Krastev: 'Trump and Harris will not accept a Putin victory'

DW: Mr. Krastev, is there a disenchantment with the very idea of liberal democracy? Many people in Europe — not only in Bulgaria — are saying "this doesn't work anymore." Are we facing a threat to liberal democracy as a basic value?

Ivan Krastev: Democracy is like love: you are constantly disappointed by it, but nevertheless, you hope that some day you will find it in its true form. The biggest risk here is that we're no longer quite sure what democracy is.

Is there a danger of authoritarianism posing as democracy?

Krastev: Of course. The very division between democracy and authoritarianism was quite characteristic of the twentieth century.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we see the emergence of political regimes in which free elections coexist with authoritarian practices. You can have a highly authoritarian regime where a government enjoys the support of the majority, but at the same time tramples on the rights of the individual and deprives the opposition of any feasible rights.

Paradoxically, open borders are one of the factors that stabilize such regimes. In the EU, for example, people are leaning towards a simpler truth: if you want to change your life, it is easier to leave or change the country where you live than to change the government of your own country.

Would you agree that the idea of free democracy does not necessarily benefit from what I would call "liberal overreach" —  hidden or explicit "rules" of political correctness?

Krastev: I once spent some time at Stanford University. While I was there, there was a scandal that was completely absurd. The IT department there put together a list of over 150 words and phrases that shouldn't be used because they are deemed politically incorrect.

One was the "killing two birds with one stone" proverb. Supposedly, that was an affront to animal rights. I wondered what was behind this.

Then I came across the following statistic: if you ask students in American universities how they define themselves, liberal or conservative, the answer is two to one in favor of the liberals. If you ask their professors, that ratio is 6 to 1. If you ask the administration, it's 12:1.

What happened? What happened is that some people who have received a very high education, defended a thesis and hoped to become professors, are forced to work in university administrations because the number of teaching positions in the social sciences is being cut.

These people rightly feel betrayed by the education system. They have devoted many years of their lives to studying, to proving themselves, to gaining intellectual status, but all this has been in vain. It is with them that the "liberal overreach" of which you speak starts.

Because for them, radicalism is, among other things, a way of maintaining social status. But the truth is that in a country like Bulgaria, this "liberal excess" is a virtual reality. People read about it, but they don't live in it or embrace it.

And a Sartre-esque world emerges, where hell really is other people.

Krastev: In a sense, yes. "Home" is, by definition, the place that you actually think you understand and where you feel understood.

Suddenly, when this is too fragmented, you're left with the feeling that not only do you not understand what's going on anymore, but no one understands you either, and you start to encapsulate yourself in smaller communities.

Politics predicates a common national circumstance, some basic agreement about the important things. The disappearance of this public consensus is one of the main problems of liberal democracy.

You have said that most people think of migration as moving in space, physically, but in fact almost all migrants, without knowing it, think of it as moving in time, as into the future. Is this still the case?

Krastev: We all live in a world where we are constantly moving. And not just in space, but in time as well.

The people from Africa or Asia that we see on the borders of Europe hardly think that they are simply moving geographically: for them, migration is a journey towards the future.

But the millions of people coming to Europe are naturally changing our societies, changing our cities, which leaves many locals with the gnawing feeling that the city they live in is no longer their city.

While some (Africans, Asians) are crossing the border with their feet, others are trying to time travel with their ballot.

Would you agree that the real problem of the modern world is anxiety, not fear (which has an object)? Because anxiety has no object and that is the truly overwhelming psychological danger.

Krastev: Fear sucks your power for life. Anxiety overwhelms you. We feel that everything is changing, and this drives us to either inaction or overreaction.

We will have a semblance of understanding of what is happening now in 50 years when we look back. But the feeling that we are living in a special moment never leaves us.

During a visit to Moscow at the beginning of the war, the Chinese president said, "we are seeing a change that we have not seen in a hundred years." But neither he, nor we, know exactly what that change is.

Many in Europe are wondering how the outcome of the US election will affect the war in Ukraine.

Krastev: The war is in a critical phase. Both sides are waiting for negotiations to begin and therefore both sides are looking for an escalation that will allow them to negotiate from a position of strength.

Russia has destroyed a huge part of the Ukrainian energy system, threatening to freeze not just the war but Ukraine itself. Kyiv has taken the offensive in Kursk and is looking to attack targets inside Russia.

The very idea that Trump's possible election is the end of the war, and a Democratic victory would mean a refusal to negotiate, is based on a false argument. Both Trump and Harris will not accept a Putin victory and a Ukrainian defeat.

But both Trump and the Democrats want the war to stop as quickly as possible. For one simple reason: ultimately, the American public is tired of wars and the resources spent on them. The new consensus is that America should do more for Americans and not deal with the whole world. The idea that America should be the policeman of the world is no longer acceptable.

Are you optimistic about the current world?

Krastev: Do we have another world?

Edited by: Aingeal Flanagan

Ivan Krastev is chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM).