Great empires always fall, pushed by their own leaders. Just think of the role played in Britain’s decline by the Liberals who blundered into the First World War, permanently crippling the world’s dominant empire. Or the damage done to France by Napoleon III’s imperial blunders. Or the fumbling of autocrats in China, Russia and Germany in the last century.
The US, still the world’s only true empire, now confronts the reality of two unserious presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, each threatening its viability. Americans and the rest of what’s left of the liberal world have to hope that our intrinsic advantages in demography, finance, technology and resources will survive the presidencies of either of these awful candidates.
The personalities themselves are just a symptom of the problem. Trump and Harris – or for that matter, Starmer and Macron – are more reflections of the West’s exhaustion than its instigators. There’s not a Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, Thatcher, Kennedy, Reagan or even a Blair or Clinton in the bunch. Do they have boldness in speech? Sometimes. But do they inspire the population and actually change things for the better? Not so much. Whether countries are governed by left or right, there are record levels of distrust of institutions all across the US and Europe. Voters are rebelling against such things as draconian climate policies or large-scale migration from developing countries – policies that are favoured by their own elites, but widely detested by ordinary people.
Of course, the fate of the world does not lie in Europe, which is a consistent economic, technological and demographic laggard. For all its problems, the US remains dominant. But, like Europe, it is plagued by self-doubts and an intellectual-policy elite that has little enthusiasm for the existing political system or the US constitution.
The future of the West may lie in the US, but the next president is likely to weaken its political influence. The blathering Trump’s vision is of a world of revanchism, a return to the glory days of the 1950s. His ideas on trade are also archaic. He fails to appreciate the benefits, as well as the failures, tied to relatively free trade. He has opposed, for example, Nippon Steel’s bid to buy US Steel, despite the huge upgrade it would represent for local communities. Trump’s persona alone is enough to send most Europeans, Canadians and even our Asian allies to look elsewhere, perhaps kowtowing to China.
Both he and Harris seem anxious to appeal to protectionism, even when it makes little sense. But Trump is likely to shake things up more than Harris. His re-election threatens Europe’s comfy deal with NATO and his willingness to strike deals with Vladimir Putin has a Chamberlain-esque dimension. Should he abandon Ukraine, it would make other countries, notably Taiwan, uncertain of American resolve. It could also persuade a new generation of GOP hawks to throw their lot in with the Democrats.
At least Trump is not utterly deluded about the Middle East. One of the major accomplishments of his administration was the Abraham Accords, which, had Biden followed through with them, would have tilted the balance of power in the Middle East towards the West. He also did what needed to be done with Iran, imposing sanctions and assassinating its most important terrorist commander. Much of the region, not just Israel, would prefer a second Trump term.
Read the rest of this piece at Spiked.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Screenshot from debate, under CC 4.0 License.
Email this Story
