JD Vance against democracy: Munich Security Conference or Munich Beer Hall?

Photography Source: United States Department of State – Public Domain

The vice president of the United States, JD Vance’s comments this week about democracy are very good to the ear of some, but are out of the musical score of the events. February 14^thMunich’s security pact saw Vance introduce against European states for not adhering to democracy. And recent actions in Europe about democracy raise their eyebrows. Vance, for example, referred to Romania canceling his final round of December 8, 2024 of presidential elections. The upstart of the “populist” candidate Calin Georgescu won the plurality of the votes on November 24 of the first round of 2024. The Romania government, with the support of the United States embassy, ​​expressed concern that a campaign of Russia’s Tiktok was a wind against Georgescu to victory. And the surveys positioned him to win the final round.

The previous events were during the final period of the Biden administration. Romania has 3 large NATO bases (USA) with the largest American base in the EU under construction. Romania has also supplied weapons of Ukraine and other forms of support. In addition, the port of Romania in Constanza has become one of the largest entry points for military supplies in Ukraine and for the export of its grain.

Georgescu, although it has a long public career in environmental policy, has policy opinions in disagreement with that of Romania, if the EU and the political current prior to the transmission. Georgescu speaks in the language of “antiglobalists.” Celebrates the dictators of interwar of Romania and his government as a period of national glory while praising Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. In addition, it supports ending the war in Ukraine, but in terms favorable to Kremlin instead of NATO. In summary, the perspective of Georgecu’s electoral victory panicked both Romania and the US administration at the end of 2024.

However, according to Trump’s administration, Georgescu’s opinions are accepted, not to mention that of the AFD in Germany, orban in Hungary, Law and Justice (of which the last one has received a great step given the support from Poland to Ukraine in the current war). Vance highlighted Romania for his electoral interference in his comments from Munich. He argued, not without merit, that a purchase of social networks of $ 200,000 that has never been conclusively related to Russia, but regardless of whether it did, it is a thin sauce to cancel an election, which insinuates the weakness of our democracies . To be clear, however, normatively, these are Romania’s electoral decisions.

In all these points, Vance is correct. But the evidence points to his intellectual dishonesty with his protests and defense of democracy. The day after Munich de Vance’s speech, his “boss” (a word that one can be sure that Trump supports), saw the last place in the alleged Napoleon axiom of social networks that, “the one who saves his Country does not violate any law. ” This trolling of the public with Trump that is placed above the law demonstrates contempt for the constitutionalist government and much less democracy. Of course, Trump’s contempt for democracy was completely evident in his electoral loss of 2020 when he called Georgia Secretary of Georgia, Republican, Brad Raffensper, stating: “Fello, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” In addition, the looting of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2020 by Trump’s supporters in the weeks after the night call superior to Trump’s choice and the subsequent reference of Shoskers arrested as “hostages”, Va further by revealing the cynical deployment of “defense of” defense of “defense of” democracy “by Vance.

Looking even more at democracy, Viktor Orban de Hungary delivered the opening speech at the CPAC meeting of 2022 Republican in Texas (headed by Trump). Orban said: “We cannot successfully fight by liberal media … the only thing we can show you is how to fight with our own rules.” These comments combined with the gerrymandering of the legislative districts of Hungary and control over judicial (tactics also deployed in the United States most markedly in Wisconsin and North Carolina) point completely to ignore democracy.

In summary, there are reasons to see the defense of democracy both by liberals and conservatives and mainly instrumental. Each accepts democracy to the extent that their agendas progresses, but no more. This does not mean that liberals and populist law are the same, and in fact, I maintain that the greatest contempt for democracy comes from populist law, but points out how both will ignore democracy in the search for their objectives if it looks as necessary.

But in the score of the liberals that they profess (if they do not believe) in democracy, while instrumentally rejecting it when facing their other central values ​​and/or interests, the question remains, why is the public rejecting each Even more democracy and/or embraces populist law?

Polyians (Karl), such as Wolfgang Streeck of Germany (and, to some extent, the current author with hangers in Transylvania, where Polyyi wrote his doctoral dissertation, and Wisconsin) Answers are found in tensions between markets and society. In the nineteenth century, nationalism created spaces for local middle classes and access to professions and social mobility previously monopolized by foreign imperial entities. Nationalism represented a liberatory character for society where the state of displacement of the State and the Nation by the Empire and its elites of foreign power. Of course, in the years of interwar, nationalism also revealed what could be its evil character when the state separated from democracy and national groups themselves became oppressors of their own national minorities.

We quickly advance until the last half century and we see the “long stagnation” and the market again subsuming society to the economic imperatives of the elites. The social democracies placed guard rails in their place that provide protections for society in their place since the 1930-1970. But in the 1990s, those began to erode and after the financial shock of 2008, to break. Meanwhile, in the post-Soviet block of social protections on health and education they remained from the communist period, but the working classes were subjected to nothing less than you would contain the market forces that impoverished them at home, leaving many from his national communities in favor. of work abroad with minimal protections.

For many in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), communism placed its national aspirations in pause. The post-Soviet period represents these states the opportunity to collect the project of the national communities prior to World War II. This has the possibility of assuming forms that resemble more benign characteristics of nationalism of the nineteenth century or if they undergo impediments to carrying that project, its most dangerous way of scoring.

Neoliberalism (an extreme state -imposed state form) has eroded support for democracy. Political liberals have spoken and acted in points under neoliberalism to protect vulnerable populations (all good) while failing to maintain conditions so that majorities of work and middle class thrive. For local populations, NGOs, Brussels bureaucrats and academics who advance the projects for “vulnerable populations” can, although well intentional, the appearance of missionary efforts that do not meet the broader needs of society. Populist responses emerge from this soil and with it the figures that many warn in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) after the financial crisis of 2008, but now are linked to analogues in the West. In addition, although long -standing hate towards the Russians exists among many in the EEC of their experience with Soviet aggression, others want peace and want to see accommodations made with Russia that stop war.

In the short term, figures such as JD Vance must be shown for what they are: people demonstrably without loyalty to democracy and only refer opportunistically for any tactical political gain that can be taken. However, medium and long -term adherents, adherents of democracy must pivot the policies that defend society at the local level and in larger geostrategic dimensions develop strategies to walk back to war and find more Westfalia solutions to the international order. In summary, some variation of the formula of the privileged society of Polanyi, which also means, especially in CEE, protecting the nations, represents the only opportunity for Democry’s survival.