Zelensky claimed during his speech at the European Parliament that Russia supposedly wants to destroy Europeans’ way of life, but it’s really the West’s liberal-globalist elite that are doing this. These individuals are driven by the belief in their radical ideology’s supposed universalism to impose its tenets onto everyone without exception, beginning with their own people and then expanding across the entire world. Russia’s conservative-sovereigntist worldview, by contrast, isn’t universal nor expansionist.

The US-led West’s Golden Billion is ruled by people who are convinced that it’s immoral to limit socio-cultural expression, the act of which they consider bigoted, racist, and xenophobic, which comprises the liberal half of their ideology. Accordingly, they practice a laissez faire approach towards socio-cultural minorities like those with non-traditional sexual dispositions and immigrants (irrespective of their legality), especially those from civilizations with very different morals, ethics, values, and principles.

The proliferation of these minority socio-cultural views, which are usually considered “disruptive” (to put it mildly) by the majority of the population, is accelerated due to the state’s tacit support of them for the aforementioned ideological reasons. In practice, this results in LGBT+ views being forced onto impressionable children at school as well as immigrants refusing to assimilate and integrate into society, both in terms of their behavior and the language that they employ when engaging with locals.

Regarding the first of these two most popular outcomes, it goes against the religious views of the social majority as well as the rights that they believe that parents are endowed with when it comes to their children’s exposure to sexually sensitive subjects, including via “gay pride parades”. As for the second, this takes the form of public prayers and loud, regular, and public calls to them; so-called “no-go zones”; and immigrants refusing to learn the language that the majority of their new society speaks.

Both outcomes collectively contribute to radically reshaping the socio-cultural norms (“way of life”) of the states in which these processes are unfolding, which is the direct result of their elites aggressively imposing their liberal-globalist ideology onto the same people on whose behalf they claim to rule. The globalist half of this coin is then seen by those aforesaid elites extrajudicially expanding their self-declared writ to impose their radical liberal ideology onto everyone else across the world.

Russia’s conservative-sovereigntist worldview, which aligns with the one that’s also shared by most of the Global South and thus the vast majority of humanity, is the polar opposite of the liberal-globalist worldview embraced by the Golden Billion’s elite. Unlike the US-led West, Russia believes that it’s actually immoral not to limit some socio-cultural expressions since the resultant proliferation of radical views via its counterparts’ laissez faire approach towards them goes against the rights of the majority.

With that in mind, its legislature recently prohibited the public expression of non-traditional sexual views in totality so as to safeguard the socio-cultural norms of the majority in whose name those elected representatives rule. This conservative approach doesn’t outlaw the practice of non-traditional sexual relations in one’s own home, apart from of course retaining the prohibition on pedophilia and other forms of sexual crimes like zoophilia for instance, but simply protects the rights of the majority.

As for the immigration dimension of this issue, Russia earlier reformed its related legislation to require those individuals who voluntarily enter its society to assimilate and integrate themselves within it, to which end they must learn its language, laws, history, and traditions. Of course, they still have the right to publicly express themselves in line with the limits stipulated by existing legislation and nobody is curtailing what they do in their own home, but this also helps protect the rights of the majority too.

Unlike the Golden Billion, Russia and most if its partners across the Global South don’t regard their conservative-sovereigntist worldview of protecting traditional socio-cultural norms and respecting every state’s sovereign right to determine their own to be universal, nor do they aggressively impose it on others. While disagreeing with the US-led West’s liberal-globalist approaches, and in some cases expressing disgust at some of the forms that they take, they don’t want to change Western society.

Objectively speaking, the conservative-sovereigntist worldview of Russia and most of its partners across the Global South is much more democratic than the Golden Billion’s liberal-globalist one. The former respects the rights of the majority in whose name they rule, comprises the sentiments of the vast majority of the global population, and doesn’t seek to impose their socio-cultural norms onto others. By contrast, the latter disrespects the majority at home and abroad by imposing radical norms onto them.

Considering this, Zelensky was flat-out lying by claiming during his speech to the European Parliament that Russia wants to destroy the European way of life. It wants nothing of the sort since this Eurasian Great Power has neither the desire nor means to impose its polar opposite worldview onto others. While many among its elite and the majority in whose name they rule sympathize with fellow conservative-sovereigntists within the EU, they won’t meddle in the bloc’s affairs to support them.

The socio-cultural and political clarifications shared in this analysis are essential to accept if one wants to truly understand the strategic dynamics of the New Cold War. This worldwide struggle over the direction of the global systemic transition is just as much about socio-cultural issues and states’ rights (or lack thereof) to determine/protect them as it is about geopolitics. The failure to acknowledge this is a flaw in many observers’ analyses, which results in inaccurate assessments of the New Cold War’s dynamics.

By Andrew Korybko