“Rav mein hai aaj Trump kahan dekhiye thamey Na haath baag par hai, na pa hai rakab mein.”
(Trump is in full gallop, who knows where he’ll stop? Reins are not in his hands, nor feet in the stirrups)
The traumatic turn the world order is taking in the time of Trump tends not to make much sense unless, from the pandemonium one sifts out a policy statement. Vice President JD Vance’s chastisement of Europe at the February 14 speech at the Munich European security conference is one such statement.
“Europe’s enemy’s are not Russia or China; the enemy is within” he said. Europe was scared of its own people, its voters who were turning to parties the European establishment was averse to. He made a pointed reference to leaders who had not been invited “to this very important conference”. In ample demonstration of what he meant, Vance went on to meet the leader of Alternative for Germany, the far Right anti-immigrant party which, before the recent elections, was advancing in the popularity stakes.
All other disparate political parties come together to form “a wall” against the Alternative for Germany. This is precisely the manoeuvre to thwart the popular surge, according to Vance. Readers may yawn because Trump has churned the universe with a thousand decisions and indecisions that his next moment will reverse. But Vance’s speech, mark my word, is a marker. I have revisited the Munich conference with a purpose: it was not a standalone outburst by Vance. It was a continuation of a process started by Trump’s ideological mentors, and companions to undermine the European Union, promote “nationalism” in European nations and puncture the balloon of globalisation which weakens the nation state and, thereby, nationalism.
In The White House Terrifying tariffs as tactics in the new order were not spelt out, per se in Vance’s speech which was heard by a hall packed with European grandees with open mouthed wonder. It was not an off the cuff statement. Trump’s principal philosopher and friend, never mind if he served a brief jail term, Steven Bannon had been crisscrossing Europe since at least the first Trump Presidency meeting, promoting, creating a chain of far Right leaders, bringing them in line with what was to emerge in bright silhouette as Trump’s project of remaking Europe as a fulcrum for the new world.
It was all clear as daylight from the start but you did not see it because the western media, the one that the Indian media supinely follows, had switched off its cameras on the story. In 2016, it was in the thrall of Hillary Clinton, frontrunner against Trump. For that reason, it was a target for “Russian interference” throughout the 2016 campaign.
How ‘pulpy’ American democracy looked when the US Deep State was seen wringing its hands on Russians “effectively” interfering in elections to defeat Hillary Clinton. And the media was swallowing these yarns hook line and sinker.
I watched that story closely. Around 2013, there were two maestros with parallel agendas hopping from one European capital to the other promoting competing visions of the architecture western capitalism should create. George Soros, the philanthroper was on a contrary path. He was out to strengthen globalisation, the European Union in the liberal mode.
He did everything possible to block Brexit. His ‘open society’ was not ‘closed’ and circular; it leapt out of the stage like a ballet dancer. Brexit produced panic headlines rather like the ones after Trump’s tariffs. ‘A calamity’ screamed the New York Times. ‘Global panic’ was the more moderate headline in London. While Soros lamented Brexit, Bannon was delirious. The Right-Wing Group he had formally registered in Brussel’s in 2017 was named The Movement, a counter point to Soros’s Open Society.
Hungary’s Victor Orban, Frances’ Marine Le Pen, Italian Mateo Salvini, UK’s Nigel Farage, Netherland’s arch Euro skeptic, Gaert Wilters and a host of others were enlisted. Some of these leaders are a trifle hesitant because of The Movement’s American sponsorship. They see a clear contradiction. What kind of hybrid nationalism was being promoted in which Bannon, an American, plays a key role. This issue is being sorted out, but the broad ideological line is consistent – anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, anti-immigrants and, strewn around Bannon literature in very small print, “anti-Islamisation”.
This last one will be brushed up to help remove the taint of genocide which has stuck on the faces of Netanyahu and his supporters in the US and the Israeli lobby in America. The Alternative to Germany has most tenaciously latched onto this one ever since Angela Merkel, following her instincts as a Vicar’s daughter, humanely opened the door to Syrian refugees fleeing the outside imposed civil war in their country.
Trump minced no words. His high decibel MAGA chant was his anti-globalisation drive. Hare-brained declarations on takeovers of Panama, Greenland, Canada were preceded by an even sillier plan some year ago to “administer Afghanistan just as the British ran India under a Viceroy”.
Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the world’s biggest supplier of mercenary soldiers, was the author of the scheme which, through Bannon, reached The White House. The Pentagon shot it down. “The hegemon is in decline; he is coming down like a falling star.”
This tiresome chant was another irritant to cope against which MAGA came in handy. Before obituaries are written on the old world order Trump has decided to dig out the pitch and initiate a totally new game. There will be no reordering of the world order which, in his mind, is now extinct. He is for a world in which the US is more equal than others. From inside fortress America, its walls ever higher, Trump’s teams will go out to promote nationalism and smash regional or global groupings which are the stepping stones towards globalisation. The experience with Europe has been heady.
The Citizen
(Saeed Naqvi is a senior journalist and commentator.)
