https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6yntgDid anyone see Big Questions this morning?
I thought there was a really interesting discussion about the difference between a political liberal world order and an economic liberal world order. In simplistic terms, it was argued that politically liberally countries seem to like supporting foreign dictators (evidenced by their arms sales and political support for dictators) but only in situations where the political liberal democracy needs an easy and regular supply of resources that is under the control of the dictator or where the dictator's aims is in the strategic interests of the liberal democracy.
What seemed to emerge was the idea that the need for welfare and aid has increased because of policies pursued by liberal democracies - Yemen was cited as an example where the humanitarian crisis caused by Saudi bombing (military equipment bought from the UK) is far in excess of any humanitarian aid provided by the UK after the bombing.
Another issue discussed was liberal polices in relation to the negative environmental impact of economic models based on economic growth.
From a WWF report: “High-income countries use five times the ecological resources of low-income countries, but low income countries are suffering the greatest ecosystem losses,” said Keya Chatterjee, WWF’s senior director of footprint. “In effect, wealthy nations are outsourcing resource depletion.”
I thought it was a refreshing change to see a discussion on liberalism from a global or national perspective, rather than the individual perspective and also that a distinction was made between domestic political liberalism which champions accountability, rule of law and welfare access vs less liberal international economic/ political foreign policies pursued by those same liberal democracies.
