Ukrainian civilians withdraw along humanitarian corridors from Ukraine's Mariupol on March 20, 2022. More than 3.48 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN refugee agency. Photo: AFP

"Today, what you have in Washington DC is a massive amount of intellectual laziness. This intellectual laziness was described in Francis Fukuyama's reductive essay The End of History' But the world today is very complex. Instead of the end of history, you're seeing its return," Singaporean political scientist Kishore Mahbubani once told the Global Times in an interview.

After the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan Revolution in 2014, Ukraine was again pushed by the US-led West into a democracy trap in 2022. As the initiator of the Ukraine crisis, the West doesn't care about the safety of Ukrainian people in turmoil, but tries to convince the world that the ongoing conflict is a "battle between democracy and autocracy."

Francis Fukuyama made recently a prediction-style analysis in the form of a PowerPoint outline. He wrote, "Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine… A Russian defeat will make possible a 'new birth of freedom,' and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians."

Fukuyama's assertion reflects his blind trust in the "liberal democracy." He predicts a dark future for Russia, and resolutely defends his liberal democracy belief and the correctness and supremacy of US liberal hegemony. This is unsurprising. His argument demonstrates that US scholars have done an amazing amount of paperwork but still fail to make institutional progress in their thinking. Instead, they have sunk to promoting the rhetoric of liberal democracy.

Trampling on democracy in the name of justice

The Ukraine crisis is by no means a "battle between democracy and autocracy," but another example of the US' trampling on democracy. 

Augusto Zamora R., former Nicaraguan ambassador to Spain, wrote in an article published on Spain's Publico that the US refused to talk with Russia about security because "what was at issue was not Ukraine's independence and sovereignty, but rather using Ukraine as a trap so that Europe would blindly and en masse assume its role of the US' Atlantic flank."

What the US is doing is a clear deception against the Ukrainian people. Nevertheless, many discussions and debates among US scholars about the situation have ignored the real intent of the US while the scholars tried to deceive more people with their remarks that blindly believe in "liberal democracy." Not only did they make Ukraine think it was on the front line for what they called justice of democracy, but they also tried to trick the world into believing in their so-called justice.

Although those scholars are fond of talking about democracy, they don't necessarily have faith in it. "To say those people have faith is putting them on a pedestal. They are just opportunists who follow the trend and rush in the offensive of ideological struggle. They are simply catering to the needs of US politics," Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.

The current public opinion atmosphere in the US has already deviated from the values of "liberal democracy" advocated by Washington. If you support what the government says - even if it is wrong, your words will be spread by different media in the entire West, otherwise you will be severely criticized.

The debates over the Ukraine crisis have clearly proved this. Leading realistic scholar John Mearsheimer believes that the US and the West are principally responsible for what the Ukrainian people are suffering. He was thus criticized for being pro-Russia. However, those who hype that Ukraine will win and Putin will be defeated are largely applauded. 

Li said in the prevalence of such rhetoric, many scholars have ignored the basic facts of how shattered the democratic practices are in the US and the West, but instead trumpet that style of democracy. This is pure power politics, and it is trampling real democracy.

Fully operated propaganda machinery

Fukuyama's "end of history" theory was proved wrong various times in the past decades. He once reflected on that but now he has turned back and become more assertive. 

Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Fukuyama was probably encouraged by certain forces behind the curtain as his theory meets the needs of US propaganda. Therefore, even though there are flaws, Fukuyama's argument still can prevail, while Mearsheimer is seen by some as a traitor. 

This demonstrates a scenario in US society: That it is hard for many sober-headed people to have their voices widely heard before being overwhelmed by criticism. 

"The US is good at propaganda. Traditionally, there is a firewall between the propaganda and the government's real policymaking. But now, it is more likely the policymakers have lost independent judgment to propaganda. This is terrifying," Lü said. 

Dichotomy with intellectual laziness

In the US, the general trend of public opinion and the democratic discourse in academic circle continues to weave a huge information cocoon at home and throughout the West. Politicians, pundits and media persons have restricted the general public's access to different voices, and made people's way of thinking more rigid and extreme. Irrationality has become the mainstream in society, making it difficult for people who think critically to survive. As a result, people's judgments on issues are becoming increasingly simplistic: Things are either black or white.

"You can't simplify all issues as a matter of 'democracy vs autocracy,' and simply classify things as democratic and non-democratic. This will not only intensify conflicts but also confuse right and wrong. And it won't provide any good solutions to the problems. The US must first reflect on itself," said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University.

Zhu argues that many problems in the world now, including those related to development and terrorism, can't be solved simply by adopting the "liberal democratic values" that the West holds on to. 

But some in the US now firmly believe that their liberal democratic system is the optimal solution that will never go wrong. Even if these people see problems occur in the West and beyond due to this system, they still won't admit something is wrong with it. They try to tell themselves with such political correctness that nothing is the US' fault. But such a mentality will only lead the US to a dead-end of false democracy, and its effect may spill over to other regions and even put the whole world at risk.

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn