This leads to
the idea of “universality” becoming the book
of rules of a powerful club that is used in determining
(mostly automatically, as Marx explained) who is in and
who is out. This is, in many ways, the West’s and
NATO’s philosophy and vision of the world –
a vision that has, throughout history, had a habit of imposing
itself through force.
Francis Fukuyama
is another celebrated European thinker who supports the
same model of social democracy promoted by Habermas and
thus can help explain the motivations and thinking behind
NATO’s strategies in the past few decades.
According to
Fukuyama, this model was realized after the Cold War, following
the triumph of Western liberal democracy over the Soviet
Union. For Fukuyama, this was the end of history –
the end-point of humanity’s ideological evolution.
Western liberal democracy, he argued, is the final and best
form of human government anyone can hope for. Faithful to
his ideas, Fukuyama supported the invasion and so-called
‘democratisation’ of Iraq in 2003.
Although the
American thinker has recently recognized that these Western
democracies can decay, that is, go backwards at a certain
point, he recently attested that if “the United States
and the rest of the West” do not stop Russia, China
and other non-democratic powers from doing as they wish
and dominate the world, we could be facing the “end
of history.” This is why he recently praised Finland
and Sweden’s plans to join NATO in response to Putin’s
invasion of Ukraine.
Fukuyama clearly
does not consider the expansion of NATO through the 1990s
and 2000s a violation of the commitments the West made to
Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. And he clearly
does not recognize the fact that Russia had long been adamant
that such moves would lead to the confrontation we are witnessing
today. All this demonstrates that he is part, and perhaps
one of the engineers of, the military union’s ideological
crusade – and thus his thinking can help us understand
how we got here, and what we can and should do to deescalate.
Another thinker
who can help us understand NATO’s stance in the Ukraine
conflict is undoubtedly American political philosopher and
expert on the morality of warfare, Michael Walzer. According
to Waltzer, the war in Ukraine is yet again demonstrating
the enduring value of the ‘just war’ theory.
This theory
– which has long guided the ethicists of war in the
West – has been used, at least to some degree, to
justify many of NATO’s interventions in the past few
decades. Walzer has in the past supported Israel’s
‘just war’ claims against Palestine, and received
significant criticism for doing so, but now he is backing
arming Ukraine instead of searching for diplomatic solutions
to the conflict. “We are resigned,” he recently
said, “to the fact that every way out now passes by
military victory.” His perception of the conflict
as a just war that has to be fought can thus help us understand
how NATO, and the Western powers that are part of it, are
approaching this conflict.
While Habermas,
Fukuyama and Walzer’s ideas all likely inform and
explain NATO’s approach to and role in this ongoing
conflict, it is perhaps the ideas of Bernard-Henri Levy
(BHL as he is commonly known) that best explain the military
alliance’s stance.
According to
the French thinker, NATO’s interventions against Russia
in Syria, Libya and now Ukraine were all not only justified
but vital, because there is no alternative to the West as
the bearer of universal values.
As an advocate
for the 18th-century dream of universal human rights he
believes – as he explained in a NATO Youth Forum in
2009 – that the West is central to upholding not just
these values, but all the values that matter. If BHL is
(too) often supportive of military intervention it is because
he believes other civilisations (the Russians, the Chinese
or Muslims) prevailing and becoming the dominant power on
Earth is always a greater danger than war – however
costly or destructive. His world view – and similarly
NATO’s – is reflective of the usual (mostly
American biblical) archetype of good against evil.
Just as we do
not know with certainty whether Putin read or listened to
Surkov, Ilyin and Dugin before invading Ukraine, we also
cannot be certain that NATO officials actually turn to Habermas,
Fukuyama, Walzer or BHL’s ideas when deciding their
strategies. Nevertheless, as the ideas of these thinkers
seem to mostly be in line with what NATO is doing –
and how it is legitimizing and explaining its actions –
they can help us understand and prevent a repeat of this
conflict.
