Trump has opened the world to dystopia
When a tweet broadcast to 23 million followers is sent from the handle @realDonaldTrump, it’s a threat perception on par with a national calamity.
This is a war with a different name, the clash of civilisations between liberals versus protectionists, when a discriminatory regime inflicts apartheid prejudiced by nationality, race and religion in preference to its citizens, placing US national economic interest as paramount.
Protests
Adversity creates opportunities for the rise of an alternate economic power, but the end of "Pax Americana" also signals the biggest threat to global stability in 2017, as the world readies to insulate itself from "Trumpian" America, rebuilding from where US signed-off after disengaging from free trade and shutting its borders to immigrants. Frankly, the unorthodoxies or bypassing political niceties by the 45th US President stun.
“Hello Mr PM... this is my tweet-invite to you. If unwilling to pay for the wall you stand de-invited. Donald.” Perhaps, even "blocked" and "unfriended" too. So here’s a word of caution to world leaders en route to the White House: be prepared to disembark and check before take-off if the President cancelled out last minute.
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| Trump’s pre-electoral promises are for real, as he declares war on half his country. |
Trump’s pre-electoral promises are for real, as he declares war on half his country and half the world, causing consternation, fear and protests, whether it’s building the giant Mexican Wall, his belief that “torture works”, blocking Muslim refugees, and nixing TPP partnership or “dumb deals” of the past regime.
Another trait of this new-age war is against media, the fourth pillar of any vibrant democracy, now in a slugfest with authoritarian leaders in the post-democratic world. Unlike media which needs advertisement support from governments, informal social media has begun to take on that role of vigilantism with its outspoken condemnation of the executive order banning immigrants along with heads of Twitter, Facebook and Google contesting the order that flouts the Geneva Convention, as also the tenets of plurality within the US constitution.
America Inc, seldom at variance with the sitting President, is now in combat with the government on hiring locals that would lead to higher wages and impact profitability.
So who loves Trump, and why? Rural and middle class American swadeshi lobbies powered his rise, believing he would “bring back our wealth.” In this fantasy, he echoes a victim’s psyche of colonised countries like India determined to bring back the fabled Kohinoor diamond, a symbol of avenging years of economic exploitation by their colonial masters.
Middle America, Trump’s core constituency, felt the benefits of globalilisation bypassed them in favour of the handful of “500 people” who “will hand over $2.1tn to their heirs — a sum larger than the annual GDP of India, a country with 1.3 billion people...While a group of men who could easily fit into a single golf buggy own more than the poorest half of humanity.”
Lifestyle
So how exactly was Trump any different to one of the guys in that buggy?
Taking a virtual tour through YouTube, strolling through the gilded interiors of Trump Towers, peeking into his personal aircraft and his summer retreat in Mar-a-Lago, the regalia of Trump’s lifestyle makes one question the naiveté or desperation of the bourgeois who believed an oligarch as President would uphold the rights of the proletariat.
Trump, the “political outsider”, is a complete insider to the cosy Beltway club of business cronyism, reflected in his reluctance to reveal tax statements or not recusing himself from his business interests before taking oath.
His policy decisions are, therefore, expected to favour his ilk, albeit lowering corporate tax from 35 per cent to 15 per cent would make US a preferred investment destination, an objective that can’t be faulted. Besides, Trump can’t afford to start his first 100 days by being horrid to all, can he?
Who else loves Trump? Vladmir Putin.
While it’s inconclusive if Russia gamed the results of the world’s most powerful democracy, Putin could hold the joker in his hands: trumping Trump, and riding piggy-back to regain Kremlin’s superpower eminence. Today Putin’s Russia is corruption-ridden, poorer after plummeting oil revenues, and isolated for annexing Crimea, therefore desperately in search of an ally, or a political "bestie".
If Putin does hold dark untold secrets on Trump’s covert business deals with Russia, they are sure to tumble out of the Soviet closet to sting the new regime. So is the real game of controlling the world geopolitical order being played between two men: Trump and Putin, by the law of Omerta, the law of silence? Could Putin in the near future proxy-control the world?
The absence of US-led primacy will present Russian expansionism the perfect opportunity to reassert its power over former Soviet bloc countries and act without fear in Ukraine.
Isolation
Globalisation-in-retreat is turning endemic, more so if elections in France, Italy and Germany throw up populist leaders as a backlash to elitist capitalism, confirming Trump’s victory was not a one-off phenomenon.
However, the collapse of "Pax Americana", the international order for shared security after WW-II as agreed on by US and allies, poses a threat to the global order. Jobs are shrinking around the world due to technological advancements with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
With predatory trade wars of the Trump era, global growth will dip below the current average of 3 per cent, and widen debt to GDP ratios of nations that will increase risks of sovereign default, shrinking wages and fuel social unrest.
Till US experiments and ultimately abandons its self-inflicted isolation in favour of the benefits of trade arbitrage, we ride the wave of uncertainty. However, Globalisation 2.0 will be a chastened, reformed and corrected version of Globalisation 1.0. It won’t repeat the excesses of the liquidity Quantum Easing infused, creating asset bubbles.
It will address the plunderous rise of the "1 per cent" at the cost of the "99 per cent" by recognising the inalienable right of all to be included in the fair and equitable gains of growth.
Till then, let’s brace for a dystopic world order as we readjust or reject to Trump’s ways and transit from the old to the new.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)