Two different interpretations of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Francis Fukuyama of the "End of History" fame : “Putin’s war on the liberal order” and

Arta Moeini of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, “How Western elites exploit Ukraine”

Francis Fukuyama has described the invasion as Putin’s war against the liberal democratic order. "The problems facing today’s

liberal societies did not start and do not end with Putin, and we will face very serious challenges even if he is stymied in Ukraine. Liberalism has been under attack for some time now, from both the right and the left. Freedom House in its “Freedom in the World” survey for 2022 notes that global freedom has fallen in the aggregate now for 16 years in a row. It has declined not just because of the rise of authoritarian powers such as Russia and China, but also because of the turn towards populism, illiberalism and nationalism within longstanding liberal democracies such as the US and India".

Arta Moeini “So far as the Western legacy media is concerned, we really do live in the post-historical age Francis Fukuyama triumphantly proclaimed in 1989, with liberal internationalism the only acceptable paradigm through which to understand the world. Alternative views are now tantamount to championing tyranny. In each instance, the dictator comes to personify internationally Hegel’s thymotic, if savage, primitive man — the inhumane antithesis of the “last man” — fighting maniacally against liberal democracy, the march of modernity, and progress itself. Assad, Ghaddafi, the Taliban, and Vladimir Putin all fit this archetype as reactionary actors par excellence necessitating a holy alliance to confront and civilise.

Such a melioristic framing of international politics justifies and indeed privileges a Manichean narrative of good and evil. In this context, rationality itself is bound to the good, defined as effective conformity with liberal hegemony."

A comment : "You think you are capable of making your own mind up but unfortunately you have been bamboozled by your own moral righteousness or tinted glasses in an area and region you know nothing about. ...let us get out facts right first and learn more about.... Which ones, from where..?

4Prakash Neerohoo, Paul Lismore and 2 others

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