This simply does not work in a non-Western environment where foreign occupation or influence is seen as far more dangerous than homegrown tyranny. And again this all reduces to being habitual war winners / war losers, occupiers / occupied.
I think the problem here is when you try to apply it to Russians, who are actually very much on the side of habitual military victory (albeit often in scorched-earth form), and in fact have crossed over into habitual colonialism of their own quite regularly.
The argument works well for some place like South America that hasn’t had sovereignty or hosted a homegrown empire for hundreds of years, or maybe India and Africa, but when you try to apply it to much of the rest of the “anti-colonialist” Old World (ie: Russia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia aka the Middle East) you mostly find that the societies so obsessed with repelling foreign invaders are mainly just butthurt that in the 19th and 20th centuries, they lost for the very first time.
I’d say the major point of my argument would be the internal tyranny danger vs. foreign attack danger, and the minor part would be that those who tend to lose wars feel the external danger even more. But even if they win, a lot of wars close to home (in case of Russia: Poland, Tatars/Mongols etc.) will tend to focus more on external dangers than on potential inner tyrannies.
Close to home is a key point. Here is it is not really useful that we have one noun, war, for both. It is an entirely different experience when you send soldiers far away and the worst thing that can happen is that they won’t return, or when you live in a constant danger of some troops visiting your village for some looting, rape and arson. The second is probably so much more stressful that instead of war it would be more expressive to have two different nouns for this.
Let me put it differently: it seems focusing more on external danger is the default mode of humankind. It is a really unique and special thing that the West invented this whole “don’t trust your own leaders much either” thing, which perhaps is what defines the West as such as it was already there in Greco-Roman times. You could call it the invention of politics a such, very literally, Aristotle’s Politika was already about the different kinds of Greek constitutions which reduce to different amounts and ways to trusting leaders: monarchy, aristcracy, democracy, politeia. But this is not humankinds defaut mode. The default mode is to focus on defeating the external enemy which means there is no politics as such: just follow whatever leader there happens to be as he seems to be winning. When not ,someone will take his place.
So leader-distrust is all of politics in the Western sense, not only liberal politics, not only modern politics, but its whole history, even if someone would argue for theocratical monarchy or something similar, it is political in the sense that there is an argument at all. I don’t really know to formulate it better, but this is in stark contrast with the non-political views outside the West where you just simply whoever is there as long as he is winning, so politics is replaced with fighting the enemy.
Thus the West is completely mistake when it tells others their politics is wrong because e.g. not democratic enough. It is not sure at all they want to have politics.
It is an entirely different experience when you send soldiers far away and the worst thing that can happen is that they won’t return, or when you live in a constant danger of some troops visiting your village for some looting, rape and arson. The second is probably so much more stressful that instead of war it would be more expressive to have two different nouns for this.
If we attempt to take your theory as making serious predictions, you’ve completely failed to explain why Germany or Poland want to operate as democratic societies but Russia doesn’t care. All three of these countries have repeated invasion as their original historical experience prior to the formation of the nation-state—especially Poland, which has been the regular victim of both of its neighbors’ imperial ambitions.
And yet the Poles have a politics beyond “Fight Russia”.
Russian xenophobia isn’t really an argument that Russia faces fundamentally different historical-material circumstances from, say, the countries Russia regularly invades and colonizes. It’s just evidence that Russians have been fed quite a lot of propaganda designed to make them fear the outside world.
They’re not dealing with new and original existential challenges. They just got unlucky in which form of politics took root there. The neoliberal “shock therapy” after the fall of the Soviet Union certainly didn’t help.
I think the problem here is when you try to apply it to Russians, who are actually very much on the side of habitual military victory (albeit often in scorched-earth form), and in fact have crossed over into habitual colonialism of their own quite regularly.
The argument works well for some place like South America that hasn’t had sovereignty or hosted a homegrown empire for hundreds of years, or maybe India and Africa, but when you try to apply it to much of the rest of the “anti-colonialist” Old World (ie: Russia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia aka the Middle East) you mostly find that the societies so obsessed with repelling foreign invaders are mainly just butthurt that in the 19th and 20th centuries, they lost for the very first time.
I’d say the major point of my argument would be the internal tyranny danger vs. foreign attack danger, and the minor part would be that those who tend to lose wars feel the external danger even more. But even if they win, a lot of wars close to home (in case of Russia: Poland, Tatars/Mongols etc.) will tend to focus more on external dangers than on potential inner tyrannies.
Close to home is a key point. Here is it is not really useful that we have one noun, war, for both. It is an entirely different experience when you send soldiers far away and the worst thing that can happen is that they won’t return, or when you live in a constant danger of some troops visiting your village for some looting, rape and arson. The second is probably so much more stressful that instead of war it would be more expressive to have two different nouns for this.
Let me put it differently: it seems focusing more on external danger is the default mode of humankind. It is a really unique and special thing that the West invented this whole “don’t trust your own leaders much either” thing, which perhaps is what defines the West as such as it was already there in Greco-Roman times. You could call it the invention of politics a such, very literally, Aristotle’s Politika was already about the different kinds of Greek constitutions which reduce to different amounts and ways to trusting leaders: monarchy, aristcracy, democracy, politeia. But this is not humankinds defaut mode. The default mode is to focus on defeating the external enemy which means there is no politics as such: just follow whatever leader there happens to be as he seems to be winning. When not ,someone will take his place.
So leader-distrust is all of politics in the Western sense, not only liberal politics, not only modern politics, but its whole history, even if someone would argue for theocratical monarchy or something similar, it is political in the sense that there is an argument at all. I don’t really know to formulate it better, but this is in stark contrast with the non-political views outside the West where you just simply whoever is there as long as he is winning, so politics is replaced with fighting the enemy.
Thus the West is completely mistake when it tells others their politics is wrong because e.g. not democratic enough. It is not sure at all they want to have politics.
If we attempt to take your theory as making serious predictions, you’ve completely failed to explain why Germany or Poland want to operate as democratic societies but Russia doesn’t care. All three of these countries have repeated invasion as their original historical experience prior to the formation of the nation-state—especially Poland, which has been the regular victim of both of its neighbors’ imperial ambitions.
And yet the Poles have a politics beyond “Fight Russia”.
Russian xenophobia isn’t really an argument that Russia faces fundamentally different historical-material circumstances from, say, the countries Russia regularly invades and colonizes. It’s just evidence that Russians have been fed quite a lot of propaganda designed to make them fear the outside world.
They’re not dealing with new and original existential challenges. They just got unlucky in which form of politics took root there. The neoliberal “shock therapy” after the fall of the Soviet Union certainly didn’t help.