution, these laws function as a foundational legal framework, outlining the state’s responsibilities and safeguarding essential civil rights. But Netanyahu’s government has exploited the court’s non-interference policy, seizing every opportunity to manipulate the Basic Law process for Netanyahu’s personal and political gain. With their latest ruling, the justices aim to end this practice.

The court’s decision to overturn Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul also represents a major victory for the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who took to the streets over the past year to protest against it. These mass rallies have highlighted the ongoing conflict between two contrasting visions of Israel’s future, a divide that was momentarily overshadowed by Hamas’s massacre of Israeli citizens on 7 October. Since the war in Gaza began, Netanyahu and his allies, whose negligence led to the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history, have tried to shift the blame to the protesters and the Supreme Court. By exposing Israel’s internal rifts, they argue, the protesters inadvertently encouraged Hamas to attack.

But it is abundantly clear that it was the government’s judicial overhaul, not the protests against it, that ripped apart Israeli society. Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s allies—including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose far-right settler constituency has been the driving force behind the efforts to weaken the judiciary—have lashed out at the court for ‘weakening the spirit’ of the soldiers fighting in Gaza.

Netanyahu, for his part, seems to view the war against Hamas as an insurance policy of sorts. His management of the war is inextricably tied to his quest for political survival, reflecting his apparent conviction that the only way to mitigate the adverse repercussions of his divisive judicial overhaul and his personal responsibility for the7  October attack is by pursuing a decisive victory over Hamas, no matter the cost.

Netanyahu’s desire to save his political career also explains his refusal to accept responsibility for the blunders that have led to Israel’s current predicament. The military’s top brass, from the chief of staff to the heads of military intelligence and the Israeli security service (Shin Bet), have all acknowledged their failures and pledged to resign once the war is over. But Netanyahu, who once stated that a strong Hamas in Gaza is ‘our way to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state’, continues to evade responsibility by repeating his newfound mantra: ‘After the war.’

Before 7 October, many military reservists and combat pilots actively participated in the mass protests against the government’s judicial overhaul. Some even threatened to stop reporting for duty. While they were primarily motivated by their concern for Israel’s democracy, they also understood, as military personnel, that an independent and internationally respected judiciary safeguards them against potential prosecution by international tribunals. Regrettably, it didn’t take long for these reservists’ worst fears to materialise.

The devastating human toll of the war in Gaza has exposed Israeli leaders and soldiers to the risk of prosecution for war crimes. Later this month, the International Court of Justice in The Hague is scheduled to discuss the genocide allegations brought against Israel by South Africa. In its defence, Israel is expected to brush off the savage threats and genocidal rhetoric used by Netanyahu’s coalition partners (which have bolstered South Africa’s accusations) and highlight the international standing of the Supreme Court.

While Netanyahu’s attempted judicial coup has been thwarted, this victory could prove fleeting. Netanyahu’s coalition of warmongers, messianic settlers and cynical opportunists remains intact and will continue to pursue its authoritarian agenda. Moreover, the liberal Supreme Court majority that overturned the government’s overhaul no longer exists following the retirement of Chief Justice Esther Hayut and Justice Anat Baron.

The significance of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, especially in the midst of an existential war, cannot be overstated. The court’s liberal-leaning majority has proven to be an indispensable ally of the democratic forces opposing the extremists who view the war in Gaza as an opportunity to realise their vision of a Greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. But these forces’ recent victory is merely part of a larger battle for Israel’s soul—a battle that continues to play out in the shadow of an ongoing war.

Strange bedfellows form Thailand’s new government

Thai politics were in a muddled state prior to 22 August 2023. Following the general election in May, there was much speculation about who would become the next prime minister and how the old establishments would leverage their political power to achieve their desired outcome.

According to most Thai news sources, it was widely believed that the prime minister’s seat would be assumed by Prawit Wongsuwan, the former deputy prime minister, leader of the Palang Pracharat Party and a key figure behind numerous clandestine political deals. Rumours were rife about whether there was a special deal between the monarchy and the autocrats.

Three months after election day, the covert political warfare between Thailand’s populist Pheu Thai Party, the alliance of conservative political parties including Palang Pracharat, and the military-appointed senators finally came to light and undermined Prawit’s shot at power.

On 22 August, Thailand witnessed two significant political events. First, Srettha Thavisin, a real estate magnate from the Pheu Thai Party, was appointed prime minister. Second, Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister who had been in exile for 15 years and was the influential force behind the Pheu Thai Party, returned to Thailand. When he emerged from the terminal, he paid homage to the portraits of the Thai king and queen, and then greeted his supporters.

Immediately afterwards, corrections officials escorted Thaksin to jail. He submitted a request for a royal pardon on 31 August and King Maha Vajiralongkorn granted it the next day, reducing Thaksin’s jail time from eight years to just one.

The Thai people, once deeply polarised between pro-democracy red shirts and pro-royalist yellow shirts, now find themselves baffled by the unusual alliance forming the new governing coalition. The red shirts, who are anti-military rule, pro-democracy and opposed to the royalist conservatives, support the Pheu Thai Party.

The yellow shirts, who despise Thaksin and his allies, are strongly against those whom they believe want to abolish the monarchy by amending the lèse-majesté law and support pro-military parties like Palang Pracharat and the United Thai Nations Party. But the new alliance between these two opposing political camps has led many Thais who once staunchly supported their ideological camps to question where their loyalties lie.

As the dust settles in Thailand, the extent of the post-election political manoeuvring has come to light. The new cabinet ministers, now royally endorsed, include familiar faces from General Prayut Chan-o-cha’s previous government and members once labelled as ‘pro-democracy’ from the Pheu Thai and Palang Prachachat parties. The new alliance has also seen several inexperienced ministers appointed to high-level cabinet positions.

The political divisions in Thailand can now broadly be categorised into three distinct groups. The first group consists of those who steadfastly support their leaders and whatever they do. The second group comprises staunch supporters of their political camp, who have become disillusioned by their leaders’ alliances with the opposite camp. Phumtham Wechayachai, the Pheu Thai Party deputy leader, spearheaded the unusual alliance, saying that all Thais needed to swallow their pride ‘in order for the country to move on’.

The third group includes those who supported the Move Forward Party. These people were disillusioned from the beginning because, though their party won the most seats in the election, it did not form government. This third group has continued to support the Move Forward Party, which now serves as the opposition.

With the governing coalition formed and ministers appointed, the Thai people are looking at what the future holds for them and the country’s politics. Staunch supporters of Thaksin remain defenders of the Pheu Thai Party, even going as far as protecting political figures from the pro-royalist camp. Those disillusioned by the Pheu Thai Party will likely shift their support to the Move Forward Party in the next election, given their shared pro-democracy ideology. But those in the pro-royalist conservative camp, who felt betrayed because their leaders and the monarchy supported Thaksin’s return, will likely remain loyal to their political camp. Their ideologies are too conservative to align with the Move Forward Party. Pro-royalist conservatives will likely continue to search for loopholes to undermine Thaksin and the Pheu Thai Party.

While the conservatives and Thaksin’s camp may be aligned, mutual trust is lacking. Their alliance remains fragile and could disintegrate at any moment. The military remains a key cleavage. Even though the Pheu Thai Party’s campaign rested on an anti-military stance, Prime Minister Srettha and Minister of Defence Sutin Klungsang are ostensibly intent on supporting the military’s interests. Pandering to the directives of the Thai military is most likely an effort to prevent another coup.

The past four months of political tumult have shown that Thai citizens have little influence over their nation’s affairs. The formation of the coalition, the government’s alignment with the military, the political arrangement between autocrats and the monarchy, and the swift return and subsequent release of Thaksin have revealed that the interests of the Thai people have never been a top priority. To the autocrats and the monarchy, what matters most is the preservation of their power.

Thailand’s tilt at democracy

The undemocratic reality of Thai politics was on full display at the first joint session of the Thai parliament on 13 July. The charismatic leader of the progressive and pro-democratic Move Forward party, Pita Limjaroenrat, was blocked from becoming the country’s 30th prime minister by the junta-appointed Senate. Pita had secured the support of 311 of 500 newly elected members of parliament, all hailing from the Move Forward–led coalition.

He also had the backing of more than 14 million Thais who gave Move Forward their party list vote in the May election, earning the party 39 parliamentary seats. This was in addition to the 112 Move Forward candidates who gained the trust of their constituents, helping the party to its surprising electoral victory. Yet all this was not enough to secure Pita the country’s top political office.

Only 13 junta-appointed senators honoured the will of the Thai electorate during the prime ministerial vote. One senator resigned from the Senate a day before the vote; the rest either voted against Pita (34 senators), abstained from voting (159 senators) or didn’t turn up for the vote (43 senators). Pita needed to win at least 375 votes, a simple majority from both houses of the Thai parliament, but he fell 51 votes short.

Pita’s road to the premiership was always going to be difficult, if not impossible, given the design of Thailand’s political system, much of which was crafted under the direct rule of the 2014 military junta. The system was designed to weaken the electoral fortunes of political parties associated with former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has loomed large over Thai politics for the past 20 years despite spending most of that time in self-imposed exile.

Elections used to be Thaksin’s main trump card against the conservative Thai establishment that is centred on the powerful monarchy–military alliance. Having built a loyal voter base in the north and northeast, Thailand’s two most populous regions, Thaksin-aligned parties enjoyed an unprecedented streak of electoral victories. They won all general elections between 2001 and 2019.

Unable to defeat them at the polls, the conservative Thai establishment resorted to unconstitutional means of ousting Thaksin-aligned parties from power via military means. But military coups are costly, and they don’t always work. The 2006 coup did little damage to Thaksin’s popularity, while the 2014 coup created a new ‘enemy’ for the conservative Thai establishment in the Thai youths who were fed up with the country’s undemocratic politics.

Having learned from the failed 2006 coup, the 2014 military junta led by General Prayuth Chan-o-cha designed an elaborate system of ‘insurance’ mechanisms to arrest any real prospects for democracy should elections continue to return the ‘wrong’ result. The junta-appointed 250-member Senate is one of the most striking examples of this. The Senate secured Prayuth another four years in the prime minister’s office following the 2019 election, even though the Prayuth-aligned Palang Pracharat Party didn’t win the most parliamentary seats. Now, in 2023, the Senate is blocking Pita’s chances for the premiership. It’s sobering to think that a couple of hundred people whom nobody voted for can overturn the will of millions, essentially making elections meaningless.

The Move Forward party isn’t giving up yet. A day after the failed prime ministerial vote, it submitted a parliamentary proposal to amend the 2017 military-drafted constitution to divest the Senate of the right to vote for the country’s prime minister. But the devil is in the detail. For any such proposal to succeed, Move Forward needs the Senate’s support, which it’s unlikely to get. The constitution put a five-year limit on the Senate’s right to join elected members of parliament in the prime ministerial vote. That provision is due to expire in May 2024, which is still a long way away.

The Move Forward–led coalition will nominate Pita as the country’s prime minister again at the next parliamentary vote on 19 July, but if he fails to secure enough support that could spell the end of Move Forward’s bid to lead the next government. Move Forward key coalition partner, the Thaksin-aligned Pheu Thai party, is already sending signals that it is ready to propose one of its own prime ministerial candidates, putting pressure on Pita to step aside if he cannot win at the next vote. In such a scenario, Pheu Thai may opt to exclude Move Forward from its coalition government and instead join hands with parties backed by the conservative establishment. That would guarantee the Senate’s support for its candidate.

As it stands, several senators are trying to prevent Pita from being renominated in the 19 July prime ministerial vote. But that isn’t the only hurdle Pita, his party and the Move Forward–led coalition face. The Constitutional Court, together with the Election Commission of Thailand, can continue to arrest the country’s prospects for democracy for some time to come without any help from the Senate. A day before the prime ministerial vote, the Election Commission petitioned the Constitutional Court to rule on a media share controversy involving Pita that could lead to his being disqualified from his MP status just like his predecessor Future Forward party leader, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit.

On the same day, the Constitutional Court accepted a separate petition accusing Move Forward of wanting to abolish the country’s monarchy. This claim was based on the party’s campaign promise to amend the country’s strict lèse-majesté law. The petition could see the entire party dissolved, much like the Future Forward party. Both of these issues were brought up repeatedly by the junta-appointed senators and members of parliament from the parties aligned with the outgoing Prayuth-led government during the parliamentary debate that preceded the prime ministerial vote. The fact that the Thai monarchy would hardly have been an acceptable subject of parliamentary debate just three years ago doesn’t make the vote’s result any less painful for Move Forward’s supporters.

The unexpected electoral victory of Move Forward in May was in large part born out of the 2020–21 student-led pro-democracy protests calling for reform of the previously sacrosanct monarchy. The 13 July prime ministerial vote was a conservative pushback against the changing tide of Thai politics and the increasingly vocal demands for democracy from Thais up and down the country. Thailand’s political system doesn’t make space for democracy, and while the Move Forward victory was an encouraging step forward, the question hangs on whether the party can translate it into a more democratic future for the country. That will depend to a large extent on the conservative Thai establishment and its willingness to let go of power.

Will the conservative Thai establishment continue to arrest the country’s prospects for democracy at all costs? If so, Thailand is likely to descend into street politics once again, with violence and further military coups back on the table.

The West needs to get real about India

Lately, the West—particularly the United States—has been wooing India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the bling of a monied Indian wedding.

Last month, Modi was US President Joe Biden’s guest for a full state visit—of which there are usually only a couple year. Modi also addressed Congress for a second time. In so doing, he was among a chosen few—of whom Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela have been the most notable.

Earlier, when in New Delhi in April, Biden’s commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, included in a paean to Modi words such as ‘unbelievable’, ‘indescribable’ and ‘visionary’.

Kurt Campbell—the US National Security Council’s most senior figure on Asia—reportedly routinely describes the US–India relationship, without caveats, as America’s most important. This will be news to Japan, the UK and others.

Modi was a guest at the G7 meeting in Hiroshima in May. He then visited Australia. He has been invited by President Emmanuel Macron to be France’s guest for Bastille Day. The leaders of Italy, Germany and Australia—among others—have all visited India this year.

Since India became independent, Western dealings with India have had their fits and starts. However, the courtship gathered pace with the so-called nuclear deal concluded between the US and India in 2008, under which the Americans agreed to assist India’s civil nuclear development and to sell the deal internationally—despite the impediment that India was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The deal was a turning point in the US–India security relationship and boosted India’s growing status as a major power. A stimulus for the deal was concern in both countries about the rise of China.

In the past few years, India’s attraction for the West has increased because of its size and wealth. It is now the most populous nation globally, and in purchasing power parity terms has the world’s third highest GDP. Its attraction has grown as concerns about China have multiplied.

That said, there are three reasons why the West might want to reflect on the ardour of its courtship of India.

The first is that India’s economic promise—particularly as an eventual rival to China—is overblown.

Doubts about the extent of India’s promise have been around for a couple of decades—in fact, ever since some commentators started suggesting that India would one day outstrip China.

These doubts were cogently expressed by Harvard academic Graham Allison in a recent essay in Foreign Policy. Allison, inter alia, suggested that we need to reflect on several ‘inconvenient truths’:

  • We have been wrong in the past about the pace of the rise of India—namely in the early 1990s and the middle of the first decade of this century.
  • India’s economy is much smaller than China’s—and the gap has increased, not decreased. In the early 2000s, China’s GDP was two to three times as large as India’s. It is now roughly five times as large.
  • India has been falling behind in the development of science and technology to power economic growth. China spends 2% of GDP on research and development, compared with India’s 0.7%. On artificial intelligence, the figures are startling. For example, China holds 65% of AI patents, while India holds just 3%.
  • China’s workforce is more productive than India’s. The quality of their respective workforces is affected by poverty and nutrition levels. As one example, according to the 2022 UN State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, 16.3% of India’s population was undernourished in 2019–2021 compared with less than 2.5% of China’s population.

The second argument is that India’s worldview is quite different to that of most Western countries.

India rightly sees itself as a force in international affairs. It aspires to be a powerful pole in a multipolar world. It adheres to a doctrine of strategic autonomy. It is guided by what it thinks is best for India, not by alliances or what others want of it.

India’s China-driven strategic congruence with the US is not the same as a quasi-alliance relationship. India doesn’t operate within a framework of mutual obligation. It doesn’t expect others to come to its aid and it won’t join someone else’s war.

In a recent Foreign Affairs article entitled ‘America’s bad bet on India’, an American academic of Indian origin, Ashley Tellis, argues that New Delhi would never involve itself in any US confrontation with China that did not threaten its own security.

The Tellis piece has weight because he was a main intellectual force behind the ‘nuclear deal’ concluded in 2008.

Moreover, India will differ radically from the West on some questions. True, as the Ukraine war has progressed, India has put some daylight between itself and Russia. But it declines to impose sanctions on Moscow. Both countries benefit from Russia’s sales of oil to India.

And never a proponent of the Western-inspired liberal international order, India is also a leader of the disparate—but re-energised—global south, effectively the developing world.

The third argument is that the west’s line that its relationship with India is based on shared democratic values does not hold up.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said he saw the long-term trajectory of the US-India relationship as being ‘built on the notion that democracies with shared value systems should be able to work together both to nurture their own democracies internally and to fight for shared values globally’. Come off it, Mr Sullivan!

The problem is that Modi’s government can only lend itself to highly qualified identification with democratic principles.

Elections in India are generally fair, and Modi’s sway is vigorously contested by the main opposition party, by Congress and by regional parties. That’s good.

However, Modi remains an unabashed Hindu supremacist whose political machine largely disregards the aspirations of Muslims and other minorities. It reacts vengefully to criticism and scores badly on most of the international indexes that measure democratic freedoms. To some, India is an illiberal democracy; to others, it’s an electoral autocracy. But, for sure, it is not a liberal democracy.

Western interests dictate that we put grunt into our relationship with India with energy and determination. It is unquestionably an increasingly important country. But we must have realistic expectations of India and deal with as it is, not as we might like it to be. Otherwise, we risk disappointment.

American democracy is in a perilous moment and US allies need to speak out

Alarm about the state of US democracy has been getting ever more insistent in recent weeks as the congressional investigation into the 6 January 2021, insurrection uncovers more information about organised attempts by elected officials and Trump administration figures to overturn the 2020 election.

Former White House Russia adviser Fiona Hill, in a recent interview for ASPI’s Policy, Guns and Money podcast, says she is much more pessimistic about the political trajectory of the US than she was a year ago.

Hill had a front-row seat in Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency as the National Security Council adviser on Russia, before resigning and testifying in Congress in Trump’s first impeachment hearings. She detailed efforts by Trump, his chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and US ambassador to Ukraine Gordon Sondland to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden, the future president’s son, and Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US election. In return, Trump would unblock a US$400 million congressionally mandated military aid package to the country. Hill summed up the actions of Trump and his inner circle succinctly, saying that they were conducting a shadow foreign policy solely for partisan political benefit.

In her testimony, Hill also authoritatively set out her assessment that Russia was actively weaponising internal dissent in the US to damage democratic institutions, before requesting that certain members of Congress stop promoting ‘politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests’.

In the period immediately after the 6 January insurrection, Hill says she was briefly heartened to see both Republican and Democrat members of Congress repudiating the actions of the mob as well as Trump’s stolen election lies. ‘But now, things are actually going in the opposite direction, with those same people saying that there was no violence on January 6th. This is an Orwellian moment: doublespeak, doublethink,’ she says.

‘And many of the people who have been perpetrating this lie about 2020 are now poised to basically become the dominant force in the elections with the 2022 midterms. There’s an expectation on every front that the Democratic Party is going to lose.’

This, she says, is because President Joe Biden has not been able to push through legislation like Build Back Better that would have gone some way to addressing widespread socioeconomic grievances and the Voting Rights Act that would have delivered some measure of protection for voters in the face of prolonged and well-documented efforts by Republicans to make it harder for Democrats to be elected.

Instead, explains Hill, the big lie has generated a huge amount of political energy aimed at doubling down on voter-suppression tactics. These include redistricting, the practice of redrawing voting districts to ensure it’s impossible for an opposition party to win; legislation of measures that would make it harder for demographics that don’t traditionally vote Republican to cast a ballot; and replacement of non-partisan election officials with loyalists.

‘That was really what was happening after January 6th. I was seeing the removal of many of the non-partisan, or even partisan, secretaries of state who opposed what President Trump was trying to do to steal the election for himself in 2020.

‘There’s concern about the Supreme Court, as to whether some of the judges that were appointed in the Trump era are playing partisan politics, rather than being impartial. And this is a concern that I share, that the checks and balances that prevented Trump from essentially staying in power and infecting a self-coup in January 2021 have now been eroded.’

And it’s not just Democrats who need to be worried, argues Hill; everyone who believes in the preservation of democracy in the US needs to be mobilised.

‘I mean, I’m not a Democrat. I’m a non-partisan, unaffiliated voter, and there are people like me who are out there,’ she says.

‘We certainly also need to talk to members of the Republican Party who are still within Congress, who are being pushed into all kinds of loyalty tests by President Trump. He’s not ideologically a Republican, he’s not a conservative in the political sense.

‘This is an individual who’s trying to usurp the authority of parties, short-circuit representational democracy and, in effect, hijack the country for their own personal, private gain, in the interest of their own power and influence.’

And this authoritarian turn is happening in plain sight.

‘Trump isn’t even trying to hide the fact that that’s what he’s doing. He’s very blatant about it and open about it. I’m trying to speak up and speak out, and a lot of other people are too, but we really have to get some momentum behind that. It’s a really perilous moment.’

This poses a difficult question for US allies. How should they handle the prospect of a return to power of a party in the US that has seemed to abandon the notion of America as a plural liberal democracy? Trump’s four years in office was a test of the convention of non-partisanship in allied relations, challenging notions of democratic balance and that legitimate political parties actually support the political system in which they operate.

Hill believes that allies need to confront this question in a forthright manner. ‘I think the United States does have to be held to account and on notice in that context. Because the whole of the global dynamic could shift as a result of the United States stepping away from both domestically upholding democracy and principles and values, but also ceasing to defend them abroad.

‘I mean, are we going to compete with Vladimir Putin in Russia, or Victor Orban in Hungary, or Bolsonaro in Brazil? Is that where we are going? Is that really what people want to see the United States do? I think that has to be challenged.

‘And when members of parliament from Australia are visiting their counterparts, they should speak up and say that. You’re known for your fierce independence and your own viewpoints and for blunt speaking. Have at it.’

A world of mounting disarray

My 2017 book, A world in disarray, was published five years ago this month. The book’s thesis was that the Cold War’s end did not usher in an era of greater stability, security and peace, as many expected. Instead, what emerged was a world in which conflict was much more prevalent than cooperation.

Some criticised the book at the time as being unduly negative and pessimistic. In retrospect, the book could have been criticised for its relative optimism. The world is a messier place than it was five years ago—and most trends are heading in the wrong direction.

At the global level, the gap between challenges and responses is large and growing. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the inadequacies of international health machinery. We are now in the third year of the pandemic, but still don’t know its origins, thanks to Chinese stonewalling.

What we do know is that more than five million people, and more likely 15 million, have died. We also know that some three billion people (many in Africa) have yet to receive a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. And we know that the ongoing pandemic has reduced global economic output by trillions of dollars.

Climate change has advanced. The world is already more than 1°C warmer than it was at the start of the industrial revolution and is on course to get warmer. Extreme weather events are more frequent. Fossil fuel use is up.

Governments have pledged to do better. Their performance remains to be seen; in some cases, including China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, the pledges are noteworthy for their lack of ambition and urgency.

Cyberspace remains akin to the Wild West, with no sheriff willing or able to set boundaries on acceptable behaviour. There’s not even the pretence of global cooperation. Rather, we see technology outpacing diplomacy, with authoritarian governments going to considerable lengths to wall off their societies while violating the cyberspace of others to sow political discord or steal technology.

Nuclear proliferation continues. North Korea has increased the quantity and quality of its nuclear arsenal and the range and accuracy of its missiles. And, in the aftermath of the unilateral US decision in 2018 to exit the accord that placed temporary ceilings on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the Islamic Republic has gone from being a year away from possessing a nuclear weapon to just a few months or even weeks.

Great-power rivalry is more pronounced than at any time since the Cold War. US–China relations have deteriorated rapidly, mostly owing to increased Chinese repression at home, trade and economic frictions, and China’s growing military strength and increasingly assertive foreign policy. Against a backdrop of growing economic competition and possible conflict over Taiwan, it’s unclear whether the two countries will be able to cooperate on global challenges like public health and climate change.

Russia is arguably even more disaffected with the world order. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, President Vladimir Putin, seemingly ensconced in power for the foreseeable future, is set on stopping or, if possible, reversing NATO’s reach. Putin has shown himself to be comfortable using military force, energy supplies and cyberattacks to destabilise countries and governments he views as adversarial. The immediate target is Ukraine, but the strategic challenge posed by Putin’s Russia is much broader.

Other developments also offer reason for concern. More than 80 million people—one in every hundred —are displaced. Many times that number are enduring what can only be described as a humanitarian crisis. The Middle East is home to several ongoing wars that are simultaneously civil and regional.

Democracy is in retreat in much of the world, not just in dramatic cases such as Myanmar and Sudan, but also in parts of Latin America and even Europe. Haiti and Venezuela are essentially failed states, as are Libya, Syria and Yemen. Afghanistan appears on its way to again becoming a world leader in terrorism, opium production and misery.

There is one other critical factor: the United States is in greater disarray internally than it was five years ago. Political polarisation is at an all-time high, and political violence has emerged as a serious threat. The peaceful transfer of political power following elections can no longer be taken for granted. This internal reality has in turn accelerated America’s pullback from global leadership after three-quarters of a century. No other country is able and willing to assume that role.

To be sure, some positive developments deserve mention: the rapid creation of vaccines that dramatically reduce vulnerability to Covid-19; new green technologies that reduce reliance on fossil fuels; growing cooperation between the US and several of its partners to push back against a more forceful China; and the simple fact that, so far, great-power rivalry has not descended into war.

What would it take to avoid a future defined by disarray? A short list would include widespread vaccination against Covid-19 and new vaccines effective against future variants; a technological or diplomatic breakthrough that would dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels and slow climate change; a political settlement in Ukraine that promotes European security and an outcome with Iran that prevents it from becoming a nuclear or even near-nuclear power; a US–China relationship able to put in place guardrails to manage competition and avoid conflict; and a US that managed to repair its democracy sufficiently so that it had the capacity to focus on world events.

As always, little is inevitable, for better or for worse. What is clear, though, is that trends will not improve by themselves. Innovation, diplomacy and collective will are needed to turn things around. Unfortunately, the last two are in short supply.