The Ukraine crisis has shown that the West is still isolated from the rest of the world, which continues to live “under dictatorships, autocracies, oligarchies, theocracies, authoritarian or totalitarian systems,” former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said.
In an article for Il Giornale published on Thursday, Berlusconi hailed the West’s “balanced, firm and above all united response” to the “undeniable aggression from the Russian side against a neutral country.”
“From this point of view, Russia has already lost its game: If it considers the West an opponent, today it faces an opponent much more united and more determined than in recent years,” Berlusconi wrote.
However, in his opinion, the Ukraine conflict has revealed “a very bitter reality.”
“Russia is isolated from the West, but the West is isolated from the whole world,” he said.
The former prime minister explained that only 1.4 billion people live in systems “that can be broadly defined as free and democratic, of a Western type,” while the “other 6.4 billion human beings live under dictatorships, autocracies, oligarchies, theocracies, authoritarian or totalitarian systems in various ways and to varying degrees.”
He added that the largest countries in the world – China, India, Russia, and many other Asian, African, and Latin American nations – “are not with the West at the moment.”
Berlusconi noted that, despite all “the errors and crimes” committed by the US and Europe, the West created “the freest and most democratic political, civil and social system that humanity has ever known in its history,” while ensuring “the greatest well-being” of its people.