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China and Russia’s tyranny can be stopped, but only if Global Britain trusts in the power of freedom
This long-termist approach won’t bear fruit immediately, but it’s all the more worthwhile for Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, to try
Liz Truss addresses delegates at the Conservative Party conference (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
By Mark Wallace
i columnist
December 21, 2021 6:00 am(Updated 2:11 pm)
The “elections” in Hong Kong this weekend mark a depressing new boundary line for the expansionist Chinese dictatorship.
Described euphemistically by the BBC as “controversial”, the ballot was, at best, a veneer of democracy. The proportion of seats up for election was reduced, only candidates who passed a test of loyalty to Beijing were allowed to stand, and activists were arrested for urging their fellow citizens not to vote – all on top of years of intimidation and repression.
Turnout plummeted from 58 per cent to 30 per cent – Hong Kongers aren’t stupid, why vote in a bogus election that offers only a pretence of democracy? Many of their compatriots, of course, have already voted with their feet, fleeing their hijacked home for a new life in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere.
A guide to today's talking points, straight to your inbox
We don’t yet know if this is the high-water mark of the Chinese Communist Party’s dominion, but there is good reason to fear that it will not be. Beijing certainly has ambitions to go much further – both by seizing direct control of more territory and by menacing other countries into silence or obedience.
Lithuania is the latest target of China’s aggressive foreign policy. For the sin of undertaking diplomatic talks – not even formal recognition, just contact – with Taiwan, the Baltic state is being subjected to an economic beating, with Lithuanian imports being blocked at Chinese customs.
The fall of Hong Kong is just one front in the ongoing battle between freedom and tyranny.
Russia continues to threaten Ukraine – not with invasion, as is often mistakenly reported, but with further invasion, over and above the invasion perpetrated in 2014.
Going by past performance, the Kremlin hopes to strike such an aggressive posture as to make Kiev’s western allies press for a negotiated “peace” that will reward Russia with yet more spoils as a prize for breaching its previous agreements. It’s worked before, and like any protection racketeer, Putin’s gangster state is optimistic that it will work again.
Meanwhile, a court in Berlin last weekend sentenced an assassin for a murder in the city that was carried out on the orders of the Russian state. This is just the latest example of Putin’s death squads at work in free countries, as happened in Salisbury in 2018.
Whether in Europe or Asia, this process of managed decline – of bartering and surrendering people and countries to tyrannical predators inch by inch, bite by bite – is both wrong and counter-productive.
Each retreat costs those on the front line their most precious liberties and often their lives, and further weakens the remaining free nations by depriving us of trade partners, allies and friends.
All the while, bullies such as China and Russia learn the lesson of indulged bullies everywhere, gaining in confidence and aggression with each victory.
British foreign policy offers some opportunity to reverse this. We’ve already seen encouraging steps in the right direction – not least Dominic Raab’s creditable decision to offer safe haven to many Hong Kongers seeking refuge.
But there’s a lot more to do, both on our own account and by encouraging our allies to up their game too. It’s encouraging that Liz Truss, Raab’s successor as Foreign Secretary, evidently appreciates the scale and urgency of the challenge.
In a speech earlier this month, she warned that “In recent years, the free world has taken its eye off the ball… confident that freedom and democracy would inexorably go global under its own steam.” She criticised “strategic drift”, reduced defence spending, and the risk of becoming “strategically dependent on cheap gas, or reliant on others for vital technology like 5G” – warnings about Russia and China that are rather hard to miss.
She laid out a strategy of “building a network of liberty”, and called for the deployment “of ideas, influence and inspiration” in order to further advance it.
There are already positive signs. Trade and security deals with like-minded countries help, and the Government seems to have a much healthier caution about exactly whom we are allowing inside the foundations of sensitive infrastructure, such as communications and energy, than was the case under some previous administrations.
There is certainly more that can be done on the “ideas, influence and inspiration” front. The Foreign Office could do worse than to study the example of Linda Whetstone, the pioneering campaigner for classical liberalism, who died a few days ago.
Via her Network For a Free Society, Whetstone disseminated the key texts of liberal philosophy and thought to hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people in societies in which they were not otherwise available. This is the foundation-building of freedom: be it helping Iranians to access the works of Adam Smith in Farsi, spreading ideas of academic liberty in South Sudan, or despatching DVDs and CDs of philosophy and political theory in translation to Kyrgyzstan.
This is a long-termist approach, and it bears fruit over long periods of time, rather than immediately, but it’s all the more worthwhile for that.
It’s also a fundamentally optimistic way to enact foreign policy. In her “network of liberty” speech, Truss quoted JFK, arguing that we should seek to prevail “not with an imperialism of force or fear, but the rule of courage and freedom, and hope for the future of man”.
What better way to do that than to trust in the merit of the ideas of freedom – to believe that they are so compelling, so robust, so visibly and self-evidently good that just by telling people about them they will spread and spread again?
After all, that’s what tyrants fear the most – that they might temporarily capture some turf, or some institutions, but that they can never capture the human heart.
Mark Wallace is chief executive of ‘ConservativeHome’, a blog independent of the Tory party
inews.co.uk
This long-termist approach won’t bear fruit immediately, but it’s all the more worthwhile for Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, to try
Liz Truss addresses delegates at the Conservative Party conference (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
By Mark Wallace
i columnist
December 21, 2021 6:00 am(Updated 2:11 pm)
The “elections” in Hong Kong this weekend mark a depressing new boundary line for the expansionist Chinese dictatorship.
Described euphemistically by the BBC as “controversial”, the ballot was, at best, a veneer of democracy. The proportion of seats up for election was reduced, only candidates who passed a test of loyalty to Beijing were allowed to stand, and activists were arrested for urging their fellow citizens not to vote – all on top of years of intimidation and repression.
Turnout plummeted from 58 per cent to 30 per cent – Hong Kongers aren’t stupid, why vote in a bogus election that offers only a pretence of democracy? Many of their compatriots, of course, have already voted with their feet, fleeing their hijacked home for a new life in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere.
A guide to today's talking points, straight to your inbox
We don’t yet know if this is the high-water mark of the Chinese Communist Party’s dominion, but there is good reason to fear that it will not be. Beijing certainly has ambitions to go much further – both by seizing direct control of more territory and by menacing other countries into silence or obedience.
Lithuania is the latest target of China’s aggressive foreign policy. For the sin of undertaking diplomatic talks – not even formal recognition, just contact – with Taiwan, the Baltic state is being subjected to an economic beating, with Lithuanian imports being blocked at Chinese customs.
The fall of Hong Kong is just one front in the ongoing battle between freedom and tyranny.
Russia continues to threaten Ukraine – not with invasion, as is often mistakenly reported, but with further invasion, over and above the invasion perpetrated in 2014.
Going by past performance, the Kremlin hopes to strike such an aggressive posture as to make Kiev’s western allies press for a negotiated “peace” that will reward Russia with yet more spoils as a prize for breaching its previous agreements. It’s worked before, and like any protection racketeer, Putin’s gangster state is optimistic that it will work again.
Meanwhile, a court in Berlin last weekend sentenced an assassin for a murder in the city that was carried out on the orders of the Russian state. This is just the latest example of Putin’s death squads at work in free countries, as happened in Salisbury in 2018.
Whether in Europe or Asia, this process of managed decline – of bartering and surrendering people and countries to tyrannical predators inch by inch, bite by bite – is both wrong and counter-productive.
Each retreat costs those on the front line their most precious liberties and often their lives, and further weakens the remaining free nations by depriving us of trade partners, allies and friends.
All the while, bullies such as China and Russia learn the lesson of indulged bullies everywhere, gaining in confidence and aggression with each victory.
British foreign policy offers some opportunity to reverse this. We’ve already seen encouraging steps in the right direction – not least Dominic Raab’s creditable decision to offer safe haven to many Hong Kongers seeking refuge.
But there’s a lot more to do, both on our own account and by encouraging our allies to up their game too. It’s encouraging that Liz Truss, Raab’s successor as Foreign Secretary, evidently appreciates the scale and urgency of the challenge.
In a speech earlier this month, she warned that “In recent years, the free world has taken its eye off the ball… confident that freedom and democracy would inexorably go global under its own steam.” She criticised “strategic drift”, reduced defence spending, and the risk of becoming “strategically dependent on cheap gas, or reliant on others for vital technology like 5G” – warnings about Russia and China that are rather hard to miss.
She laid out a strategy of “building a network of liberty”, and called for the deployment “of ideas, influence and inspiration” in order to further advance it.
There are already positive signs. Trade and security deals with like-minded countries help, and the Government seems to have a much healthier caution about exactly whom we are allowing inside the foundations of sensitive infrastructure, such as communications and energy, than was the case under some previous administrations.
There is certainly more that can be done on the “ideas, influence and inspiration” front. The Foreign Office could do worse than to study the example of Linda Whetstone, the pioneering campaigner for classical liberalism, who died a few days ago.
Via her Network For a Free Society, Whetstone disseminated the key texts of liberal philosophy and thought to hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people in societies in which they were not otherwise available. This is the foundation-building of freedom: be it helping Iranians to access the works of Adam Smith in Farsi, spreading ideas of academic liberty in South Sudan, or despatching DVDs and CDs of philosophy and political theory in translation to Kyrgyzstan.
This is a long-termist approach, and it bears fruit over long periods of time, rather than immediately, but it’s all the more worthwhile for that.
It’s also a fundamentally optimistic way to enact foreign policy. In her “network of liberty” speech, Truss quoted JFK, arguing that we should seek to prevail “not with an imperialism of force or fear, but the rule of courage and freedom, and hope for the future of man”.
What better way to do that than to trust in the merit of the ideas of freedom – to believe that they are so compelling, so robust, so visibly and self-evidently good that just by telling people about them they will spread and spread again?
After all, that’s what tyrants fear the most – that they might temporarily capture some turf, or some institutions, but that they can never capture the human heart.
Mark Wallace is chief executive of ‘ConservativeHome’, a blog independent of the Tory party
China and Russia’s tyranny can be stopped if Global Britain trusts in the power of freedom
This long-termist approach won't bear fruit immediately, but it’s all the more worthwhile for Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, to try
inews.co.uk
