It is an essential counterweight , just as the balance of terror of the nuclear arsenals of the East-West blocs was in its time . The economy is the very essence of a society ' s social progress . China ' s emergence as a superpower will have the domino e ect of multiplying the number of regimes that could easily be labelled despotic , in an environment where democracy will have been lost in conjecture , in procrastination that has failed to provide the right answers for the people . The temptation of the rigid formula , including in the West with far-right populism , is only logical . Even if China has always prided itself on not caring about the regimes that govern the nations with which it does business , it is more than likely that certain peoples will succumb to the sirens of rigorist populism . An ideological trend that would castrate the peoples of the world from an era of freedom that has enabled the unrestricted circulation of knowledge and information , and send human society back to a period as opaque as that of the dark ages that buried the world after the fall of the Roman Empire . If Plato thought that democracy uncontrolled by the people led inexorably to tyranny , it ' s easy to see that the inability of the world ' s peoples to control Washington ' s injunctions has led the world towards a dictatorship of the most abject kind , and no doubt it ' s time for historians to take a closer look at this textbook case . To conclude , a return to ancient history is in order , in an attempt to understand the allegorical .
Between the end of the 6th century and the end of the 3rd century BC , the Latin term dictator designated a magistrate invested with extraordinary powers to manage the a airs of the Roman Republic in times of crisis . Unlike other magistrates , he was beyond the control of the public , to whom he was not accountable . But this supreme authority was only granted for a limited period : six months . It was agreed in advance that he would resign at the end of his term , whether or not he had fulfilled his mission . In the event of victory before the six months were up , the dictator could abdicate spontaneously , as was the case with Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus ( c . 519 - c . 430 BC ), in 458 BC . Cincinnatus , who had succeeded in crushing the Romans ' enemies in just sixteen days , left o ce after his triumph . In ancient historiography , he epitomized the figure of the virtuous dictator , in the sense that he made no attempt to hold on to power beyond the time required to accomplish his mission . In view of this Roman frasque , it ' s easy to understand that dictatorship could only succeed democracy , which had been scorned and ine ective . So , in our era , it is important to ask whether China and its ally Russia , disregarding their selfish agendas , will be able to be the virtuous dictators who put a world in crisis back on the path to freedom and social progress for all ? We can only speculate , as only future generations will have the evidence to answer this question . Nevertheless , it ' s fair to say , with a touch of comedy , that the old world is triumphing over what was called the new world at the start of Western colonization of the Americas .
Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr . Journalist .
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Flashmag ! Issue 149 April 2024