Is today the chance for Juan de la Cruz to reinvent himself?

It’s refreshing to hear from a Russian about democracy and autocracy. And not any Russian but its Foreign Minister, 1991-1996.

“Andrei Kozyrev says there can be no return to normal business with Russia once the war ends,” The Economist, 25th Mar 2022.

“The prospect of a westernizing, democratic, and prosperous Ukraine is the nightmare of the Putin regime because it will be a powerful motivation for Russians to follow suit. However, to change, [freedom-loving people] must recognize Russia as a nation under a belligerent and ruthless dictatorship and be treated accordingly.

“Mr. Putin has stoked nationalism as a means of maintaining power. For years the Kremlin has cracked down on free speech and democracy and proved its commitment to dominating Ukraine, undermining the West, and protecting dictatorships as far away as Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela.

“The West reacted with inadequate words and sluggish sanctions. (Dirty money has brought comfort to Russia’s elites and corruption to the West.) Mr. Putin demands that NATO backtrack from eastern and central Europe. The cold war’s divisive lines are back in Europe and beyond, like it or not. For the situation to change, Russia must change.

“America and its allies at last imposed tough sanctions on Russia in recent weeks because it again violated the civilized norms of behavior in Ukraine. Yet useful idiots or pseudo-experts on Russia who sympathize with autocratic leaders, such as Tucker Carlson on Fox News, are pushing for a prompt return to business “as usual” with Russia and its oligarchs. If they succeed, the sacrifices of Ukrainians and the discomfort of Western taxpayers will have been for nothing.

“If the Kremlin gets away with this war, and business relations return to normal in its aftermath, the country’s aggression will continue to grow—with or without Mr. Putin. The West should keep the bulk of its sanctions in place and maintain its military preparedness until the Kremlin respects the rights of its people and those in other countries, in line with international norms.

“Sadly, Russians will suffer from Western sanctions. But it will be impossible to hide the sanctions’ effects, even amid the mire of the Kremlin’s militarist propaganda.

“And only the country’s citizens can reform the regime.”

As the blog asserts, we Filipinos bend closer to autocracy than democracy because of our caste system. Unsurprisingly, political patronage and oligarchy undergird our economy. Do we want to mirror Russia?

Is today the chance for Juan de la Cruz to reinvent himself? From the former Russian Foreign Minister, “only the country’s citizens can reform the regime.”

For the umpteenth time, it’s worth restating that perfection is not of this world.

Consider: While America granted me citizenship for my contributions to my old MNC-company, I acknowledge its imperfections. And as a sign of protest, I don’t exercise the right to vote.

Why? American politics – and it explains its current polarized state – undermines its professed commitment to “the common good.” And the world is yet to see how that plays out in the medium- to longer-term. But the signs are ominous.

They are threading not the way forward but the reverse. Even the Supreme Court can’t stand away from backsliding – its failure to codify recusal norms within its August body. There is nothing wrong with feeling strongly about one’s belief, but what happens to the common good when lies justify these beliefs?

In other words, democracy is not about the “left or right.” And given its Judeo-Christian heritage, America must be the first to embrace the coming of Christ, specifically, how he battled the scribes and Pharisees for appropriating the faith.

“Paul is one of the most misunderstood and disliked teachers in the Church. We have tried to understand a nondual mystic with our simplistic, dualistic minds.

“Paul recognizes that the greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for “supposed perfection” or order.” [Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations, Center for Action and Contemplation, 26th Mar 2022]

Why did Pope Francis take the name of St. Francis? The latter, like St. Paul, kept to the message of Christ – e.g., they were nondual mystics. For example, St. Francis recognized the Creation story and the independence of the universe. He saw the Creator not only in humans but in all of creation, including plants and animals.

News item: How Joe Manchin aided coal and earned millions. Manchin, the Democrat who rose through state politics to reach the United State Senate, where through the vagaries of electoral politics, is now the most critical figure shaping the nation’s energy and climate policy. [The New York Times, 27th Mar 2022]

The concept is beyond “climate change” but the imperative to sustain our lifeblood, the photosynthesis phenomenon.

And if we drill down said interdependence, it will facilitate our cognitive recognition of “forward, lateral, and creative thinking.” And they promote problem-solving and development, including the quantum leap we witness today in the 21st century. And they are best nurtured by freedom and democracy, not autocracy.

Question: How can parochialism and insularity cut into the dance of interdependence? Is that why we’re out of step that Juan de la Cruz suffers from abject poverty?

Given America’s commitment to freedom and democracy, I represented USAID in Eastern Europe as a volunteer – to assist Bulgarian MSMEs to gear up for the onslaught of global competition as the country prepared for accession to the EU.

And because these people demonstrated their embrace of freedom and the free market, I remained even after the USAID program ended. [With the pandemic ebbing, the wife and I will travel again and be Eastern Europe based, April through July.] I have done business across Eastern and Central Europe and showed these people how to pursue innovation and global competitiveness, the characteristics of this century.

There is a soft spot in my heart for the Ukrainians. They were not prepared to join NATO because of political patronage and oligarchy. Yet, the average Ukrainian has their heart in the right place. And the world no longer doubts that, given how they demonstrated their readiness to die for freedom and democracy.

These former Soviet satellite states are learning to live out a set of principles. They have cherished freedom, yet they know they have work to do. As in the case of Russia, political patronage dictated how the communist leadership farmed out and privatized state-owned entities that created the oligarchy. It is no different from the Philippines.

But that is why there is a group of us holding their hands and encouraging them to keep the faith. Their storied past helps because they know how autocracy robbed decades of their existence.

The wife hasn’t gotten over her visits to the museums in Ukraine, learning about “Holodomor” – derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger and extermination.

“Holodomor, “man-made” famine that convulsed the Soviet republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933. It was part of a broader Soviet famine (1931–34) that also caused mass starvation in the grain-growing regions of Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan. However, the Ukrainian famine turned deadlier because of political decrees and decisions aimed chiefly or only at Ukraine.

“The origins of the famine lay in the decision by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to collectivize agriculture in 1929. Teams of Communist Party agitators forced peasants to relinquish their land, personal property, and sometimes housing to collective farms. They deported so-called kulaks—wealthier peasants—and any peasants who resisted collectivization altogether. Collectivization led to (a) a drop in production, (b) the disorganization of the rural economy, and (c) food shortages. It also sparked a series of peasant rebellions, including armed uprisings, in parts of Ukraine.” [Britannica]

Can we Filipinos learn to recognize the distinctions between freedom and autocracy – and live them out? Can we commit to certain principles?

Please recall how I entered into a social contract with these people: You must commit to transparency, or I am out the door.

“Ukraine is not in the EU at this tragic hour because it could not meet Western standards on law and order and anti-corruption measures. It should make a more significant effort to reform after the war to open Europe’s doors.

“The West must double its support to the country as it rebuilds and recovers. Failing to do so could have dire consequences. A Marshall plan of sorts is imperative, and encouragement from the EU about its future membership is to inspire it. (Several states already have spoken in support of the application to join just days into the war.) A nation in the center of Europe subdued to Mr. Putin’s control would set a dangerous precedent.” [Kozyrev, op. cit.]

But isn’t the West to blame too?

Consider the sham justifications behind the Vietnam war and the attack on Iraq. Or the greed – care of Western financial institutions – that brought about the global recession of 2008 that impacted the entire world, especially developing economies. Even America did not fully recover from it and paved the way for the Trump presidency, i.e., right-wing populism.

“There is no dispute now that Mr. Putin wants to defend Russia’s sphere of influence. At the start of his speech on 24th Feb, as his forces invaded Ukraine, he criticized the “expansion of the NATO bloc to the east, bringing its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders.

“He embarked on a tirade against the actions of the Western powers and the Ukrainian government. He claimed an ongoing “genocide against the millions of people” in the Donbas region without evidence.

“However, for Professor John Mearsheimer (political scientist, University of Chicago) to reduce the causes of Russia’s invasion to the Bucharest declaration is simplistic and wrong. For a start, there were apparent frustrations, fears, and mistakes. Other, more crucial factors were at play. Professor Mearsheimer mentions that the continuing American strategic partnership with Ukraine may indeed have played a part, rubbing salt in the wound of NATO’s projected expansion.

“Ukrainian defiance in response to Russia’s huge military exercise on its border last year would have been hard for Mr. Putin to tolerate. A successful and democratic Ukraine undermines the Russian leader’s authoritarianism at home. And there was a faulty understanding of the situation: both America in Iraq and Russia in Ukraine have launched wars on terrible “intelligence.”

“Alongside these proximate causes, three other factors help explain the current Ukraine crisis. The most important and the most neglected is that the break-up of empires is often messy and traumatic. Usually, a foreign military intervention of some kind follows.

“The end of European colonial empires, and the collapse of the Soviet and Yugoslav empires in the 1990s, forced new or re-constituted states to make fateful decisions. What frontiers does the state have? Is citizenship based on ethnicity or simply residence? Should kin living outside the state have a right to citizenship? Or what friends and allies? What constitution? What language?

“Such questions have been at the heart of political crises and armed conflicts of the past hundred years. The dozens of UN peacekeeping missions established since 1945 have all addressed post-colonial and post-imperial problems.

“Both Georgia and Ukraine faced these quandaries in the 1990s—and faced them long before the question of NATO membership arose. From the beginning of their new existence, the status of Russian minorities in Georgia and Ukraine was complex.

"In Georgia, two breakaway republics provided a basis for occasional Russian intervention or at least a pretext. In Ukraine, too, defending the rights of its two Russian-supported breakaway republics was the ostensible reason for Russian military interventions there. And in these pro-Russian republics, there were “forced expulsions” of Georgians and Ukrainians, respectively, leading to calls to free passes to return to their homes.

“Second, nuclear weapons outside Russia necessitated Western involvement in security matters. An array of nuclear weapons remained in Ukraine (and in Belarus and Kazakhstan) following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of 5th Dec 1994 addressed the problem of what to do with this arsenal.

“The three post-Soviet states agreed to hand these nuclear weapons over to Russia. In return, they received security assurances from Russia, Britain, and America, which all undertook to respect the sovereignty, independence, and existing borders of Ukraine and the other two states.

“Russia violated this provision by its takeover of Crimea in March 2014. The breakdown of the Budapest Memorandum left Ukraine in an awkward situation. It could not trust Russia’s word and had reason to doubt Western security guarantees. The idea of full-blooded membership in NATO appeared increasingly attractive but not necessarily more attainable.

“The third factor is color revolutions—the popular revolutions that occurred in many countries in the former Soviet Union in recent decades. They must have reminded Mr. Putin of the movements in eastern Europe in 1989 that precipitated the collapse of one communist regime after another.

“Mr. Putin was deeply suspicious of the revolutions, such as the Rose Revolution in Georgia in November 2003. It was the first successful assault in the former Soviet Union against the corrupt strongmen who had come to power immediately after communist party rule—then followed within a year by the Orange Revolution in Ukraine that threw out another such strongman, Viktor Yanukovych.

“It suits Mr. Putin to treat civil resistance movements as parts of a grand international conspiracy. I have been studying such movements for more than 50 years. And there were accusations that such movements were the pawns of outside forces. There is little evidence to support such theories.

“Professor Mearsheimer, in a lecture on “The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis” at Chicago University in 2015, actually lent credence to the idea that such movements verge on being an American instrument. “Our basic strategy is to topple regimes all over the world,” but evidence for this generalization was missing. Throughout his analysis, Professor Mearsheimer pays remarkably little attention to people’s “ideals” and political desires in countries that have experienced “people power” revolutions.

“These factors suggest that the 2008 proposal to expand NATO to include Georgia and Ukraine is just one among developments that have made the current crisis acute. Indeed, it is arguable that the NATO expansion proposal made matters worse, as may other Western actions, but to assert that “the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis” goes too far.” [“Sir Adam Roberts rebuffs the view that the West is principally responsible for the crisis in Ukraine,” The Economist, 26th Mar 2022]

We Filipinos must learn from history. But it’s not a cakewalk.

“Four hundred and fifty-three years ago in Cebu, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi wrote out a report to the king describing the natural and human resources of the Philippines as the first step toward their exploitation.

“This description of lawlessness struck me: The inhabitants of these islands are not subject to any law, or king, or lord. Although there are large towns in certain regions, the people do not act in concert or obey any ruling body; but each man does what he pleases and takes care only of himself and of his “slaves.” He who owns most “slaves” and the strongest can obtain anything he pleases. No law binds “relative to relative,” parents to children, or brother to brother.

“Filipinos have not changed much in the last 450 years. The challenge of history is breaking the cycle, so the present will stop reading like the past.” [“History is a circle,” Ambeth R. Ocampo, LOOKING BACK, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 25th Mar 2022.]

“And only the country’s citizens can reform the regime.”

In other words, we shall perpetuate our caste system if we can’t undo our instincts: We are parochial and insular. We value hierarchy and paternalism and rely on political patronage and oligarchy; ours is a culture of impunity.

“What’s preventing Filipinos from getting rich? Extractive institutions allow a small group to extract incomes and wealth from the rest of society and block economic growth to safeguard its interests.

“Powerful groups often stand against the engines of prosperity,” write Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in Why Nations Fail: The Origins Of Power, Prosperity And Poverty. Economic growth is not just a process of more and better machines and more and better-educated people but also a transformative and destabilizing process associated with widespread creative destruction.

“Growth thus moves forward only if not blocked by the economic losers to protect their economic privileges and by the political losers who fear the erosion of their political power.

“Worse, extractive institutions breed corruption and political oppression.

“Nations fail when they have extractive institutions, supported by extractive political institutions that impede and even block economic growth,” Acemoglu and Robinson.” [“Why Filipinos Remain Poor,” Panos Mourdoukoutas, Forbes, 1st Jun 2017; Mourdoukoutas is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post in New York; and teaches at Columbia University.]

Are we more like Russia than our neighbors – better known as Asian Tigers?

What will it take for us to embrace the principles of freedom and democracy?

Is today the chance for Juan de la Cruz to reinvent himself?

Gising bayan!