It’s official! Or, at least, what has been implicit in the election campaign speeches throughout is now implicit in the official, Presidential speech of Donald Trump on taking office in Washington, DC, last Friday. What is ‘implicit’ in this new and growing discourse of America’s withdrawal from the world stage as the pre-eminent super-power.
Analysts across the world noted this logic of American withdrawal in the election campaign discourse – I can’t simply say ‘speeches’ because some of it was in Tweets. Many commentators recalled the rhetoric of ‘Isolationism’ in US politics during 1930s when European democracies, alarmed by the aggressive and threatening behaviour of not just Germany and Italy but also of Stalin’s mighty Soviet Union, looked to America for support.
That was the period of America’s early hesitation as it stepped on to the world stage as an emerging super power. Even reports of pogroms against Jews in Germany did not stir Washington’s politicians, despite the heavy Jewish presence in the American establishment. It took the sneak attack by Japan on the US’ most vital overseas base (Hawaii) to push Washington to enter World War 2.
The chief slogan of the isolationist discourse of the 1920-30s was ‘America first’. In more recent decades, as the US held sway as the economically stronger of the two rival super-powers, a frequent slogan in election campaigning among American politicians was ‘America is No.1’, which is different from ‘America first’.
‘Number 1’ means that the USA in on top; the first or foremost power in the world – the symbol of global dominance which, with the fall of the USSR, came true in full force as America became the sole super-power. The post World War 2 discourse in Washington was not about simply putting “America first” - that is, America before any other country. It was about America being on top of the gobal heap, of American dominance. This was what the opposing Communist bloc termed as ‘neo-imperialism’, that is, a new form of imperialism beyond the old (European) colonialism.
The discourse that rationalised American dominance in the world was, no doubt, inspiring: a very young modern state that was a story of rapid national success, ostensibly (because the darker side of US state formation within that country was not officially acknowledged) based on classic European ideals of liberal democracy and sophisticated civilisation. The discourse took pride in the American endeavour of rapid nation-building, including the refining of the democratic political system that is, even today, a model (but certainly not the only) for other countries.
For some decades in the last century the USA and its allies, many of them former rapacious colonial powers, managed to sustain this rationale for global eminence which seemed further justified by the collapse of the Communist model of economy. It was after the US became the sole super-power that things began to look blacker than the projected ‘leader of democracy/civilisation’ image.
The fall of the USSR and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact alliance finally gave that space for Washington to genuinely attempt to act as the world’s policeman. That posture, after all, fitted well with Euro-American Christian tradition of benevolent, patriarchal control of destiny. President George Bush Sr., in the build up to the West’s first Persian Gulf military intervention, talked to American evangelical church leaders about taking ‘God’s Kingdom’ to the ends of the Earth. His son, President George W. Bush, talked about saving the world from a mad dictator and his weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the ultimate US invasion of Iraq the results of which have been devastating for the whole world, not just West Asia.
Today, the world, having experienced America in its role as ‘Number 1’ on Earth these past few decades, is now watching breathlessly a complete transformation: a shift from aspiring to hang on to the ‘Number 1’ global position to a withdrawal into one’s corner to lick its wounds as it were.
It’s all there in Donald Trump’s speech – the ‘carnage’ that is. He specifically talks about the carnage within the United States – ‘carnage’ in terms of social decay, governmental lethargy, and pockets of economic failure. His entire speech is about his determination to heal this ‘carnage’.
If what has happened in the US is ‘carnage’, one wonders what word Mr. Trump will use to describe what has happened in Iraq, Palestine. Libya, Syria and Afghanistan, among other countries whose previous lives were arbitrarily changed by direct intervention by the US and its Western alliance. That is, presuming that America’s new President actually knows (or cares to know) about the situation in these countries.
It is possible that, at least in some of these devastated states, their citizens may be happy for the US and Donald Trump to remain in ignorance of their situation if only they are left alone from any further US interference in their affairs.
What is significant is that President Trump takes pain to focus on the US’ internal problems and has, for once among US Presidents, chosen to largely ignore the rest of the world. The UK’s The Telegraph newspaper notes that Donald Trump’s Inauguration speech, his first official statement as President of the USA, was the most emphatically ‘American’ of all presidential inauguration speeches in US history. Apparently the new President used the words ‘America’ and ‘American’ more than any other incoming US President, according to this conservative British newspaper which, while being cautious about Trump’s many foreign policy gaffes, remains loyal to the Republican Party Presidency.
Analysts the world over have noted this significant shift in American political perspective – from one of US global dominance (‘No. 1’) and its consequent interventionist policy imperatives to one of placing America’s domestic concerns over and above (‘America first’) global aspirations or even current global obligations. The shift was first noted in the election campaign discourse.
President Trump, in his first official speech, has formally notified the world that his interests are more domestic and less to do with global politics. How much of this is sheer ignorance of the implications (and positive aspects) of globalisation and general political naivety and, how much of this is on the basis of serious analysis and reflection remains to be seen in how the new President sets about his work.
As this column has already noted earlier, Donald Trump is a ‘doer’ since he could not have notched up his business success without that dynamism. But, as pointed out previously, the new President’s political naivety threatens to undermine his own ambitions and assumed goals as President.
How much the Republican Party mandarins will be able to curb this isolationism only the coming months and years will tell. On one side, many millions of war-affected people the world over will celebrate any decline in US interventionism. At the same time, many authoritarian or expansionist regimes that benefitted from tacit or overt US support will be hoping that some of the Cold War hawks in the new administration will prevail.
Already rightwing and conservative commentators in the West are warning that an US withdrawal will give space to Russia and China to assert some kind of global dominance. There is no indication whatsoever that Russia has any capacity for, or even interest in, the kind of expansionism practised by the colonial powers or the aggressive interventionism of the US. Neither has China. Indeed, the launch of the first direct train service across Asia and Europe from China to the UK – named the ‘East Wind’ – demonstrates that China’s global ambitions are far more creative and innovative rather than destructive – even if a few ethnic minorities may get trampled on by the Han on the way.
Small countries like Sri Lanka can only hope that the system of global governance and collective responsibility that the US took the lead in creating will be allowed to grow rather than wither through neglect or deliberate undermining. At stake in this globalised world is the Earth itself.
One hopes that the entrepreneurial cunning of Donald Trump will lead him to learn about his role in the Oval Office so that America’s new ‘greatness’ which he talks about so much will genuinely retain a global leadership position even as it gracefully ends it bully-boy tactics.