Never has so much been written in such a short time about the inauguration of a president of a country and his first week in office.
Never has so much been written in such a short time about the inauguration of a country's president and his first week in office. This frenzy had been announced a long time ago. The media performance of President Donald Trump's inauguration is only paralleled by the one that marked the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. On the one hand, the dramatic celebration of the unilateral imposition of rules on humanity, on the other, the dramatic celebration of rules accepted by consensus by all humanity. This contrast sums up the time of transition in which the world finds itself. What does Trump mean in this transition? The metaphor of the "paper tiger" to characterize the United States comes from Mao Zedong. It is a complex metaphor, since it designates both weakness and strength (the strength to disguise one's weakness). What are America's strengths and weaknesses under Trump?
As Immanuel Wallerstein taught us, the modern world economy and the interstate system of the last five centuries show multiple signs of exhaustion. You don't have to completely agree with the details of his analysis to give him credit for having drawn attention to the fact that something profoundly disturbing is fatally affecting the functioning of this systemic whole (economic, social, political, cultural, epistemic) that he calls Eurocentric modernity. What will come next no one can predict. This set was characterized by the continuous expansion of capitalism and colonialism driven by the following fundamental beliefs: infinite economic growth, unilinear progress, science and technology as privileged rationalities, civilizational-racial-sexual superiority of those who have the power to unilaterally impose their will. (what I called the abyssal line: the necessary coexistence of humanity with subhumanity), the unequal exchange between the central countries and the peripheral countries, political democracy and social-fascism as guarantors of the unjust order with less violence, becoming stronger and stronger. of the State as a guarantor of national cohesion. The tension between an increasingly globalized economy and a system of states based on inclusive and exclusive ideas (sovereignty and citizenship) was permanent. Peace and war became twin sisters.
Imperial rivalries continued until, beginning in 1870, U.S. imperial domination began to be built, a domination that would culminate in 1945 after the most recent and longest "Thirty Years' War" (1914-1918, 1939-1945). The United States was the only central country whose infrastructure emerged unscathed (and even strengthened) from the war. Between 1945 and 1970, the United States was not only the dominant country but also the hegemonic country. It is true that there was the Soviet bloc, which aimed at bipolarity. But there was a reciprocal contest between the socialist bloc and the capitalist bloc at the political level (well illustrated in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962), while at the level of the world economy the United States dominated unrivaled. When, between 1955 and 1961, Third World countries (recently independent of historical colonialism or still colonies) tried to transform bipolarity into tripolarity, they were quickly neutralized.
In this period, being dominant had two components: unilateralism and hegemony. Unilateralism means the ability to dictate the rules of the game in international relations that best suit the dominant country. Hegemony means the ability to do so without having to resort to force, through mere political pressure. Recourse to war (whether cold or hot, regular or hybrid) was always available, and superior military power was a powerful deterrent. In fact, the metaphor of global war was always on the agenda, but as a way to reassert hegemony, and it evolved over time: war against communism, war on illicit drugs, war on terrorism, war on corruption.
From 1970 onwards, everything began to change and the US hegemony began to stop supporting its unilateralism. The economic rivalry between Western Europe (with the rapprochement with the Soviet Union) and Japan arose, although they remained political allies of the US, the first oil crisis in 1973, the defeat in Vietnam that same year, the humiliation by Khomeini to Iran in 1980. It is true that Japan stagnated from the 1990s onwards, but in the meantime the "yellow peril" was renewed in an unprecedented way with the rise of China. Since then, US unilateralism is no longer backed by hegemony and, without it, resorting to military force has become the first political resort. Military involvement in the Middle East and Ukraine are examples of this. Military support for Ukraine was never aimed at making Ukraine's victory possible, but rather at weakening Europe (to be a political ally it had to cease to be an economic rival) and Russia, as China's most important ally. The high information and communication technologies and the entertainment industry were the last two resources to regain hegemony, but the yellow peril had already appropriated them. Without exclusivity there is no hegemony and unilateralism without hegemony has only one resource at its disposal: war. But in this case, the war will have the North American territory as a theater of war for the first time.
Paper tiger?
Given this, what is Trump's role? His inaugural speech aims to convey the message that unilateralism is no longer based on hegemony but on exceptionalism. In it are present all the components of the American myth: manifest destiny, frontier spirit (far west, desert), territorial conquest, terra nullius (no man's land, that is, "ours"). To this myth he adds a new element: domination was a cost, the development of the last hundred years was the American "white man's burden" and, therefore, the world owes reparations to the United States. It is the dramatic affirmation of defensive unilateralism, the confirmation of decadence disguised as a return to the Golden Age. Whoever opposes it, prepare for the apocalypse. The speech is a treatise on symbolic politics, but the political arrogance was so hyperbolic that it had to translate into an immediate avalanche of executive action. The frenzy of words demanded shock and amazement at the executive level. If there is a paper tiger, at first it mastered the strength of the weakness disguise. What will it mean domestically and internationally?
The interior plane
Internally, the principle of institutional terra nullius is being radically applied. The US state is now a potential institutional Gaza. Institutional cleansing as a mirror of ethnic cleansing. But the similarity ends here, given that American institutions are less weak in relation to Trump than Palestinian ones are in relation to Israel. We will enter a long, destructive and destabilizing period of measuring forces before reaching a possible ceasefire. The State as a factor of social cohesion, typical of the modern world system, becomes the main factor of national fracture. The danger of this institutional struggle lies in the fact that it will always be on the verge of chaos, on the verge of extra-institutional struggle.
The strategy of fracturing is complex because it is carried out in the name of true cohesion, ethnic-racial cohesion. Hence the anti-immigrant fury. In other words, the foundational principle of national cohesion, citizenship, is replaced by the principle of community. The modern movement from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft is reversed. But the end of citizenship and its replacement by communitarian neo-tribalism had long been included in plans for the end of secularism and the rise of identity essentialism. From the ruins of citizenship will emerge religious belonging and exclusionary identity.
Therefore, Trump's terra nullius does not imply a total break with the recent past. Trumpism began before Trump and will continue after him. The seeds of what was to come, both in terms of the end of secularism and the rise of identity essentialism, had long blossomed in the media, social media, schools, and universities. If we want to, it is possible to go back much further. It has been said with truth that with the Trump Administration, capital, which has always dominated American politics, ceased to have confidence in politicians and decided to assume power directly. Thirteen billionaires in the government team. But after all, hasn't Congress been dominated by capital for a long time? Don't the majority of senators and representatives belong to the 1%? On the other hand, reformist liberalism that translated into social policies, the creation of middle classes, the general improvement of the standard of living (welfare state) had long since ended and the democratic party had been the instrument of this destruction, especially from the 1990s onwards.
While not a rupture, the dramatic accentuation of certain trends promoted by Trump will be destabilizing; And we can't forget the recent polls that seemed to indicate that civil war was a real possibility for a significant percentage of Americans. Alternatively, one might think that, after all, the supporters of the civil war have just won electorally. Now they will demand from the President that the counterrevolution acquire common sense, as he himself stated in his inaugural speech. Whether or not he will be able to do so is an open question. It is not excluded that they will soon make him a scapegoat. America's decline is structural and cannot be stopped by the triumphalist rhetoric of demagoguery.
At the international level
The drama of the deportations was intended to signal a total upheaval in the interstate system. However, the actual policies that will be implemented without drama cannot be underestimated. It should be noted, first of all, that the policies of protectionism, nationalism, the imposition of tariffs and the promotion of (re)industrialization now advocated by Trump are the same policies that the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of the world tried to pursue in the 1970s and 1980s. and they were severely punished by multilateral institutions dominated by the United States, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These punishments were the cause of much social suffering, an increase in poverty and hunger, deindustrialization, urban violence, the rise of organized crime and dictatorships. Would it not be time to propose reparations, for example, the extinction of the foreign debt of these countries, some of which are still suffocated by it? And will all other countries be able to follow the same kind of policies proposed by Trump for the United States from now on? Or are we facing yet another manifestation of unilateralism based on American exceptionalism? It is already visible that the economic freedom and freedom of expression that Trump's tycoons propagate in all the echo chambers of the extreme right around the world is freedom for their ideas and repression and censorship for the ideas of those who oppose them.
Trump's defensive-aggressive unilateralism aims to cause the same institutional destruction internationally that he is causing domestically. It is not only the institutions linked to the UN, but also all alliances between countries, whether regional or not. The preference for bilateral relations and the fact that import tariffs are determined, not by the type of product, as has been the case until now, but by the type of relations between the producing country and the US, is intended to destroy any inter-state alliance in the long run. that rivals the United States, whether the European Union or the BRICS.
In international politics, too, ruptures often disguise continuities. After all, since the criteria for tariffs are the ones I stated above, what is the real difference between tariffs and economic sanctions? Didn't the destruction of the European Union begin with Brexit and then with the war in Ukraine? In this area of ruptures/continuities, perhaps the cruelest example is what could happen to the martyred people of Palestine. The ethnic cleansing that began in 1948 with the creation of the State of Israel is about to become official U.S. policy in Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be followed by that of the West Bank. Without the drama of the deportations of immigrants, the brutal ethnic cleansing is announced as a benevolent humanitarian action, as Donald Trump seemed to claim, in reference to the desolation of the rubble produced by the incessant Israeli bombardments.
And now?
When weakness masquerades as strength, it can lead to even more catastrophic results. The paper tiger has the strength to destroy, but not to build. Today there is no place for unilateralism, much less for that of the United States. The global challenges facing humanity require multilateralism, civility and mutual respect. The two biggest victims of the paper tiger are democracy and ecology. The millionaires around Trump know that the policies they want to impose cannot be imposed democratically. For now, they have decided to occupy democracy and transform it into fascism with a human face. Since fascism with a human face is an oxymoron, if they are forced to choose, we know in advance what their choice will be. If we take into account that the imminent ecological collapse can only be avoided by a new global hegemony: a great convergence of democratically constructed efforts between human beings so that it can be democratically executed between human and non-human beings, it is easy to see that unilateralism devoid of Trump's hegemony is the shortcut followed by the elites of global capitalism to legitimize fascism 3.0¹. The novelty of this fascism is that it is global and imposes on all humans what humans have imposed on nature since the sixteenth century. Given this, it is difficult to imagine that anyone thinks that it is not necessary or urgent to fight, resist and dare to win.
I refer to fascism 3.0 because I characterized as fascism 2.0 the type of governance that Donald Trump proclaimed in November 2020 on the eve of losing the elections. Fascism 2.0 was based on the following premises: not recognizing unfavorable electoral results; transforming majorities into minorities; double standard; never speak or govern for the country and always and only for the social base; reality does not exist; resentment is the most precious political resource; traditional politics can be your best ally without knowing it; Polarize, always polarize. Fascism 3.0 expands the premises of Fascism 2.0 on a global scale.
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