While the iron is hot
Trump is attempting to preemptively frame his legacy at warp speed
Trump evinces a we-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-badges approach to international affairs, reflecting Americans’ overall sense that we are done as a nation in building a world order (what I have called our market-making role from 1945 through 2008) and need to vigorously embrace an aggressively competitive approach to this multipolar world of our enabling (and, more recently, of “our suffering”) — or what I describe as a more avowedly and selfish market-playing persona.
And yeah, you can think of international organizations and our so-called rules-based world order as comprising those “stinkin’ badges" in Trump’s eyes.
To channel another 1970s movie classic (Network): We’re as mad as hell as we’re not going to take it anymore!
Watch the clip and tell me that character’s rant doesn’t capture a lot of people’s mood right now — not just in the US but across the developed world.
Such is the reality of a world undergoing profound structural changes.
Is that sense — overwhelmingly concentrated in the Global North — of righteous fed-upped-ness out of touch with the optimism and ambition of that emerging, Global South-centric middle class whose rise represents the future economic growth opportunities for all?
Yes, it is. Because, while the Global South can still sense a better tomorrow (God bless when those expectations run into climate change’s worst devastations), the Global North presently does not — hence the anger and fear and rightward turns (Get me a strong man!).
So, yeah, we are a fearful lot. We fear demographic collapse. We’re learning to anticipate economic devastation from climate change (see, homeowner’s insurance). We loathe the rise of black-box AI capable of eliminating our jobs while remaining impervious to our understanding — much less control.
And yes, we fear one another more and more — we superpowers. We sense an imperative in this re-regionalization/decoupling era we’re presently navigating — one that screams get yours now before somebody else does!
Russia evinces that ambition in the nastiest ways, China more pragmatically with its Belt and Road Initiative. India is just beginning to think along such lines, already aping the Big Boys’ approach to dealing with ex-pats it deems bad actors (as in, kill at-will wherever they hide — originally an American doctrine born of our Global War on Terror).
Europe and the US, with Trump’s return, seem destined to complete their conscious uncoupling like two self-absorbed celebrities whose career needs no longer jibe. And just as in the nasty “divorce” that was — and remains — the collapse of the Soviet Empire, where “mom and dad” (Europe and Russia) still fight over who gets custody of the “kids” (Ukraine presently), now we see rumblings of the same acquisitive aggression within Western ranks.
Trump says America deserves the “child” Greenland in a sort of national-security payback for all those decades of protecting Western Europe from the Sovs. The Economist argues that the EU, having just cut a trade deal with South America’s Mercosur trade bloc, logically needs to pull Canada into its economic union. Trump goads with the claim that Canada would be better off with the US as just another state, and that America should snatch back the Panama Canal, presently bookended by two major ports run by Chinese companies, lest we cede that chokepoint to our fierce hemispheric competitor.
You can say that all this hubbub results from Trump’s verbal jousts and taunts, but let’s be clear on who he is and what he’s good at: the man does not come with a vision of his own making but with a stunningly effective capacity to sense fear within the ranks and weaponize it for political gain.
Is that the most dangerous form of democracy — that sort of angry populism commanded by demagoguery?
Yes it is.
Is it oftentimes, in historical terms, required to unfold for a follow-on progressive wave to emerge and actually address the underlying inequalities?
Yes it is.
Again: America is grappling with its own success in creating a world order that allowed for the overwhelmingly peaceful rise of a handful of superpowers. No, it’s not nirvana and world-peace and it’s ignited plenty of superpower competitive tensions, but these growing pains were always inevitable. They don’t signal failure or loss so much as adaptation and adjustment.
Does our Boomer/Gen X leadership accurately sense this moment in history?
Not really. They tend to package everything into the same old Cold War paradigm because that’s what they know and they can’t imagine beyond it. The same is roughly true across all five of our superpowers — for now.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), the ultimate solution-set requires generational change at the top — something none of our five superpower is close to completing.
And so we enter this long Zone of Turbulence that I describe in America’s New Map. Our world system and its major players are being compelled to evolve at what feels like hyper-speed because it is. Just like species the world over are being compelled to (attempt to) evolve at roughly 10,000 times normal speed — thanks to climate change, our systems and its pillars are being similarly stressed now by all the same cluster of structural transformations (demographic, climatic, technological).
Trump, love him or hate him, sees just enough of this world and the fear it generates within our ranks to know that what sells right now — what feels good — is a mergers-and-acquisition superpower mindset reflective of that East-West decoupling dynamic, its fellow-traveling re-regionalization imperative (driven mostly by simple economic logic), and that growing superpower brand-war dynamic comprising all these “races” and their technological outcomes (wiring up and winning the Global South, adapting to climate change, working AI, etc.).
Right now, as globalization digitalizes at stunning speed, that version of a world system is undergoing a very strong empire-building phase. The Tech Bros recognize it for what it is, as does the Kremlin and the Chinese Communist Party, and now Trump seems increasingly locked onto it as the means to establish his legacy: the real-estate magnate who not only bettered America but biggered it.
So, this is why we must take all this very verbal jousting seriously: it’s not just Trump, and it’s not just climate change, and it’s not just the “Race for the Arctic,” and it’s not just demographic disparities, and it’s not just the AI race or the competition to lock-in strategic resources … it’s all of those things … everything everywhere all at once.
Good grand strategy is all about flowing with history’s tides instead of against them, because that’s how you grow your ranks and, by extension, deny such growth to your rivals.
In the most crass realist terms, this is the world we live in right now — this is a super-competitive moment. By mid-century, we will all be living in somebody’s world.
I am fully committed to that world — or however much of it we can effectively integrate — being American versus anything else. Such ambition/responsibility will define our patriotism this century.
It won’t be my-way-or-the-highway in its absolutism (too Cold War and too brain-dead an offer) but it will be a join-our-network-or-try-surviving-on-your-own-for-as-long-as-possible-before-some-other-superpower-network-pulls-you-in strategic reality.
Right now, however crudely and bombastically, Trump points us in that ambitious direction.
Scary?
Sure.
Daunting?
Absolutely.
Necessary and inevitable?
Bet on it.
I could sell this reality as the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it but that would be bullshit fear-mongering. Trump is not the source — just the amplifier and … increasingly … the action officer.
We are reaching the top of the roller-coaster’s first drop and my instinct is to raise my arms above my head and scream.
You decide how it makes you feel.
