The Historical Context
Most important, Mr. Trump is no outlier. His positions, though forcefully and colourfully expressed, fall well within conservative Republican traditions. Donald Trump’s economic and foreign policy views reflect US 19th century isolationism and high tariff mercantilism. His views on race and immigration echo anti-Chinese US policies before World War I. His values reflect the pro-Western European white Protestant predispositions that underpinned the anti-Catholic politics of agrarian and traditional “town” versus industrial and transformative “city” division that vivified US politics after the Civil War and, in terms of social policy, produced Prohibition and the War on Drugs among other efforts to control personal behaviour and oppose the advance of gender equality. His economic policies that favour the 1% find sustenance (whether he knows it or not) in Calvinist notions of the Elect, blessed with wealth by God in this life, that actuated the social “laisez-faireism” of the US before the Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt.
Donald Trump’s most recent avatar was Senator Robert Taft, the Republican Presidential candidate in 1940, 1948 and 1952. Taft favoured isolationism and opposed Lend Lease in that it propped up the UK in World War II. He was a mercantilist and propounded US autarky behind high tariff walls. Though an anti-Communist, Taft did not favour containment of the USSR, arguing the US had an insufficiency of material interest to defend West Europe.
From the turn of the 19th century the US has been embroiled in a long-running political dispute about the nature and role of the state. Whether individual states or the Federal government enjoy constitutional and legislative primacy was not settled by the Civil War. The question continues to divide Americans. The Progressive Movement launched by Teddy Roosevelt sharpened the matter by asserting Federal responsibility for the well-being of citizens. Throughout much of the 20th century the progressives put in place measures that, on the one hand limited states’ rights and on the other advanced Federal programs to promote US prosperity and equality in its various dimensions. FDR ‘s New Deal, politically abetted by the Great Depression, provided the framework and much of the substance of US Federal social policy. Progressivism reached its apogee with the advances in racial equality on JFK’s watch and in Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society legislation. This is the liberal US that appeals to the better instincts of Canadians. This version of the US fought for Western liberal democratic ideals in the two World Wars and produced the structure of world governance — the UN and its subsidiary organizations; and the Bretton Woods institutions: the IMF, the World Bank and the GATT, later to reach institutional maturity as the WTO — that has under-pinned the slow progress of global stability and rising prosperity.
The conservative counter-reformation that propounded a “small” Federal state with limited, if any, responsibility for social and individual well-being began with the candidacy of Barry Goldwater and succeeded into power under Ronald Reagan. Republican foreign policy is firmly based in a traditional concept of the state, in the exercise of power in the conduct of relations among states in the pursuit of their national interests, a distrust in multilateral institutions and notions of collective security, and a belief in the moral superiority of the USA – in the identity of the USA’s ideology (often through a USA/Christian optic) and its largest strategic interests.
The Clinton Presidency was a brief but largely successful interregnum in a progression of conservative administrations that have, by one means of another, sought to prune the Federal programs and institutions that, in effect, limit states rights and advanced a Federal writ for political and social equality and personal well-being. A “small federal state” and states’ rights are the leitmotifs of US conservative ideology. The political struggle has turned not on facts but on values and ideology.
Donald Trump, though a caricature of conservatives like Reagan and Goldwater, pursues the same goal of a smaller, less intrusive and less caring state. He has harnessed the fears engendered by globalization and terrorism in the service of a profoundly regressive agenda that would see the US revert to its 19th model of limited governance and much less bridled capitalism domestically and, in the international arena, retreat from its leading role on the one hand and promotion of national self-interest in the crassest possible terms on the other. All of this to be sustained by US military predominance.
Fear
During the Cold War there was a generalized fear of nuclear war with the USSR that was balanced by a certain degree of confidence in the US capacity both to deter and to retaliate. This fear receded with the various arms control agreements in the 1970s and 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the US population returned to its traditional sense of immunity from the world’s troubles, a feeling reinforced by the military primacy of the US.
It’s clear that 9/11 was a seismic social shock. The US could be a target of Islamic terrorists armed with nothing more than box cutters. The magnitude of the attack and its audacity added to the sense of vulnerability that came to afflict Americans. No one could consider themselves safe anymore. The whole of the continental US was immediately declared a no-fly zone and Canada played host to hundreds of aircraft and their passengers. The largest demonstration in Canadian history took place when a million Canadians massed in front of Parliament in sympathy with the US. Canada was rewarded with unfounded accusations of porous borders and demands for redress that intruded on our sovereignty. The Trudeau Government can expect more of the same. The fear of Islamic terrorism of Americans is visceral and unreasoning. Donald Trump has nurtured these fears to his electoral advantage.
Fear now dominates the thinking of many Americans. Fear of Islam and Muslims. Fear of globalization and off-shoring. Fear of losing one’s job. Fear of blacks and crime. Fear of immigrants, legal and otherwise. Fear that one’s children will be worse off economically than oneself. Crassness and cruelty now characterize the political discourse of a significant part of the US electorate.
Canadian influence in such a dysfunctional political climate is a forlorn hope.
Social Change and Trump
Globalization has triggered vast and disruptive social change. Economic growth has much diminished poverty in the so-called Third World and added to the middle class of those heretofore LDCs. By the same token, globalization has produced huge population movements, principally but not exclusively, from the South to the more prosperous North. Declining birth rates and aging populations in North America and Western Europe resulted in labour market shortages, often in unattractive, low-skill occupations, that immigrants were happy to fill.
Manufacturing capacity in Western Europe and North America has off-shored to low wage countries. Labour’s share of national income declined and economic inequality has risen steeply. Social mobility has stagnated. White nativists came to fear for their jobs and the persistence of their culture. They distrust profoundly the traditional political establishment for the simple reason it has failed to even address their problems.
Donald Trump has taken demagogic advantage of these fears. These social and economic phenomena are reflected in most Western countries and, unsurprisingly, have also thrown up radical anti-establishmentarian parties: Martine Le Pen’s National Front in France; Podemos in Spain; Five Star in Italy; Pergida in Germany; and so on in almost every Western European state. In Hungary, Greece and Poland such parties have succeeded into governance to the disadvantage of liberal-democratic values and objectives. Most, but not all, of these parties stand on the right side of the political spectrum; a few can, with justice, be described as neo-fascist. They are all anti-immigrant (despite local labour-market requirements and the consequent threat to the financial viability of pension schemes). They all oppose globalization. They are all intensely nationalistic. And, they are all deeply anti-establishmentarian. These trends are secular and they are not going away any time soon.
Whether Donald Trump is elected or not he has unearthed a significant vein of white nativist bigotry and intolerance and shifted the parameters of political debate and policy options to the right. Most of the Republican candidates already espouse views analogous tor Trump’s, albeit in less inflammatory language. The next US government, whether Democrat or Republican, will in some measure reflect the course and content of the election campaign. This will entail a lower measure of political tolerance for countervailing policies and values.
In the last election Canada’s electorate chose a different path. It elected a Liberal government on a more or less traditional platform. But one that also promised “change”
Since the end of the Cold War, owing to the greater ease of travel and communication as well as electoral requirement, personal relations among leaders have become an important marker of state-to-state bilateral relations. Stephen Harper’s Conservative government had very good relations the Bush Administration — ideological propinquity had a lot to do with that. The PMO was in regular contact with Vice President Cheney’s office. However under Obama bilateral relations languished. Inept and abrasive Conservative policies were not the only reason. The profound ideological divide played a larger role.
A Republican presidency would see a further significant deterioration of bilateral relations with the US. But it should not be thought, given the likely rightward shift of the US political spectrum, that clear-sailing can be expected from a Democratic Administration. Bernie Sanders is closest among all the candidates to Canadian ways of thinking and he may beat Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire — but Mr. Sanders is not likely to become President, nor would his platform leave as profound a mark as Mr. Trump’s.
If Donald Trump achieves his political goals in 2016, expect a difficult period in Canada-US relations.
Sven Jurschewsky has had postings to New Delhi, Zagreb, Vienna, Lagos, Bonn and Berlin. In 1999, while posted to Beijing as Head of the Political Section he was tasked to effect Canada’s recognition of the DPRK (in support of President Clinton’s “soft landing policy”). He has led or participated in security initiatives in crisis areas including, among others, Bosnia, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Baltic States and Slovakia. He has also at various times been assigned to handle OSCE, IAEA and UN affairs. During his time at DFAIT’s Lester B Pearson building, he has served in a number of roles, including: preparations for the Rio Earth Summit; preparation of NAFTA feasibility studies; participation in Paris Club debt re-schedulings; Head of both the West and East German Desks, as well as the desks for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Island States. He headed the headquarters unit responsible for current intelligence assessment, the Global Security Reporting Program, liaison with Five Eyes Partners and related matters. In non-proliferation and arms control he played a significant role in the 1995 NPT Extension Conference. Before joining Canada’s foreign service, he taught philosophy at the University of Toronto.
Original Article
Source: nationalnewswatch.com/
Author: Sven Jurschewsky
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