The French magazine Le Point asked: Are we in a global confrontation, during which regimes aim to impose their political system on democracies? Should we see what Russia and China are doing as an existential threat to the West? Writer Gerard Araud answered both questions directly in his article in the negative.
He demanded that the foreign policy of France and the European Union be determined on the basis of this fact, pointing to the need to return to the correct diagnosis that stems from the fact that our views are based on assumptions that others may not share, and that these are not stupid, ignorant, or ill-intentioned, but they see the world in a different way from ours. .
And he believed that this world, as everyone agrees, is going through a transitional phase characterized by a change in the relative balance of power at the expense of the West, although the United States will remain the first, although its supremacy is no longer indisputable, and therefore – according to his opinion – the military, financial, economic and political dominance of the West United behind the Americans has been left behind by multipolarity, where no one can easily impose his will and where competition over ambitions is the norm.
And he considered that neither Russia, President Vladimir Putin, nor China during the era of Xi Jinping are two countries driven by ideological fervor that would push them to subjugate everything to spread their gospel, because it is Russia’s tradition to seek progress in the West by force of arms, while Xi uses the party to maintain his power in a country Huge, which means that support for absolutism is a tool for them to weaken the opponent, but it is not the goal of their policy.
The writer pointed out that the maneuvers of the two presidents do not constitute a serious threat to the political systems of the West, just as the ills that democracy suffers from in Western societies are not a result of the actions of these two leaders, to conclude that it is necessary for the West not to succumb to the paranoia that would deceive it about the challenge it faces. Because this challenge is geopolitical, not ideological.
He called on the West to refrain from mortgaging itself to the idea that it is a fortress that sees itself as the camp of good, and asked that we fight the promotion of the autocratic model, but without making that the principle around which our foreign policy is determined, to conclude that the truth in the end is that this will not be the first time that Democracies and other systems coexist.
