By Kevin D. Williamson
Wednesday, July 01, 2020
You have to see Hong Kong to believe it. I am glad that I
did see it, at least a little of it, last year, in what I am afraid we will
remember as the last days of a free Hong Kong.
The new “security” law being imposed on Hong Kong by
Beijing is a monstrosity, the sort of thing that often is described as
“Orwellian” or “Kafkaesque” but which in fact represents the best efforts of a
regime that is in some ways worse than anything imagined by those dystopian
thinkers.
Some of my friends on the right have presented this as
evidence of the folly of our economic engagement with the so-called People’s
Republic of China, beginning with Bill Clinton’s 1994 decision to reverse a
campaign pledge and normalize trade relations between our countries. (Some of
you may remember that Bill Clinton on the stump was a militant China hawk,
while Bill Clinton in the Oval Office was otherwise occupied.) But these are
johnny-one-notes. If it’s cloudy outside, then we need new trade restrictions;
if it’s sunny outside, then we need new trade restrictions; if Starbucks is out
of blonde roast, then we need new trade restrictions. If it’s a day of the week
ending in “y” . . . Never mind the reality that our diplomatic position
vis-à-vis Beijing was — and is — in fact much stronger with our trading
relationship than it would have been without that relationship. If you think it
is easy to push around a poor, backward, and economically isolated country, ask
yourself why the United States failed to bully India into following
Washington’s lead for the whole of the Cold War. Our failures in China are
failures of American diplomacy, failures of American policy, and failures of
American nerve. If iPhones were made in Timbuktu instead of Zhengzhou, we would
still be in the same situation.
Across the border, to China’s north and east, the scene
is a little less Orwellian and a lot more 1930s. There has never really been a
free Russia, except for maybe for about five minutes between the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the rise of the Russian mafia state.
The Putin regime is pushing through a “constitutional”
reform package that would turn back the clock on the formal term limits under
which Vladimir Putin notionally operates, extending his potential time in power
through 2036 — at which time, Putin’s term no doubt will be extended once
again, assuming he lives that long. There’s no retirement plan for gangsters —
it is likely that Putin’s political career and his life will end at
approximately the same time, one way or another. Putin’s sycophants and
imitators, Viktor Orbán and the rest, are learning their lessons well and
playing variations on Putin’s theme. Hungary, it bears keeping in mind, is a
member of the European Union. The failures in Brussels are of a different kind
from the failures in Washington, but their effect has been much the same.
Jean-Claude Juncker may call for “plain language” regarding Budapest’s
suffocation of democracy and its contempt for the rule of law, but Orbán has
good reason to believe that plain language is as far as things will go, if,
indeed, things go even that far. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both just old
enough to remember the dramatic events of 1956, when Soviet tanks rolled into
Budapest to stop a nascent rebellion against oppression and tyranny. Seeing the
free world abandon the Hungarians is, apparently, not a
once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Back when Bill Clinton was flip-flopping on China, there
was a great deal of techno-utopianism in our national mood. We had this nifty
and indeed revolutionary new thing, the Internet, which was at that time not
yet the sewer it has become. The economy was booming, and the Iron Curtain was
fading in our memory. We talked about “Moore’s Law” as though it were a force
of nature, an inevitable engine of progress. We even expected similarly
“exponential” improvements in everything from education to cancer treatment to
poverty — a Moore’s Law for social improvement. And we did see radical
improvements, especially in reducing severe poverty. But those were not the
result of a Moore’s Law for prosperity or some kind of Hegelian capital-H
history. They were the results of good decisions and intelligent reforms, many
of them by subsequently underappreciated figures such as Manmohan Singh. They
were the result of piecemeal efforts, good luck, hard work, innovation, and a
thousand thousand other variables.
The superstition of a Moore’s Law for social betterment,
like the superstitious belief that freedom is the “hope of every human heart”
or that certain politicians are “on the right side of History,” is a part of
the long tradition sometimes known as “Whig history,” the belief that human
society marches inevitably toward progress, enlightenment, and liberty. As
Professor Glenn Loury once put it, the essence of conservatism is the idea that
human nature has no history. George Will expands on that: “The idea that human
nature has a history — that human beings only have a nature contingent on their
time and place — is the idea that has animated modern tyrannies.”
We start from scratch, every generation. History does not
bend inevitably toward justice, or freedom, or decency, or even stability.
History doesn’t do that in Hong Kong, or in Moscow, or in Washington or New
York City or Los Angeles. History goes where we push it. And if we don’t push,
someone else will.
Right now, there is a pretty big push coming from
Beijing, and it is being felt well beyond the territorial borders of the
so-called People’s Republic. Moscow’s smaller push is felt across Europe and
beyond. What is to be done? In the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson is offering
refuge to millions of Hong Kong residents holding British overseas passports.
“Our natural business lies in escaping,” Thomas More advises in A Man for
All Seasons. And that may do, for a time.
Then what?
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