The
new nationalism
With
his call to put “America First”, Donald Trump is the latest
recruit to a dangerous nationalism
Nov 19th 2016 | From
the print edition
WHEN Donald Trump
vowed to “Make America Great Again!” he was echoing the campaign
of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Back then voters sought renewal after the
failures of the Carter presidency. This month they elected Mr Trump
because he, too, promised them a “historic once-in-a-lifetime”
change.
But there is a
difference. On the eve of the vote, Reagan described America as a
shining “city on a hill”. Listing all that America could
contribute to keep the world safe, he dreamed of a country that “is
not turned inward, but outward—toward others”. Mr Trump, by
contrast, has sworn to put America First. Demanding respect from a
freeloading world that takes leaders in Washington for fools, he says
he will “no longer surrender this country or its people to the
false song of globalism”. Reagan’s America was optimistic: Mr
Trump’s is angry.
Welcome to the new
nationalism. For the first time since the second world war, the great
and rising powers are simultaneously in thrall to various sorts of
chauvinism. Like Mr Trump, leaders of countries such as Russia, China
and Turkey embrace a pessimistic view that foreign affairs are often
a zero-sum game in which global interests compete with national ones.
It is a big change that makes for a more dangerous world.
My country right or
left
Nationalism is a
slippery concept, which is why politicians find it so easy to
manipulate. At its best, it unites the country around common values
to accomplish things that people could never manage alone. This
“civic nationalism” is conciliatory and forward-looking—the
nationalism of the Peace Corps, say, or Canada’s inclusive
patriotism or German support for the home team as hosts of the 2006
World Cup. Civic nationalism appeals to universal values, such as
freedom and equality. It contrasts with “ethnic nationalism”,
which is zero-sum, aggressive and nostalgic and which draws on race
or history to set the nation apart. In its darkest hour in the first
half of the 20th century ethnic nationalism led to war.
Mr Trump’s
populism is a blow to civic nationalism (see article). Nobody could
doubt the patriotism of his post-war predecessors, yet every one of
them endorsed America’s universal values and promoted them abroad.
Even if a sense of exceptionalism stopped presidents signing up to
outfits like the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), America has supported the
rules-based order. By backing global institutions that staved off a
dog-eat-dog world, the United States has made itself and the world
safer and more prosperous.
Mr Trump threatens
to weaken that commitment even as ethnic nationalism is strengthening
elsewhere. In Russia Vladimir Putin has shunned cosmopolitan liberal
values for a distinctly Russian mix of Slavic tradition and Orthodox
Christianity. In Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned away from the
European Union and from peace talks with the Kurdish minority, in
favour of a strident, Islamic nationalism that is quick to detect
insults and threats from abroad. In India Narendra Modi remains
outward-looking and modernising, but he has ties to radical
ethnic-nationalist Hindu groups that preach chauvinism and
intolerance.
Meanwhile, Chinese
nationalism has become so angry and vengeful that the party struggles
to control it. True, the country depends upon open markets, embraces
some global institutions and wants to be close to America (see
Banyan). But from the 1990s onwards schoolchildren have received a
daily dose of “patriotic” education setting out the mission to
erase a century of humiliating occupation. And, to count as properly
Chinese you have in practice to belong to the Han people: everyone
else is a second-class citizen (see Briefing).
Even as ethnic
nationalism has prospered, the world’s greatest experiment in
“post-nationalism” has foundered. The architects of what was to
become the EU believed that nationalism, which had dragged Europe
into two ruinous world wars, would wither and die. The EU would
transcend national rivalries with a series of nested identities in
which you could be Catholic, Alsatian, French and European all at
once.
However, in large
parts of the EU this never happened. The British have voted to leave
and in former communist countries, such as Poland and Hungary, power
has passed to xenophobic ultranationalists. There is even a small but
growing threat that France might quit—and so destroy—the EU.
The last time
America turned inward was after the first world war and the
consequences were calamitous. You do not have to foresee anything so
dire to fear Mr Trump’s new nationalism today. At home it tends to
produce intolerance and to feed doubts about the virtue and loyalties
of minorities. It is no accident that allegations of anti-Semitism
have infected the bloodstream of American politics for the first time
in decades.
Abroad, as other
countries take their cue from a more inward-looking United States,
regional and global problems will become harder to solve. The ICC’s
annual assembly this week was overshadowed by the departure of three
African countries. China’s territorial claims in the South China
Sea are incompatible with UNCLOS. If Mr Trump enacts even a fraction
of his mercantilist rhetoric, he risks neutering the World Trade
Organisation. If he thinks that America’s allies are failing to pay
for the security they receive, he has threatened to walk away from
them. The result—especially for small countries that today are
protected by global rules—will be a harsher and more unstable
world.
Isolationists unite
Mr Trump needs to
realise that his policies will unfold in the context of other
countries’ jealous nationalism. Disengaging will not cut America
off from the world so much as leave it vulnerable to the turmoil and
strife that the new nationalism engenders. As global politics is
poisoned, America will be impoverished and its own anger will grow,
which risks trapping Mr Trump in a vicious circle of reprisals and
hostility. It is not too late for him to abandon his dark vision. For
the sake of his country and the world he urgently needs to reclaim
the enlightened patriotism of the presidents who went before him.
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