Every now and again there is a change of political weather. Occasionally there is a seismic shift in the directional thrust of political initiative, which heralds a new diplomatic, political and economic settlement. This is happening now. This blog is happy about that. We believe a change of direction is called for and indeed essential, because the existing structure is close to collapse.
Globalization has concentrated too much power and wealth in too few hands in a financial system which sucks from the poor to feed the rich. Vast world imbalances of debts and surpluses have developed which cannot be sustained, and trade is being conducted on terms which enrich some but impoverish a multitude. The West’s interventionist foreign policy, post the fall of the Berlin Wall, has bordered on the imbecile and is now delivering chaos in the Middle East, a resurgence of Russian power, the emergence of China as the strategic military power in Asia and the renewed fear that the threat of nuclear war has, after all, not gone away. It is impossible to imagine a worse report.
Yet the thing that has struck me most about the torrent of comment from the great and the good, the wise and the clever, which has flooded the media since Trump’s victory, is that not one of them understands what is happening. They are like rabbits caught mesmerised in the headlights of an onrushing juggernaut, because the common factor with all of them is that one way and another, bar a few things which needed fixing on a fine day, everything was generally okay.
Corbyn, Brexit and Trump are all the same thing. And just like an erupting volcano the last bang is the biggest. Trump plans to shift the direction of America more drastically than any president since Abraham Lincoln. In so doing he has the power to change the world order. His vision is of much more limited globalization which stops domestic industries in the higher currency value West being exported to the lower currency value East. Global free trade is fine, but very much the opposite if it bears down on the base of some national economies until they explode.
Trump sees that and favours a world order of three strategic powers, the US, Russia and China, each with a sphere of influence, of which America is the strongest, but who cooperate for their own and the common good (as they see it). He sees a reduction in confrontation and an increase in cooperation to defeat universal enemies like IS. The future is built more easily and a good deal less expensively, if it is built on a recognition that nations are different, but share common interests which are more important than irreconcilable differences. In short this turns everything the great and the clever thought they knew, on its head. Especially the utterly barmy notion that you can impose successful democracy by outside force. Trump proclaims, correctly, that in the digital world (which is fundamentally different to what has gone before) democracy spreads by good example and has to come from within. It has also to come from broad consensus; a quality entirely absent from vast tracts of the world, which ensures that losers at the polls are willing to be governed by the winners, who in turn govern for all.
Of course Trump said on the stump vile things about women and minorities and wild things about healthcare and climate change. He stoked anger and used it as a propellant to drive his campaign. However he is already rowing back from unsustainable extremes and if he holds his nerve and sticks to his core agenda, he may walk into history as one of the makers of a better destiny for mankind. If he flies off the handle and creates not progress but chaos, as his enemies hope he will, his presidency will implode in impeachment and he will not see even the end of his fist term.
With this dramatic main feature starring Trump, the B movie, Brexit, continues in the making, within a framework of legal challenges and internal arguments of paralysing intensity. For this reason the relationship between the UK (itself creaking and perhaps dissolving?) and the two economic superpowers, America and China, is critical. And here it is with relief we can report that the signs are that the May government has got that message.
More on that another day.