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OSSERVATORIO INTERNAZIONALE

This in turn prevents Moscow from accepting that it can only choose
from the dependencies. And if the choice is inevitable, the Russian leadership
would understandably choose China that is uncritical of its political system and
that Moscow regards a more predictable partner than the West, first of all the
U.S. It is another problem that Russia does not share the values of the West and
does not want to do so for reasons of preserving systemic stability and on the
basis of historically based alienation and disenchantment.
While Western policy is based on declared values, China and Russia are
more pragmatic and that appeals to some. Although everyone who lived both
in a democracy and in an autocratic system knows where it is better to live, at
the level of political leaders the matter may appear differently. Preservation of
power, behavior that is carried out in denial of declared values has always been
present, but especially in countries where democracy does not go back for
decades, if not centuries, has not developed organically, and hence the possibi-
lity of a de facto abolition of democracy attracts some leaders. Especially in
cases where the preservation of their power is closely linked to individual enri-
chment, abuse of power and corruption. In their eyes the values and their
declaration do not serve to respect them, but to legitimize their rule. The bipo-
lar international system can be thought of as more stable than a multiplayer
model. In addition, we have experience with bipolarity from thirty years ear-
lier . However, it would be wrong to think of those experiences positively and
(23)
it would be quite a simplification to extrapolate from them.
This is how we get to the title of Honoré de Balzac’s perhaps most
famous novel. We may state that the development of the international system,
its built-in objective structural constraints, the power-maximizing reflexes, the
doubtful lessons derived from the last three-quarters of a century, the repeated
mistakes led to a situation from where we can draw a conclusion. After forty
years of observing the international system it remains what it was: Illusions per-
dues.

(23) Similarly as John Mearsheimer concluded upon the end of the Cold War. Why We Will Soon
Miss The Cold War. The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 266, (1990) No. 2; pp. 35-50, especially p.
37. https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/A0014.pdf Accessed
July 26, 2021.

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