Pyromaniac-in-Chief – America goes MAGA to Burn it all Down Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Reelecting the Insurrectionist who provoked the January 6 attack is a monumental dereliction of civic duty by the American people. Trump was provided a plurality mandate — enough of a match for him to burn America down. The electorate affirmed that the worst human being to hold the presidency deserves […] |
Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Reelecting the Insurrectionist who provoked the January 6 attack is a monumental dereliction of civic duty by the American people. Trump was provided a plurality mandate — enough of a match for him to burn America down. The electorate affirmed that the worst human being to hold the presidency deserves a second turn in the job. Despite Trump being eight years older and obviously losing his mind, despite the fact that he ran a corrosive campaign on naked malevolence, and despite his having promised to mass arrest, cage and deport immigrants, Americans rewarded him with ultimate power. Toward the end of the 2024 election, the candidates made their closing arguments. Trump painted the United States as a dark, terrifying and infested place, festering with pet-eating immigrants, violent criminals, and deviant trans people. America was a savage hellscape where good, “normal” Americans were forgotten as their white, heterosexual world was reshaped by Democrats into something alien and repulsive. Trump stoked conspiracy theories and promised vengeance. He mused about reporters being shot, mimed oral sex with a microphone, spewed racist lies, and threatened to order the military against the “enemy from within.” He emphasized every rotten thing about himself. None of this prevented his popularity from expanding in multiple electorates across the country; it may have even facilitated his success. Kamala Harris articulated a hopeful future. Positioning herself as a moderate, Harris expressed a willingness to work with her political opponents. She embraced diversity and promised to better the lives of all Americans. The electorate was offered a choice between a mainstream Democrat and a candidate running the most openly fascist campaign ever undertaken by a major-party nominee for president. They chose the latter. Voters who cast their ballots for Trump engaged in contemptible behavior, turning amoral, unserious about governing, and proving themselves undeserving of our constitutional legacy. More than a Trump problem, there’s a voter problem. If you elect a monster once, you’ve made a mistake. If you elect it twice, you’re the monster. Unlike Trump’s first election, this one cannot be minimized as the result of an overconfident Democratic campaign and the successful con of a hundred thousand voters in a handful of swing states. This time, voters decisively chose Trump. The autocrat, who has grown more belligerent and maniacal over the years, is now is a maniac with a mandate. Time and again, we hear the wild lies Trump‘s voters believe, such as babies being aborted after birth. We act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. The media often portrays this gullible crowd as woefully misunderstood: if only Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. That’s a myth no one should believe. They are not congenitally ignorant. They chose to close their eyes to reality. Autocracies thrive on befuddled, ill-informed populations. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt noted, “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.” Harris decried Trump as a fascist, a petty tyrant, a liar. If all America needed was an articulate case for why Trump was terrible, then Harris was the right candidate. With a long career as a prosecutor, she’s taken on perpetrators of all kinds: “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said. “I know Donald Trump’s type.” She was the prosecutor who would defeat the felon. The voters heard her case, and they found for the defendant. America knew his type, too, and liked it. Many thought women would rise up in defense of bodily autonomy. And they did, but not enough. Abortion was less of a key issue than expected. Harris did win the support of 54 percent of women, lower than Biden’s 57 percent in 2020. No group of voters was more loyal to Trump than white men. He managed to drive up what were already sky-high margins with his white, blue-collar base. Male voters — terrified or resentful of women — bought into Trump’s regressive idea of masculinity in which power over women is a birthright. Despite enthusiastic crowds and the endorsement of high profile celebrities, antagonism or apathy undermined Harris: over 7 million Biden voters did not vote for her. Trump likely won as a result. Currently, Harris has received 74 million votes, while Biden obtained over 81 million votes. Some may have even voted for Trump, who increased his 2020 vote total by over 2 million, up to 76 million. The anti-Trump coalition failed to sustain their 2020 outrage. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Julia Roberts lost to Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock, and Joe Rogan. Voting in 2020 was portrayed as an act of heroism, because of the raging pandemic. Though Joe Biden provoked little passion, his campaign felt like the culmination of a liberation movement. The sense of outrage, which carried Biden to victory, was blunted for Harris. In a 2016 essay “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” Masha Gessen wrote, “It is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock and outrage,” otherwise apathy would set in. And once that happened, autocracy would seem as natural as the weather. Defusing Trump outrage and hanging over the election was the festering political wound that was Democratic support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by U.S. taxpayers and live-streamed on social media — has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation. Roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction, some voted for Jill Stein, many stayed home. Harris loyally lined up behind the despicable and unpopular blank-check policy of Biden, which demoralized the party’s base and threatened its chances in Michigan. As the carnage continued and expanded, furious Arab American and Muslim voters determined to punish the party by making it lose. It appears to have worked: Trump captured Michigan partly thanks to a shocking, winning margin in Dearborn, the largest majority Arab-American city.
Trump will not improve the lives of Palestinians, nor those of most Americans. It’s no secret that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu supported Trump over Kamala Harris. He held off on any cease-fire deal that might help Harris. Trump supported Israel’s brutal bombing campaigns in both Lebanon and Gaza and told his buddy Netanyahu ”do what you have to do.” As a “gift” to the incoming Trump administration, Netanyahu is preparing a cease-fire plan regarding its bombing of Lebanon. Along with recriminations about Harris’s failure to at least express more remorse about the suffering in Gaza, a profusion of Democratic self-flagellation began immediately after the brutal loss. The party was too woke. Harris — the candidate who had been a magnet for joyful enthusiasm — was disparaged. She was too centrist, too un-primaried, too female and laughed too often. She leaned too much on reproductive freedom, or gave fatally little attention to concerns about immigration. Democrats whined further: if only Biden hadn’t waited so long to withdraw, or if only he hadn’t mumbled something about “garbage”. Pundits opined furiously and confusingly: the campaign missed what spoke to men, perhaps particularly Black men, or Latino men — or was it women? Also, Harris failed to talk enough about the kitchen-table economy and failed to address the many grievances of the working class, who are not getting their share and fear “urban” crime. Maybe there’s a little truth in some of that, but none of it explains the magnitude of what’s happened. Despite being the best-fed, richest, and most lethally defended humans in the history of planet Earth, Americans are afraid. Despite being coddled with too much of everything: more cars, more good roads, more personal gadgets, more guns, and more freedom than any country in the world, it’s not enough. Americans are annoyed. The price of eggs went up. Gas doesn’t cost what it cost in 1989. Did America elect a dictator because Cheerios — available in about 20 flavors — hit $5.29 at the grocery store? Americans reelected a Bigot who promotes hatred and division and who lies — blatantly, shamelessly — every time he appears in public. They chose a man described by his own former advisers as a fascist. Voters witnessed his abuse of presidential power toward fascist ends and understood that returning him to office will immunize him legally for those abuses. Their votes affirm that conspiring to disenfranchise Americans by overturning a national election does not make someone unfit for national office — even if that someone is already plotting to do it again. There’s no way to rationalize an outright Trump victory except as a despicable reflection of the American character. As president, Trump will likely issue shock and awe executive orders that will activate some form of Trump’s MAGA-pleasing deportation threat. The logistics of a nationwide mass kidnapping of millions of “illegals,” who are “poisoning the blood” of America are unclear. Trump confirmed last Monday that his plan for mass deportations will involve a national emergency declaration and the military. If street protests are mobilized, the regime — with a bloated strongman twitching for a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act — will deploy troops. The worst-case scenarios, including razor-wired concentration camps in the desert, are beyond horrifying. Our country has been deliberately set on fire by fellow Americans. Aside from mass deportations and contempt for climate change, human rights, and gun control, Trump will appoint a more reactionary federal judiciary and assault the press. On day one, Trump will pardon the J6ers creating a paramilitary force answerable to him. These are not the imaginings of a paranoiac. These are campaign promises announced from the podium and include a federal government stocked with fools and jesters whose highest qualification is fealty to the Great Leader. Trump has already initiated a Cabinet reminiscent of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the German Expressionist film about an evil hypnotist who brainwashes automatons to commit murders for him. Trump’s lackeys and loyalists include a propagandist for Russia — Tulsi Gabbard — as Director of National Intelligence, a Fox News host and subject of sexual assault charges — Pete Hegseth — as Secretary of Defense, an End Times Christian Zionist — Mike Huckabee — as ambassador to Israel, and an accused statutory rapist — Matt Gaetz — as Attorney General. Somehow topping all these MAGA freaks is the anti-vaxxer — Robert F. Kennedy — nominated to lead Health and Human Services. Kennedy recently commented that on its first day in power, the Trump regime will ban fluoride in water. Fluoridated water has been a favorite target of paranoid anti-Communist conspiracists dating to the 1950s. In Stanley Kubrick’s vicious satire Dr. Strangelove, General Jack D. Ripper explains that he avoids fluoridated water because it’s a Communist plot that will sap his “precious bodily fluids.” Trump’s nominations are meant to bolster his effort to lay waste to the institutions that he has come to despise or regard as threats to his power or purse strings. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty,” wrote Arendt. Trump’s cabinet offers a deliberate negation or mockery of the government functions they’re supposed to administer. They are his shock troops. Trump wants to force Senate Republicans to humiliate themselves by confirming these unqualified toadies. Republicans will not try to stop this Trump travesty or any other. On the contrary, they’ll say — and are already saying it — that they owe it to Americans to give them every stupid, destructive thing they voted for. Having lived through the circus of Trump 1.0, the voters also affirm that they’d prefer to plunge the country back into that embarrassing prior horror: blatant corruption, blathering of state secrets, the turbo-obnoxious Trump family, freak-show personnel choices, blue-state retribution, government-by-impulse, and policy-by-tweet. Trump 2.0 will likely involve more overt and impeachable crises, like flouting court orders or the constitution. Trump’s voters are plainly willing to run the risk. Knowing now what a Trump show-presidency looks like, they’ve voted for a sequel. The public has chosen malevolent leadership. The only consolation for the enemies within is clarity — the moral clarity of the voter’s decision is crystalline: Trump will regard his slim plurality vote margin as a “mandate” to do his worst. We hope that many of the ideas on Trump’s demented wish list will not actually come to fruition and that our democracy can once more withstand this sociopath and the lunatics who surround him. But that is just desperate, wishful thinking. As of yet, there is nothing that will break the iron grip Trump has over his cult, now joined by a plurality of Americans. Over the past decade, opinion polls have shown Americans’ faith in their institutions waning. But no opinion poll could make this shift in values any clearer than this vote. The United States will become a different kind of country. The lesson of this election is that the American people aren’t worthy of their Constitution. They elected a president who has never read it and who, by his behavior, holds the most fundamental values and traditions of our democracy, our Constitution, in contempt. Like the counter-culture hippies and anti-Vietnam radicals of the 1960s, the enemies within are rebels — strangers in a strange land, exiled inside a country many of us no longer feel fully part of. In the midst of the Vietnam War and Watergate, Richard Nixon won a huge and depressing landslide reelection in 1972. In a stunning shift, this dark history was overturned with Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Change is always possible, but we should not underestimate how arduous it will be to achieve, or how long it will take. In 2020, we believed that we had broken with history, with the Trump era; in 2024, it is apparent that history has broken some part of us. Acknowledging this is not surrender but a realization that the fights ahead will be formidable, but that anything is possible. About the AuthorProtesting MIT’s Disciplining of Grad for pro-Palestine Activism and Advocacy Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | – Sally Kornbluth President Sally.kornbluth@mit.edu . . . Dear President Kornbluth and Colleagues: We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about the recent disciplinary action […] |
Sally Kornbluth President Sally.kornbluth@mit.edu . . . Dear President Kornbluth and Colleagues: We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about the recent disciplinary action by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) against one of its doctoral students, Prahlad Iyengar, for speech activities protected by the university’s own free expression and academic freedom policies, which generally align with the First Amendment. Our concern is further heightened by MIT’s record of sanctioning Iyengar for other pro-Palestine activism since the spring 2024 semester as well as its repression of pro-Palestine speech and assembly on campus since 7 October 2023. MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America. On 1 November 2024, the MIT administration sent Iyengar a letter informing him that he had been banned from campus and from accessing any building owned or leased by MIT, and prohibited from contacting several members of the MIT community. In taking these measures against Iyengar without affording him due process, the university cited two incidents that it claimed constituted violations of MIT policies. The first involves an email message that Iyengar sent on 24 October 2024 to fellow graduate students working in the lab of MIT Professor Daniela Rus. The message sought to explain the context behind a pro-Palestine protest directed at Professor Rus’s lab two days earlier. In his email, Iyengar described the protest as a response to Professor Rus’s decision to take on “projects sponsored by the Ministry of Defense of Israel,” notwithstanding Israel’s “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza” and other actions in the Middle East. In his message Iyengar made clear that he did not intend to “shame or intimidate” the email’s recipients, but rather wanted to “offer support” and a “safe space” for those students who wanted “to brainstorm ways” to address “the pressing issue[s]” created by Professor Rus’s work. While MIT asserts that this email message violated its harassment policy, it is hard to see how it can be reasonably characterized as intimidating, hostile or abusive to anyone. The fact that Mr. Iyengar sent just one email message offers further evidence that his action can be deemed neither “severe” nor “pervasive,” as is required by the university’s definition of “harassment.” The second incident which MIT has cited to justify its sanctioning of Iyengar involves an article that he wrote and published in the MIT-recognized student zine Written Revolution. The article, titled “On Pacifism,” is an extended scholarly discussion of the place of pacifism in pro-Palestine activism. While MIT claims that the article “could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT,” Iyengar neither calls for violence nor suggests that students at MIT engage in violent activity. MIT has also expressed concerns about the article’s “inclusion of symbolism from a U.S.-designated terrorist organization containing violent imagery,” referring to two images (out of four in the article) that feature the emblem of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-government designated terrorist organization. MIT has not explained how the inclusion of such images violates relevant MIT policy by threatening or endangering any person on campus, as the policy specifies; nor does the article’s content provide any objective basis for concluding that any person could be threatened, intimated or coerced by it. Notwithstanding MIT’s suggestions to the contrary, Iyengar’s email message and article – indisputably forms of expressive activity – fall squarely within his right to free expression and academic freedom, as articulated by MIT’s own policies and rules. For example, in its Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom the university proudly affirms that, “with a tradition of celebrating provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, MIT unequivocally endorses the principles of freedom of expression and academic freedom.” The statement goes on to note that “[f]ree expression promotes creativity by affirming the ability to exchange ideas without constraints” and that it is “enhanced by the doctrine of academic freedom, which protects both intramural and extramural expression without institutional censorship or discipline.” MIT’s Values Statement reiterates these principles, proclaiming that “because learning is nourished by a diversity of views, we cherish free expression, debate, and dialogue in pursuit of truth….” While some members of the MIT community may have been offended or distressed by Iyengar’s email message and article, according to the university’s own policies those feelings cannot be used to deprive Iyengar of his right to express his opinions on matters of public and scholarly concern. Indeed, MIT’s Hand and Mind Book notes that “in an academic community, the free and open exchange of ideas and viewpoints reflected in the concept of academic freedom may sometimes prove disturbing or offensive to some,” but “[t]he examination and challenging of assumptions, beliefs or opinions is…[nevertheless] intrinsic to the rigorous education that MIT strives to provide.” We note that this is not the first time that MIT has sought to curtail Iyengar’s free expression on matters related to Palestine. Since the spring 2024 semester, MIT has subjected him to various instances of harassment and punishment for expressing a pro-Palestine viewpoint, including subjecting him to disciplinary measures for conducting a peaceful exchange with representatives of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin at an on-campus career fair earlier this semester. More broadly, we are concerned that MIT’s actions against Iyengar are only one of many repressive measures taken by the university against pro-Palestinian advocacy since 7 October 2023. These measures include MIT’s decision to interim suspend pro-Palestine student protestors and bar them from campus in May 2024 without due process, including prohibiting them from accessing student housing and receiving monthly graduate worker stipends; the administration’s general pursuit of aggressive investigations, interrogations and other disciplinary actions against pro-Palestine students over the past year; and its decision to suspend the main pro-Palestine student organization at MIT, the Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA), and the revocation of CAA’s web domain. These actions have led both students and faculty at MIT to conclude that the university is systematically singling out pro-Palestine viewpoints for repression and sanction. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has recently called attention to the alarming expansion of restrictive policies that intimidate and silence faculty and students, especially those voicing their principled opposition to Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. As the AAUP puts it, “[a]dministrators who claim that ‘expressive activity’ policies protect academic freedom and student learning, even as they severely restrict its exercise, risk destroying the very freedoms of speech and expression they claim to protect.” The systematic repression of pro-Palestine voices, which has become an undeniable reality across U.S. colleges and universities since 7 October 2023, has severely undermined the integrity, autonomy and mission of this country’s institutions of higher education. Instead of following other universities down this dangerous road, we urge MIT to change course and adhere to its avowed values. In this regard, we reiterate the call made by members of its faculty earlier this year “for MIT to take a leadership role in defending freedom of speech and academic freedom, and . . . engage in constructive efforts to respond to those who are peacefully expressing moral distress in the face of an ethical and humanitarian crisis and in support for life.” We therefore call on MIT to cease its targeting of Prahlad Iyengar, rescind all outstanding disciplinary sanctions, charges and proceedings against him, and end the university’s ban on Written Revolution’s distribution of the volume in which his article appeared. More broadly, we urge MIT to adhere to its own policies on freedom of expression and academic freedom, and refrain from selectively and disproportionately enforcing its rules against pro-Palestine activism and advocacy. We look forward to your response. Sincerely, Aslı Ü. Bâli MESA President Professor, Yale Law School Laurie Brand Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom Professor Emerita, University of Southern California About the AuthorRequiem for an Empire: How America’s Strongman will hasten the Decline of U.S. Global Power ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could […] |
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come… in 2025, just 15 years from now.” To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But, that historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.” Now that a “far-right patriot,” one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion. Making the Original Prediction Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, of course, that historian was me.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of American decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. The presidency of Barack Obama was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth — the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring, and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm. Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance” — but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While America’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.” Writing in a similar vein in the New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, dismissed the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.  When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires, particularly those of Britain, France, and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires. By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening, and corporate bailouts were booming — all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary Americans, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of America’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast. Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating U.S. global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population, and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), fully confident, according to two Beltway insiders, that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.” Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment — think Germany versus Great Britain in World War I — fully expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warned that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.” Just a year after that, China’s president, Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power through what he called “the Belt and Road Initiative,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy. In the following decade, the U.S.-China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned: “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.” The Global Rise of the Strongman Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization. At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy — forming the World Trade Organization in 1995, pressing open-market “reforms” on developing economies, and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by laying 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then launching 1,300 satellites (now 4,700). By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s industrial output soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the U.S. and Japan, while simultaneously eliminating 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the U.S. and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism. Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections — in Russia (2000), Israel (2009), Hungary (2010), China (2012), Turkey (2014), the Philippines (2016), the U.S. (2016), Brazil (2018), Italy (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Indonesia (2024), and the U.S. again (2024). Set aside their incendiary us-versus-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro ravaged the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an abortive coup. In Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, sacrificing his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, Recep Erdogan caused a crippling debt crisis, while jailing 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte murdered 30,000 suspected drug users and courted China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to stay in office and stay out of prison. Prospects for Donald Trump’s Second Term After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the — or perhaps even an — “exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent reelection, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around. In the globalized world America made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership. Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump called climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up executive orders to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the U.S. will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for nearly half (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent months of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029, the year Trump finishes his second term. On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump promised last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, telling a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also block wind farm leases on Federal lands and cancel the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle. As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that American-made products will be ever less competitive. To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petrol-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the U.S. auto industry uncompetitive, at home and abroad. Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has proposed slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic-foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling American farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs, while dramatically raising the cost of consumer goods for Americans, stoking inflation, and slowing consumer spending. Reflecting his aversion to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall in May 2023, he claimed he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he added: “I would tell [Ukraine’s president] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.” Just two days after the November election, according to the Washington Post, Trump reputedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call, “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, the Wall Street Journal reported that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years. With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator (should Trump actually appoint one) might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a significant role. But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French president Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses; and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency. America’s Allies Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for U.S. global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is arguably the most powerful military alliance in all of modern history. Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he called the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, claiming even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the U.S. into war. While campaigning last February, he announced that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share. Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst called “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” French President Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance. In the Asia-Pacific region, the American presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the AUKUS entente with Australia and Britain, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (with Australia, India, and Japan), and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the Biden administration strengthened those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, withdrawing from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so American power in the region. Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said last June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he told the Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because China’s President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack. Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling economic blockade on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the U.S. position along the Pacific littoral, for 80 years the fulcrum of its global imperial posture, pushing its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to America’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies. A Silent U.S. Recessional Adding up the likely impact of Donald Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe, and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.” Copyright 2024 Alfred W. McCoy Via Tomdispatch.com About the AuthorShamash! “The Leak” Panel #7 Previous panels : > |
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