It has generally been the tendency of every generation to think that its own times are somehow worse and/or more disruptive than those of the preceding age or even than what their more remote forebears had to live through. This is a matter of basic human psychology: Events we experience personally, either directly or in some indirect way – even just as news – cannot fail to take a greater meaning and to concern us more deeply than the past movements of a History which has not touched us and of which we know (or think we know) merely from books.
However, we do ourselves and our societies a disservice in yielding to this natural, present-framed instinct, and generally in not seeking a wider perspective from which to draw not just some therapeutic sense of “hope” but real inspiration and guidelines for action. Common sense should suffice in recalibrating our self-perception: There is no need to become specialists in Applied History for this purpose – much as Applied History is now, undoubtedly, the single most valuable academic pursuit related to matters of international (and indeed national) politics.
Our Western world is now certainly in a state of turmoil and upheaval not seen in a long time; but one not particularly bad at the scale of history. Under Donald Trump’s second presidency, the United States has changed course in foreign policy – let alone in domestic affairs. An unvarnished version of the American interest and power-politics has taken the place of internationalism and global responsibility and leadership through a sense of Western fellowship, as the guiding principle of US conduct on the world stage.
None of these sovereign American choices can be seriously faulted on grounds of reason or principle, given the wider world-historical changes in the global system – especially the rise of China – and iniquitous position of being taken advantage of, in which the US had been dragged into, over time, by events as well as, sometimes, “allies”. The Trump Revolution in geopolitics is an inevitable corrective to distortions, degeneracy and delusions across the “old dispensation” – from the foreign aid racket to neocon policy, the EU’s exploitative, increasingly authoritarian weakness or to the UN – that had become too big and debilitating to endure any longer. There is always a reaction, in the end, to such failures and unfairness.
But the knock-on effects of the new-model US foreign policy have detonated the supporting architecture of the international system and Western security as we have known it for some 80 years. We are now almost three generations removed from the events and people who shaped that postwar settlement. This ensures that there is no one around with any direct memory, from a practitioner’s experience, of the politics and statecraft that were in play at the conclusion of the Second World War. We can only read about it in books.
Perhaps this is what accounts for much of the catastrophising and dark, hyperbolic – even apocalyptic – tones of the present conversation at least in the ranks of the intelligentsia who is supposedly “in charge” of framing today’s choices. The transmission belt for the knowledge of what real statecraft used to be was severed with the death of Henry Kissinger (already two years ago). What we have today, instead, are the intellectual dwarves of the agenda-setting class for whom the only historical reference point is “the 1930s” and “Munich”. No wonder that the impression their daily blathering makes is one alternating between headless chicken scared of “what’s happening” and – at the other extreme typical in cases of intellectual regression – the “little dictator” syndrome. The latter is most in evidence in Europe these days, where panic is pushing some to advocate extreme measures like fast-forward Federalisation or a European Army, i.e. the dissolution of the sovereignty of the member states as an emergency measure.
There is much wringing of hands, in Europe, and much fretting, at the prospect of having to face the future “without America” – or indeed, perhaps against it in places like Greenland. Then there is the Russian menace – often described in the most lurid terms by panicky European generals and defence experts who envisage Putin invading Europe after Ukraine – and the China problem. For now, the latter manifests mainly as an economic challenge but in the long run with economic and tech power comes geopolitical influence.
The tender European mind, which has become unused to the hardships of hard power geopolitics, is now crushed under the twin perceived threats of War (with Russia, presumably) and Irrelevance (slipping further down the ranks in the tripolar world of today), with that most catastrophic of corollaries – the potential disaggregation of the European project. Imagine the angst!
All this worry, however, is in disproportion to the most likely course of events, as indicated by the facts – if anyone ever bothers to actually consult them with a clear eye – as well as by history. One fact, for example, is that Europe’s most debilitating problems are the result of its own continuing mistakes, from economic and energy policy, domestic affairs – especially immigration and the culture wars – to democracy, the Ukraine, defence policy and relations with the US. In other words, Europe could simply choose to stop doing damage to itself and that would be enough to restore something of its historical position and even propel it to real global geopolitical relevance.
The other first-order fact is that Europe still holds strong cards, and the balance of power – even in a hard power world – less unfavourable to the old continent than it is commonly held. There is still a great deal of wealth in Europe – even with the monstrous welfarism at play – and the Single Market is rich and large. And Europe’s science base is strong – including in infrastructure – together with its university landscape. In technological terms there is hardly any area in which the Europeans lack or even lag; the difference is made by the lack of commercial competitiveness, crushed by the dead hand of the European bureaucracy, regulatory burden and protectionism. Space is a great example, with the European Space Agency leading some of the world’s most advanced space science missions.
Defence is another, with Europe effectively able to field kit in almost all domains that is often technically on par with that made in the US, Russia or China; there are gaps – such as in stealth aviation, certain types of propulsion, counterspace or submarines – but they exist for lack of (historical) necessity and funding, not technological ability. And while on this subject, Europe’s defence capability – what it can actually bring to a fight right now – may be much less than the sum of its national parts (which themselves are military forces that often exist mostly on paper, even for the bigger countries) but in aggregate it still represents a considerable challenge for any would-be aggressor, while its potential to expand quickly in actual wartime conditions – i.e. Europe’s “latent power” – is massive, as previously discussed in these pages.
For enterprising, self-confident and intelligent players chaos is good – this is true in any field, but even more so in international relations. Chaos is the natural state of the world in every domain, and it makes room for change, opportunity, growth. Order is the exception, the artificial arrangement that must be “constructed” as a deliberate project and sustained at great expense of effort and focus – which is why it never lasts too long, and when it does it becomes an ossified, stultifying status quo that accumulates increasingly-monstrous distortions until it finally bursts. This is what is happening now: The dam – the order – erected by that last generation of real statesmen against the natural impulses that propel history forward – especially, War – is now breaking.
The pent-up instincts for change, expansion, even conquest, suppressed for so long, are now being released. The veil of illusion thrown over History by the post-1945 system – or the post Cold War so-called “Pax Americana” – has been well and truly pierced by the invasion of Ukraine. That was a cultural and intellectual event even more than a military one; it wasn’t just the myth of extended Western deterrence that broke down – likely, definitively – but that old Wilsonian idea of the anti-war League of Nations under international law, continued by the UN system. And now Trump is only pulling at the broken thread; others will join him.
Lamenting or panicking at this turn – or, better said, reversion to normal – in global affairs is not only useless but wrong. There is more risk and volatility, and these are now permanent, indeed increasing; we shall not see “peace and quiet” again for a long time. These are not positive developments, for sure. Yet they are the inevitable by-products, the costs, of this new chance at change that has opened up.
This great new movement in world history is only just beginning; Trump and the current populists will be seen, in a few years, as mere precursors of what is coming next – of a re-making of politics and complete doing-away with the decrepit Anciens Regimes of the last generations, a re-evaluation of socio-cultural relations, perhaps even of Art and Meaning in the 21st century, a redrawing of geopolitical structures – even of old frontiers and the conquest of new ones, certainly in outer space.
The fuse for this demolition charge set under the Old Order might have been lit by elder leaders, but the energy through which they act and the forces to which they respond, consciously or not, are those of a new generation – from America to China – removed from the sensibilities of the past. This is the force now making its own claim on shaping the world. Fundamentally, it has little regard for rules and mores from a different century and does not fear chaos as much as it is often assumed. Vast changes are coming, everywhere.
Under Trump, America is fulfilling its Roman destiny