The British military’s preparations for a possible collision with Argentina over the disputed archipelago have once again demonstrated that not only is the territorial conflict between the two countries not sputtering out, but it is ready to drive another nail into the coffin of the much-advertised Western “democratic peace theory.”
The Empire Prepares a Counterstrike
Third, what also attracts attention is the content of the exercise program. It lays out, if not the full spectrum, then at least a partial range of what the British side expects in terms of how the situation may develop and what it is seriously preparing for. There is a troop landing, the movement of troops across terrain, and assaults on simulated enemy positions involving close-quarters combat in any area, including open ground and peat bogs. It is curious that during the exercises the British deliberately reenacted Operation Sutton of 1982, which looked like a direct signal to the Argentines about the readiness of the Crown for a fight for the Malvinas-Falklands. Finally, fourth, the representative composition and technical equipment of the British contingent (paratroopers of the Parachute Regiment, reservists of the so-called Falkland Islands Defense Force, fighter aircraft, helicopters, and UAVs) also appear to have been chosen for a reason.
The Same Old Refrain
As it can be seen, the “old” pattern of combat operations was fully modernized and “recast” in a new key by means of applying new technologies and through intensive interaction among naval, air, and land forces. Moreover, it was not simply recast but staged in a highly telling manner. To an outside observer, the re-creation of the conditions of the 1982 operation looks like a kind of grotesque, but, however weird it may be, the symbolism that the stagers sought to imbed in it is undeniable.
The name of the exercises was symbolic as well – “Cape Upholder” (i.e. the one who will defend the Cape). It seems that such a heavy hint to Argentina could not have gone unnoticed either. On the whole, it is significant to understand what actually happened not only from the standpoint of Britain’s specific readiness and desire to rattle sabers. It has already been sending its own mercenaries to fight for Ukrainian neo-Nazism with Russian troops regularly eliminating them in combat. But it does not appear sufficient for the UK. The Brits are haunted by the bad example of their main rival and NATO ally, the United States, which regularly proves contagious. Why should they not follow in the American footsteps and refrain from launching direct attacks on other countries as well, however far from the shores of Albion? Even if, in informational terms, this looks rather bizarre, as with the Falklands-Malvinas, and after reading the news your first think your own eyes are deceiving you and read it twice: it seems the information is not about British scientists but about British military personnel, however…
Practice and Theory
However significant the island dispute between Britain and Argentina is to pay our attention to it, it is reasonable to turn to a not exactly extraneous, but a theoretical aspect. The point is that for several decades now, international relations scholars around the world have had a large number of Western theories hammered into their heads, including the well-known liberal “democratic peace theory.” In its most general form, its meaning boils down to the claim that “democracies” do not fight one another and that, in general, as “liberalness” and “democraticness” grow stronger, a country supposedly no longer ends up with a shattered economy and a bare backside but concerns itself with “universal human” problems and becomes exceptionally peace-loving.
It would seem obvious to anyone: the “theory” is complete absurdity and is not worth a hill of beans. Yet, it continues to be studied. As, indeed, are still being examined and seriously paid attention to other “works” of Western political thought, inapplicable to the rest of the world and, most important, unnecessary to it. Anyone who has studied world politics knows perfectly well how Western political forces spent decades doing everything to introduce precisely their own theories into the apparatus of international relations scholarship in the non-Western world; how Western journals and Western-controlled international journal associations and rankings force researchers to fit their analytical methodology to Western templates; how they reject their articles without references to Western authors; and so on and so forth.
The non-Western world, the global majority, should have put an end to all this long ago. Every state with its own scholarly tradition should have within that tradition a clear commitment to using its own theoretical heritage in international studies and an understanding of its value. It is absolutely acceptable to familiarize yourselves with foreign authors, perceiving their works as literature and as historical sources explaining the policy course of the states or civilizations to which they belong. But to agree to constantly take Western theories as the basis for the development of scholarship – that is a kind of scholarly colonialism! It is time to get rid of it once and forever.
A Long Way from the Ancient Greeks
The terms “democratic” and “nondemocratic” per se have long shown themselves to be not merely conditional but exclusively political in meaning. The West itself has moved so far from the original concept of “democracy” among the ancient Greeks that today’s power regimes and, accordingly, the governance of society in Europe and the United States simply cannot be called anything but totalitarian. It is hard to find another definition for such rulers, who appear to have aimed at completely recasting the normal picture of the world for their citizens: from the forced removal of children from the family and the hammering into them from an early age of various unhealthy attitudes in relations between the sexes, and the maximal stimulation and consolidation in humans of the animal that has stopped and become fixated only on the simplest reflexes, instead of spiritual aspirations, instead of an adequate perception of other people and a drive towards knowledge, to the imposition of a corresponding anticulture, attempts to completely block access to impartial sources of information, the construction of an enemy image out of “nondemocratic” countries, and so on, up to the propaganda of arbitrary deprivation of life, which is unthinkable for humankind.
And who are “nondemocratic” countries for Western politicians? Here everything is decoded in a rather utilitarian way. After several decades, one can conclude that “nondemocratic” is what they call those who preserve their sovereignty and do not adjust their thinking to suit them and to toe their line. They do not “jackal around embassies” and do not “grunt along” with the West on the world stage (very apt definitions given by Russian President Vladimir Putin to pro-Western figures and states in the years when today’s Russia began constantly to experience from its own experience what the struggle to preserve its sovereignty and its future is). They do not copy the elements of the social order, models, and policy goals indicated by the West, or the “shock therapy” and economic reforms that destroy national welfare. They do not voluntarily enter debt bondage. They do not forget their own national interests and defend them not in words but in deeds. They struggle against pervasive attempts by the West to interfere in internal affairs. They do not extol the dubious and, in reality, very varied role of Western states in history. They do not grovel before Western culture and scholarship and do not copy the pretensions of the aforementioned contemporary Western anticulture. They do not replace their native speech in colonial fashion with Western languages, words, and expressions. They do not forget their own rich, glorious, and interesting history and do not rewrite it to please European or American managers and at their dictation. If your state also fights off attacks from outside and does not allow anyone to tell you what to do on the international stage and within your borders or, indeed, to teach you how to live – congratulations, you live in a normal, “nondemocratic” country.
As for the observers who find insufficient the facts of wars unleashed by “democratic” US and European countries, cruel reprisals against political figures who think in non-Western ways, interventions by “democracies” in every conflict occurring in various parts of the globe, and attempts at neocolonial treatment of weaker and more defenseless members of the world community – take a look at one more thing, this time at how “democratic” Britain shows by every means to equally “democratic” Argentina how, if anything happens, it will make short work of its troops.
Let us wait and see, as they say.
Ksenia Muratshina, PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Culture Editor of “New Eastern Outlook”
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