Putin is wrong. Liberalism is more important than ever

Vladimir Putin has been rude about liberal values – “obsolete” is his terse verdict – and his remarks have gone viral. We should not be so surprised; it might have been more of a shock if he had suddenly announced a devotion to freedom of speech, the rule of law at home and abroad, and the glories of a free press in a plural society.

Still, in his first “sit down” interview with western journalists in two decades, he took the opportunity to unburden himself in quite an unbuttoned style. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was, he claims, a tragedy, because it left 25 million ethnic Russians living outside Russia’s borders (ignoring the fact that many were deported there by his predecessors from Stalin onwards in a deliberate policy of Russification of the USSR’s fringes). He believes that “all of us live in a world of biblical values”. Even when that shocking image of Oscar and Valeria Ramirez lying dead in the water on the banks of the Rio Grande is still fresh in the mind of the world, Mr Putin declares that liberalism protects the rights of migrants who “kill, plunder and rape with impunity”. Not quite “biblical”, that: he makes Donald Trump sound like Francis of Assisi.

He goes on: “Every crime must have its punishment. The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”

Mr Putin is sometimes said to have been influenced by the ideas of Russian philosophers of the past, such as Ivan Ilyin, who framed a notion of Russian Christian fascism, and whose remarks seem to reflect these sorts of ideas. He praises, for example, Peter the Great – a man who modernised Russia and endowed it with a fine navy.

Yet he doesn’t seem to have shown the same intellectual or historical curiosity about the meaning of liberalism and liberal values. They do not, for example, involve allowing crimes, by migrants or anyone else, to go unpunished. Nor do they place the rights of migrants ahead of others – or of others ahead of migrants. It doesn’t even seem to occur to Mr Putin, despite pining for the polyglot Soviet Union, that diversity and multiculturalism can enrich and strengthen a nation state.

Nor does Mr Putin have much of a sense of irony. When he castigates the United States’ foreign policy, even as he mimics Mr Trump’s rhetoric, he does so because of America’s unilateralism and the lack of rules underpinning the world order. This from the man who invaded Georgia and Crimea, and who wages cyberattacks on anyone and anything from Estonia to America’s Democratic National Committee.

The more destructive irony is the attempt to build an international alliance of nationalist populists. It is a contradiction in terms, and quite useless as a base for a Russian national strategy. President Putin may feel some strange sympathy for President Trump, but the interests of “America First” are not completely aligned with those of Mr Putin’s All-Russia People’s Front.

When Xi Jinping, himself something of a territorial and military expansionist, meets President Trump at the G20 summit, it will not be a cosy chat between fellow authoritarians, but a frosty standoff about their trade war. The nationalists of Poland, or Ukraine, needless to say, don’t share the same world view as the Kremlin. If the new world order envisaged by President Putin consists of an axis including Bolsonaro of Brazil, Salvini of Italy, Erdogan of Turkey, Modi of India and Duterte of the Philippines, plus himself and Mr Trump, then it is unlikely to be a very cohesive affair. The addition of Boris Johnson to that mix would be amusing, but in a very bad way.

Mr Putin plainly believes himself to be on the right side of some great tide of events, whereby the “End of History” that was declared by Francis Fukuyama after the end of the Cold War is itself drawing to a close. Looking at the collection of populist nationalists who have gained power, or a share in power, in previous liberal strongholds such as Scandinavia, you can see the capital he is trying to make out of this trend. And yet, even now, the world is freer and more prosperous than at any time, certainly more so than when the Soviet Union was at the peak of its powers, impoverishing and subjugating itself and its neighbours. A few decades ago, democracy was broadly confined to North America, western Europe, Japan, India and Australasia; the rest of the world was run by dictators of one sort or another. Today the truly oppressive states, such as North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or Myanmar are more of the exception than the rule. Even Putin’s Russia has not (yet) receded into Stalinist darkness.

Still, the very fact that liberalism has been in retreat in these parts of the world means that liberal values are now more important than ever. Mr Putin may not care for them, but the instinct for freedom and democracy is an unquenchable one, and it can never be permanently extinguished. Liberal values have defeated waves of militarism, fascism, Nazism and communism. It is Mr Putin and his antique imperialist policies that are obsolete.