The Chief of Staff of the Navy, Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, warned this Monday that democracy is not inevitable and so must be defended and cherished.
“Democracy is not inevitable. We must defend it. It must be nurtured and supported”said Gouveia e Melo, in Porto de Mós (Leiria), within the framework of the conference “The world divided between autocracies and democracies”, part of a cycle as part of the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of April 25.
According to the Admiral, “If democracies fail to present convincing arguments about the importance of political freedoms or if citizens become disillusioned with the way they are governed, a new generation of autocrats will be very willing to step in and take the reins. to take over” .
“If they succeed, the world will become more violent, more corrupt and more dangerous to live in,” he warned.
In the speech, in which he spoke about the end of the Cold War, Gouveia e Melo pointed out that “the collapse of ideological reference systems, some negative effects of globalization and disastrous international policies have revived dormant nationalisms and turned identity and religious extremism into society International”.
“Democratic governments may be no more tied to peace than autocracies, but it is common knowledge that democracies rarely go to war with each other,” he noted, then elaborated on the geopolitical and geostrategic framework, the resurgence of autocracies, and the challenges faced by democracies . .
According to Gouveia e Melo, “the rise of autocratic regimes has raised concerns about the weakening of democratic institutions, the erosion of civil rights and the threat to freedom of the press”, pointing out that, in a “reflection of the change in the balance of financial power autocracies are increasingly funding democracies, which is worrying given that Western economies depend on capital flows from the economies of China and the Persian Gulf.”
For the Chief of Staff of the Navy, in the context of the challenges of international cooperation, “the rivalry between democracies and autocracies poses major challenges” as “in an increasingly polarized world, cooperation on global issues has become more difficult and nations are increasingly reluctant to cooperate in areas such as trade, security and the environment”.
Gouveia e Melo also stressed that the “Russian invasion of Ukraine has produced the greatest unity and urgency among democracies of the past 40 years”, referring to the fact that “Western democracies have united around common values” such as freedom of speech, the protection of human rights and the defense of the democratic regime.
On the other hand, “autocratic nations, such as Russia and China, have positioned themselves as alternatives to the Western model of democracy, with their own, revisionist, visions of political and economic development”, underlining that “a new Cold War is not inevitable”.
Still, “cooperation between democracies and autocracies on global issues, such as the fight against terrorism, the climate crisis and the pandemic” of covid-19, “could help ease tension between the blocs.”
The Chief of Staff of the Navy added that “Portugal, as a nation-state, small and limited in its relative power in the deliberations of nations, must take into account in formulating its policies that the world is not and does not seem to towards world peace”, as “no international legal system, ‘per se’, will fully protect Portuguese interests”.
“Portugal will not be free, given the coalitions it belongs to, the position and space it occupies geographically and its interests, to be dragged into a more central and hotter zone of the conflict” between the two blocshe added.
Source: DN
