After a hundred plus years in which political leaders of all stripes claimed to be guided by ideological prescriptions or at least by a set of core principles, much of the world is reverting to an older formula in which it is taken for granted that everything depends on the whims of a handful of big men. Right now, the most prominent of these are Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, individuals who clearly believe that in their countries their word is law and that anyone who disagrees should be severely dealt with. However, while this way of doing things may seem natural enough in China and Russia, in the United States there are plenty of people who are unwilling to let themselves be bossed around by a garrulous and vindictive braggart who takes it for granted that – after winning the support of almost half the electorate – he is entitled to do whatever he wants.
Unlike Xi and, up to a point, Putin, Trump does not pretend to be putting into practice some sophisticated political or economic theory. For him, everything is personal and he makes no bones about it. As far as he is concerned, coherence is for losers. So too, for that matter, are easily verifiable facts. Though most politicians are prone to play fast and loose with the truth, few are as blatant about it as The Donald, who cheerfully makes up things on the hoof and laughs at those who say he is lying.
After wondering whether it would be better for him to back Russia in her war against Ukraine because it is a far larger country and could offer the US more business opportunities, Trump immediately got on the phone to Putin to offer him a deal he would be foolish to reject and told the world that his old friend in the Kremlin did not start the war against Ukraine. As a less impulsive politician would have foreseen, by doing this – and, while about it, describing Voldymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” hated by most Ukrainians – he greatly annoyed the many European leaders who have good reason to fear Russia’s tsarist aspirations and admire Zelenskyy for his steadfastness in terrible circumstances.
Will breaking away from Europe, which he sees as a picturesque place inhabited by welfare queens, benefit the United States? Though it could have some positive effects for North American taxpayers who, for over three-quarters of a century, have been helping to subsidise social programmes on the other side of the Atlantic by taking responsibility for Europe’s defence, it would also deprive the US of a useful ally in the confrontation with China.
This could happen not because the European leaders disagree with Trump when, like his predecessors, he complains about their countries’ refusal to spend far more on their own security, but because they feel offended by his bar-room way of putting it to them. European leaders also strongly object to the rhetorical bludgeoning they are being subjected to by J. D. Vance and Elon Musk; both warned them that, unless they shape up double quick, they would be cast into oblivion by their own electorates.
Trump’s rise to power owed less to his own merits than to the defects of the people who had been running the United States for many years. As always happens, those at the top took far more care of people who shared their priorities and, they thought, dependents who could be relied on to furnish them with the votes they needed to stay there, than of the rest of the population. They were made increasingly complacent by the musings of friendly sociologists who assured them that they could continue to get away with this by pandering to enough minorities for them to put together a permanent Democrat majority. That was wishful thinking. Last year they learned that many blacks and Hispanics, especially male ones, had become so fed up with the antics of their alleged benefactors that they decided they had more in common with the Make America Great Again crowd and, to the bewilderment of “progressives” everywhere, supported Trump who, being the man he is, attributed his triumph entirely to his own masterful personality.
By behaving in this way, Trump and his sidekicks have sent a persuasive message to political hopefuls in the rest of the Western world and given comfort to many outside it who would like to see it share the fate of Rome. There can be little doubt that the evident failure of what one might call the centre-left dispensation that has been dominant for so long in relatively wealthy countries has greatly encouraged movements that are automatically decried as “extreme right wing”, though most include ingredients that have been supplied by the left, whether authoritarian or democratic. This suggests that, for the next few years at least, most Western countries will be governed by parties that will seek to restore the social arrangements that prevailed two or three generations ago.
Trump is far from being the only national leader to feed off nostalgia, the feeling that things were better in the past before a bunch of scoundrels or lunatics came and ruined them. In their different fashions, all politicians are conservatives; even hard-core Marxists yearn for the days, a century ago, when the future lay before them and bright people took their prophecies seriously, and continental socialists, especially the French, fondly remember the “30 glorious years” that ended in the 1970s when oil prices shot up
For many, perhaps most, Europeans and North Americans, previous governments committed a very serious mistake by permitting millions of outsiders to settle in their lands. In the United States, Trump’s administration has already started to deport large numbers of such men, women and children; its European counterparts seem certain to follow suit. For those in favour of the “repatriation” of those who do not fit in and, in many cases, have no desire to do so, their presence is the most visible symptom of the changes for the worse that have taken place in recent decades, but there are others which cannot be rolled back by presidential decree. Reshaping economies so far more people get a share of the higher production made possible by technological progress will not be easy, and increasing the birth rate before entire populations die out will be even harder even if feminists allow motherhood to become as fashionable as it once was. And then there are the challenges posed by climate change, the development of artificial intelligence and others that have those who worry about them spooked. Time travel in either direction remains a fantasy. Like it or not, the world of yesteryear has gone for good.
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