FLASH
Shkruar nga Ivan Krastev
Leaders' dreams of immortality are surprising the world...
On the sidelines of a military parade in Beijing in early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping were heard discussing the question of immortality. Not the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, nor their possible successors, nor Trump's tariffs, but organ transplants and new discoveries in biotechnology that offer the quixotic hope of eternal youth.
Could this strange conversation turn out to be more important for the future of our politics than the geopolitical shift in power that everyone is talking about? The conventional wisdom is that “the world is run by old men in a hurry.” What if the great powers are actually run by old men in a hurry, who believe they have time—lots of time? How will their fascination with longevity influence their political choices?
When Putin completes his current term in office, which is highly unlikely to mark the end of his rule, he will have been in power longer than Joseph Stalin or Leonid Brezhnev. He will also be older than both.
We often assume that Putin is obsessed with who his successor should be and how a post-Putin Russia will survive. But knowing that some of us, most likely Putin included, will soon be able to live much longer, shouldn’t another question come to mind? Can the Russian president govern the country for another quarter of a century? How will this extended timeframe affect his political choices? Will he be more patient or more aggressive?
Historian Christopher Clark has observed that “just as gravity bends light, so power bends time.” The exercise of power is rooted in a set of assumptions about how the past, present, and future are interconnected. Modern politics is shaped by a belief that individuals are mortal, while nations are immortal. We transcend our mortality through our faith in God, by having children, and by being part of a conscious cultural community that will weather the storms of history.
Our idea of immortality was once embraced by a monument in a park with the names of those who sacrificed their lives for the nation, or by a poem that future generations would know by heart. As Putin and Xi’s conversation in Beijing suggests, that is no longer the case. We now live in an era when the richest and most powerful imagine themselves immortal, while many nations, under the pressure of lower birth rates and mass migration, are beginning to look mortal.
Can we still believe that we will continue to live in the minds of future generations when the speed of ecological, technological and cultural change destroys our ability to imagine how people of the future will live? Can Bulgarian or Slovak political leaders, for example, be sure that anyone will study Bulgarian or Slovak history in 100 years?
History reminds us that the pursuit of eternal youth is one of the characteristics of revolutionary times. The life and tragic death of Alexander Bogdanov, a former friend of Vladimir Lenin and founder of the National Institute of Hematology of Russia, who died from the effects of a failed blood transfusion, is the best example of the revolutionary's pursuit of immortality, understood not as the search for eternal fame, but as a search for eternal youth.
Donald Trump may be the most powerful example of the dramatic shift in the time-power axis. Putin and Xi are still preoccupied with the immortality of nations. The Russian president romanticizes a lost imperial past and daydreams about Russia’s eventual demographic revival; Xi cites dynastic continuity. But Trump is different. He rarely discusses history or how he wants to be remembered by the next generation, unlike Putin and Xi.
He certainly wants to live forever, but not in the hearts and minds of future generations. Instead, one gets the sense that he would happily spend his immortality at Mar-a-Lago, or, better yet, in the White House. His political imagination doesn’t seem to extend beyond his term—as if history itself ends with him. He shows little concern for what will happen in his immediate aftermath. When discussing the risk of conflict with Taiwan, he reiterates Xi’s promise not to invade the island while Trump is in power. But what happens when he is no longer in power?
That talk in Beijing about immortality signals a dramatic shift in how political leaders experience the time-power axis. At the end of his second term, Trump will be America’s oldest serving president. But is he really that old? The latest U.S. census suggests that most Americans born in 1946, the year Trump was born, are still alive (and many of them are still voting, apparently). And according to public opinion polls, most Republicans think Trump should run for a third term. Was it his predecessor, Joe Biden, who was the last truly old American president?
It is hard to avoid the feeling that the future of our politics is beginning to resemble the world of Greek mythology, in which the intrigues of the immortals direct world history. Meanwhile, for ordinary people, being looked upon favorably by the Immortals is the most they can hope for./ Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "Financial Times"
Lini një Përgjigje