Today’s security policy is directly concerned with the survival or collapse of the current democratic world order
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Member of European Parliament 2004–2019
In the early 1990s, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the end of the present history of war and conflict, which was to usher in a new era – the cooperation of free peoples in the creation of a single humane world village. Today’s world is a particularly stark contrast to that world.
Three large international crisis hotspots have emerged. These are Russia’s aggression against Ukraine from 2022, and the armed conflict in the Middle East from 2023, which is an attempt by Iran and its henchmen to prevent the recognition of Israel and peaceful coexistence with its Arab neighbours. The third conflict hotspot is potentially ready to explode at any moment if communist China tries to annex democratic Taiwan by force.
In all three cases, we are dealing with dictatorships and the long-term plans of extremist terrorists to erase three democracies from the face of the earth.
A precondition for this major conflict is the division of the world into two clearly opposing camps: democracies and the regimes that are becoming increasingly authoritarian.
A new feature of the last decade is the open organised attack by authoritarian states to change the existing UN-centred world order. Aggressors and violators of international law are no longer ashamed of their transgressions.
The most powerful and the most systematically operating of the autocracies is Communist China, which aims to achieve the status of the world’s dominant state by 2049, together with the eventual imposition of a new world order along the lines of the model of authoritarian states.
For decades, the West lived in the hope that trade with Russia and China would eventually make these countries democratic too (Wandel durch Handel). Exactly the opposite happened: trade with the West, combined with the stealing of Western technology, made the autocracies stronger. The pursuit for short-term profits made and continues to make us close our eyes to the criminal past and present of authoritarian powers.
An existential struggle is under way for freedom and for the fundamental values that have endured throughout history. Making a compromise will not solve this struggle. It will end in victory or defeat of one side or the other.