Ivan Krastev
Ivan Krastev
Ivan Krastev (Bulgarian: Иван Кръстев, born 1965 in Lukovit, Bulgaria, is a political scientist, the Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, permanent fellow at the IWM, Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna., and 2013-14 Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Robert Bosch Stiftung in Berlin...
ProfessionPublic Servant
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What makes me worry today is the alarming decline in the trust in democratic institutions - political parties, Parliaments, political leaders. Less and less people are going to the polls in most advanced democracies.
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America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.
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The crisis of democracy in the West is not the result of falling in love with another system. In Europe and America people who are disillusioned with democracy do not dream about the Chinese model or any other form of authoritarian rule. They do not dream about government that controls Internet and puts in prison those daring to disagree.
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Russians clearly perceive America's global influence as being in irreversible decline and American society shattered by major political, economic and ideological crises.
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The post-Cold War order in Europe is finished, with Vladimir Putin its executioner. Russia's invasion of Georgia only marked its passing. Russia has emerged as a born-again 19th-century power determined to challenge the intellectual, moral and institutional foundations of the order.
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A more stable relationship between Poland and Russia based on reconciliation might revive the reunification of Europe.
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For the Kremlin, it is more feasible to preserve its great-power status in cooperation with the United States than in confrontation.
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As China is about adaptation, not transformation, it is unlikely to change the world dramatically should it ever assume the global driver's seat. But this does not mean that China won't exploit that world for its own purposes.
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In 2008, Putin's message was, 'We aren't like a Central Asian republic, we aren't going to build a personalistic regime, we will have institutions.' This is all abolished now. The very idea of a governing party and party career, as you have in China, that didn't work.
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It is people's willingness to take personal risks and confront the powerful by daring to speak the truth, not the truth itself, that ultimately leads to change.
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Remember, until the 1970s, the spread of democracy has always been accompanied by the decline of inequality. The more democratic our societies have been, the more equal they have been becoming. Now we have the reverse tendency. The spread of democracy now is very much accompanied by the increase in inequality.
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The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about the rise of China and are threatened by the rise of radical Islam.
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Regimes like the one in Russia are stabilized by the fact that they have no ideology. There is really no ideological means to attack them.
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America is militarily overstretched, politically polarized and financially indebted.