Category Archives: Democracy

FDR started the Long Peace. Under Trump, it may be coming to an end.

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January 29, 2017

FDR started the Long Peace. Under Trump, it may be coming to an end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/fdr-started-the-long-peace-under-trump-it-may-be-coming-to-an-end/2017/01/26/2f0835e2-e402-11e6-ba11-63c4b4fb5a63_story.html?utm_term=.748842165167


President Trump walks across the tarmac with Col. Christopher M. Thompson before boarding Air Force One. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)
by Fareed Zakaria

In his first days in office, President Trump has begun to reverse the domestic policies of the previous eight years. But with regard to the United States’ relations with the world, Trump seems far more radical. In word and deed, he appears to be walking away from the idea of America at the center of an open, rule-based international order. This would be a reversal of more than 70 years of U.S. foreign policy.

In an essay in the New York Review of Books, Jessica T. Mathews points out that since 1945, Americans of both political parties have accepted three principles. First, that America’s security is enhanced by its broad and deep alliances around the world. Second, that an open global economy is not a zero-sum game but rather allows the United States to prosper and others to grow. And finally, though there was debate about whether dictatorships were to be “tolerated, managed, or confronted,” in the end there was a faith in democracy and its advantages. Mathews notes that for 30 years, Trump has attacked these views as costly naivete that has allowed the world to rip off America.

[Trump’s foreign policy revolution]

Given the magnitude of the policy shift, it is worth recalling why the United States adopted this outward-looking approach in the first place. It started with Franklin D. Roosevelt, as Nigel Hamilton explains in his superb book “Commander-in-Chief.” By 1943, while victory was still a distant prospect, Roosevelt began to imagine a postwar international system. Hamilton brilliantly sets out Roosevelt’s foresight, determination and skill in establishing a new world order.

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Neither of FDR’s key wartime allies was much interested in his approach. Joseph Stalin, a communist autocrat, would resist many of his ideas, and Winston Churchill was stubbornly committed to continuing Britain’s rule over its vast empire. Roosevelt wanted something different: to establish an enduring peace in which freedom could flourish. That meant the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan, to wipe the slate clean of fascism and militarism. And it meant that Britain and France would have to decolonize Asia and Africa. Roosevelt despised the system of colonial exploitation and believed that it created the conditions that led to revolution and war. He also wanted open trade, rather than the ruinous protectionism of the 1930s. To secure all this, FDR understood that the United States would need to be permanently engaged with the world in a way it had never been before.

Hamilton vividly describes how, in the midst of directing military strategy in the largest conflict in human history, Roosevelt always kept his eye on postwar planning. With Congress and the public still suspicious of American involvement, he juggled various plans and proposals to make sure that this time, unlike after World War I, America would help keep the peace. He needed Churchill’s and Stalin’s support, which is why he kept trekking around the globe to meet them at summits. (To understand the strain on FDR, keep in mind that Roosevelt’s trip to meet Churchill at Casablanca in 1943 entailed a long train ride to Miami, a 10-hour flight to Trinidad, a nine-hour flight to Brazil, a 19-hour flight to Gambia and finally another nine-hour flight to Casablanca. All this for a man who was paralyzed, had a failing heart and had not taken a plane ride since 1932.)

Roosevelt’s vision for a global system did not work exactly as he had hoped, chiefly because of the Soviet Union and its postwar behavior. But much of it did happen, from the United Nations to an open global trading system to the decolonization of Europe’s empires. And the great holdout to America’s vision, the Soviet Union, itself collapsed in 1991.

[Newt Gingrich: Margaret Thatcher is the real model for the Trump presidency]

The results have been astonishing. Many historians have pointed out that we live in unprecedented times. The period since 1945 has been marked by the absence of war between the world’s major powers. Most of prior human history is a tale of economic mercantilism, political conflict and repeated war. Since 1945, we have lived in what John Lewis Gaddis dubbed the “Long Peace.” Through the Long Peace we have also had decades of rising incomes, living standards and health throughout the world, especially in the United States.

When Roosevelt was beginning to design his system, he was the dissenter. The dominant foreign policy ideas in America at the time were represented by a movement called “America First.” Nativist, isolationist and anti-Semitic, the movement held that an outward-oriented America was a policy for suckers. It took Hitler and World War II to make Americans recognize that, for a country of America’s size and scale, isolation and narrow self-interest would lead to global insecurity and disaster. One wonders what it will take to make today’s America Firsters relearn that same lesson.

Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. Follow @FareedZakaria

 


 

American Exceptionalism at the expense of Laos and elsewhere

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January 29, 2017

American Exceptionalism in Laos and Elsewhere

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The Ugly American is still around. And there is nothing tough talking Donald J. Trump can do about the CIA. In the name of defending democracy, feedom, and human rights, America will continue to commit atrocities against  those who dare to challenge this exceptional nation. Jack Ma of Ali Baba fame is right when he said in Davos recently that America should use its money to repair its economic and social infrastructure in stead of wasting trillions waging war. Enough of  Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Somalia.–Din Merican

A Great Place to Have a War

America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA

Author: , Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia

A Great Place to Have a War - joshua-kurlantzick-a-great-place-to-have-a-war

Order Book Order EbookPublisher A CFR Book. Simon & Schuster

Release Date January 2017

Price $28.00 hardcover / $14.99 ebook

ISBN 978-1-451-66786-8

“Over the course of the war, U.S. bombing of Laos would become so intense that it averaged one attack every eight minutes for nearly a decade,” observes Joshua Kurlantzick in his new book, A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA. Kurlantzick, a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow for Southeast Asia, mines extensive interviews and recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records to give a definitive account of the secret war in the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Laos, which lasted from 1961 to 1973, and was the largest covert operation in U.S. history. The conflict forever changed the CIA from a relatively small spying agency into an organization with vast paramilitary powers.

The book explores how the responsibility for U.S. military conflicts shifted from the uniformed armed services to U.S. intelligence agencies operating with less scrutiny. Kurlantzick asserts that it began in 1961, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved Operation Momentum, a plan to create a proxy army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces in Laos, in order to minimize U.S. military involvement and keep the war hidden from the public at home, as well as most of Congress.

Kurlantzick’s account follows the war’s central characters, including the four instrumental people who led the operation: the CIA operative who came up with the idea; the charismatic general who led the Hmong army in the field; the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew; and the wild card paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong army and is believed to be an inspiration for Marlon Brando’s character in Apocalypse Now.

The book reveals that

  • by 1970, Operation Momentum was costing $500 million annually, the equivalent to $3.3 billion today;
  • the United States dropped more bombs on Laos than on any other country in history;
  • 80 percent of all bombing casualties in Laos were civilians; the war killed 10 percent of the population; and
  • one third of the bombs dropped on Laos remained unexploded after the war ended in 1975, and those bombs killed 20,000 Laotians in the three decades that followed.

The CIA had previously been a relatively small player in American policy, one that concentrated on intelligence and political work. Although the anticommunist forces supported by the United States were eventually defeated, “within the CIA, the Laos war quickly took on an exalted status, both as an operation that effectively stalled the communist takeover in Southeast Asia and as an operation that remade the agency into a stronger, bigger beast,” Kurlantzick writes.

The secret war in Laos created a CIA that fights with real paramilitary forces and weapons as much as it gathers secrets, contends Kurlantzick. The war became a template for CIA proxy wars all over the world, from Central America in the 1980s to today’s war on terrorism, where the CIA and Special Forces operate with little oversight.

More About This Publication

“The war’s entire compelling tale can be found in the lucid prose and revelatory reporting of Joshua Kurlantzick’s new book. . . . A vivid picture of protagonists like Vang Pao.”
—Economist

“The story of this highly unconventional war has been told before, but Kurlantzick provides a more complete picture using declassified CIA histories. He also analyzes how the conflict heralded the agency’s support of clandestine, paramilitary operations around the world as a virtual arm of the U.S. armed forces, still characteristic of its role today.”
—Associated Press

“As powerful as it had become, could the U.S. really ‘create stability where there is chaos’? As Kurlantzick reveals, the goal of the CIA in Laos was precisely the reverse: to create chaos where stability might have prevailed, if given the chance. In that sense, the effort was a success.”
—Washington Monthly

“In this important book, Kurlantzick writes in excruciating detail how the decisions by Eisenhower and Kennedy would turn the CIA from a spy organization to one whose primary role was covert warfare, involving the agency in ever-more controversial actions across the world.”
—Asia Sentinel

“Kurlantzick grippingly describes the war’s key battles on the Plain of Jars, Skyline Ridge near Long Cheng, and Sala Phou Khoun. His literary portrait of [Hmong leader] Vang Pao is one of the highlights of the book.”
—Asian Review

“In this well-written, and clearly critical, book centred on Laos, Joshua Kurlantzick not only tells the fascinating story of the American-backed Hmong guerrillas who fought against the North Vietnamese forces in the ‘Land of a Million Elephants.’ He also links the long-ago conflict to the manner in which the Central Intelligence Agency has become an essential military element in U.S. foreign policy. In doing so, the CIA, Kurlantzick argues, moved far beyond its role as a collector of information.”
—Interpreter

“In this excellent historical analysis, Kurlantzick . . . relates how the U.S. got involved with Laos, seeing it as a vital piece in the strategy of containing communism in Southeast Asia. . . . An instructive tale without a happy ending for any of the main players, and it continues to have relevance in the 21st century.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Riveting . . . Highly recommended for those wanting insight into the Hmong people and Cold War thinking.”
—Library Journal

“In his well-researched argument, the author relies on extensive materials prepared by other historians as well as first-person interviews with relevant characters (including Vang Pao) and recently declassified documents . . . an important demonstration of the U.S.’s ongoing, not-so-secret hand in world affairs. Kurlantzick’s comprehensive account provides new insights into the CIA’s objectives in the Laos war and the way that they were incorporated into its broader mission.”
—Kirkus

“Superb! Joshua Kurlantzick joins the ranks of preeminent Southeast Asia chroniclers like David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, and Stanley Karnow with what will become the benchmark book for an important part of America’s quagmire in that region—the CIA’s secret war in Laos. A Great Place to Have a War is rich and jarring in its historical insight, fast in its pacing, and gripping in its read. You won’t want to put it down.”
—Douglas Waller, author of Disciples: The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought for Wild Bill Donovan

“Gripping. Of all the CIA’s strange adventures during the Cold War, the secret war in Laos may have been the most bizarre. Joshua Kurlantzick has crafted a true drama with an improbable and colorful cast. An eye-opening, carefully researched, and wrenching yarn of what can go wrong when East meets West.”
—Evan Thomas, author of The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA

“Joshua Kurlantzick’s story of the CIA’s secret war in Laos brilliantly illuminates one of the most obscure yet harrowing chapters of the Vietnam conflict. With sure pacing and a gallery of rich characters, Kurlantzick shows how a modest operation to harass Communist forces escalated into a military onslaught that killed and displaced tens of thousands and wrecked a country. This is a cautionary tale of arrogance, recklessness, and unrestrained power that, tragically, finds echoes in many of today’s battlefields.”
—Joshua Hammer, author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

Malaysia–Regal Trouble

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January 29, 2017

Malaysia–Regal Trouble

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21715699-they-make-unlikely-saviours-malaysian-democrats-pin-their-hopes-countrys-royals

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In the days of old Malay Sultans rode Elephants

ELEPHANTS once carried the sultans of Johor—a sprawling state in southern Malaysia—on tours of their tropical kingdom. Sultan Ibrahim, the present ruler, prefers the saddle of a Harley Davidson. Each year the car-collecting monarch leads a crowd-pleasing convoy through the state’s ten counties, sometimes driving motorbikes but also boats, buses, scooters and trains. Last year locals flocked to see the sultan pilot a powerful truck painted in the colours of the state flag, its leather seats stitched with threads of gold.

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A 21st Century Malay Sultan rides around his state on a Harley Davidson

Sultan Ibrahim is the most charismatic and outspoken of Malaysia’s nine sultans (who reign ceremonially in their own states and take it in turns to serve five-year terms as Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the head of state of the entire country). Lately the profile of Johor’s royal family has been boosted by the extravagant success of the local football team, the Johor Southern Tigers. Owned by the sultan’s son, Tunku Ismail, the club has rebounded from a two-decade losing streak to win three championships in three years.

Image result for the crown prince of johorHRH The Tunku Mahkota Johor , Tunku Ismail Ibrahim

Yet with the scandal-hit administration of the Prime Minister, Najib Razak, growing increasingly authoritarian, Johor’s publicity-loving royals have also become unlikely voices of moderation. Against a backdrop of worsening race relations and decreasing religious tolerance, the sultan has applauded the contributions of Johor’s Chinese and Indian minorities, bemoaned his country men’s fading fluency in English and condemned the creeping Arabisation of its once moderate Muslim culture, notes Frances Hutchinson of ISEAS, a think-tank. As for the crown prince, when religious types criticised him for daring to shake hands with women last year, he resorted to the protection of an over-sized rubber glove in a parody of exaggerated piety.

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HRH Sultan Ibrahim is the most charismatic, daring and outspoken of Malaysia’s nine sultans

The sultans are considered guardians of the culture and religion of the Malay majority, but have little formal authority. In the early 1990s Mahathir Mohamad, the Prime Minister at the time, succeeded in pushing through constitutional amendments which withdrew the sultans’ power to veto legislation, and curbed the legal immunity their families enjoyed. These reforms were prompted by public outrage at thuggish royal behaviour, most notably that of Sultan Iskandar (father of Sultan Ibrahim), who was convicted of assault and manslaughter and only escaped prosecution for the fatal beating of a golf caddie thanks to his immunity as head of state. (The caddie had apparently laughed when the sultan fluffed a shot.)

In the years since, the precise limit of the royals’ role has been contested. (It is a dangerous debate: under an old colonial law, those deemed to have incited “disaffection” with the royals risk imprisonment for sedition.) Observers argue that the sultans are gradually growing more active as the popularity of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the party which has led Malaysia for 60 years, slowly declines. Constitutional lawyers grumbled in 2014 when the Sultan of Selangor, a rich state near Malaysia’s capital, declined to endorse the chief minister nominated by local legislators, asking for some alternatives instead. In 2015 the Sultan of Johor provoked similar head-scratching when he appeared to order the state government to ban e-cigarettes.

Now Malaysians have begun to wonder if the sultans might be called upon to moderate—or even to oust—Mr Najib’s floundering government, which has clung to power despite claims that it allowed billions of dollars to be looted from 1MDB, a state investment firm. Last year critics blasted the government for ignoring the rulers’ apparent disapproval of a noxious new security law; meanwhile the opposition is hoping that a royal pardon will free Anwar Ibrahim, its leader, who has been imprisoned since 2015 on trumped-up charges of sodomy. In September Mr Mahathir—still politically active in his nineties, and now one of Mr Najib’s fiercest critics—presented the Agong with a petition, signed by more than 1m Malaysians, seeking the prime minister’s removal.

Mr Mahathir’s request appears to have been quietly brushed aside, which may be for the best. Royal action to oppose Mr Najib would almost certainly provoke a “constitutional crisis”, reckons Saiful Jan, a political analyst. It is anyway not obvious that defenestrating Mr Najib is in the sultans’ interests: for those who would carve out a greater role in politics, a weak government is probably a boon.

The debate reveals the desperation of Malaysia’s liberals, who are repelled by reports of vast corruption but ill-served by an opposition mired in squabbles. It also says much about the woefulness of Mr Najib’s government that many reasonable citizens would like to empower unelected figures at its expense. That the country is rehashing old debates about the role of its hereditary rulers illustrates the continuing corrosion of its democratic institutions.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Regal trouble”

Malaysia: Exorcising Political Evil Spirits in Year of the Fire Rooster

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January 27, 2017

Malaysia: Exorcising Political  Evil Spirits in Year of the Fire Rooster

by Dean [email protected]

Image result for Excorcisinb the Evil Political Spirits in Malaysia

As deeply suspicious of superstition as I am, I must say I have a lot more confidence than usual that my annual Kung Hee Phatt Choi wishes will, or at least can, come true for the vast majority of us in this coming Lunar New Year of the Fire Rooster.

Because, in the process of scratching around among the prophecy-for-profit sites for enough grains of wisdom, or at least wishful-thinking, to inspire me to start pecking-away at the keyboard this week, I came across on that declared this Year of the Rooster to be a ‘wake-up call’ for the ‘exorcism of evil spirits.’

Admittedly, for all I know, this message may have been intended to have a mysteriously metaphysical or otherwise other-worldly meaning. But, simple soul as I am, I couldn’t help taking it literally, as I’ve long been conscious of the fact that there are far too many evil spirits existing and exercising themselves at our expense in this real world of ours, and a wake-up call to start exorcising them is way overdue.

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And nowhere more so than in Malaysia, where the evil spirits of the UMNO-BN regime have been, to switch to more appropriately to poultry-related imagery, treating the country as if was their own foul-yard in which to endlessly rule the roost, or in other words their very own dunghill to crow on, for an astonishing 59 years.

Astonishing to many Malaysian exiles and expatriates, perhaps, not to mention us non-Malaysians, but evidently not sufficiently alarming as to arouse the majority of the nation’s citizens from their deep slumbers.

Certainly there’s a considerable and growing minority of Malaysians who are as wide-awake as can be to the crying need to turn the UMNO-BN rule-the-roosters for once and for all into feather dusters as they so richly deserve.

But so far all their efforts at ridding the country of the curse of the UMNO-BN’s self-styled cocks-of-the-walk, and thus beginning the long process of exorcising Malaysia of the their fowl influence, have turned-out to be futile exercises in nothing much more than cackling and squawking.

Because far too many Malaysians are still allowing themselves to be lulled into silence or some species of waking stupor, if not outright sleep, by a system so totally cocked-up as to included ‘free’ chicken-feed cash handouts and election-day bribes, unconstitutional laws designed to make most people too chicken to complain or protest, and a ceaseless barrage of cock-and-bull stories from the boss-cockies themselves, their capons in the police, ‘justice’ system, ‘religious’ organisations, civil services, government-linked companies (GLCs), regime-funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and of course the cockroaches of the so-called ‘mainstream’ media.

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Najib Razak and Kulup– Eggheads stick together

And the ruling-regime roosters themselves, far from being fazed by the fact that when sufficient Malaysians finally arouse themselves they’ll be given the chop, neck and crop, and end up as jailbirds, have taken to crowing about being inspired by the election to the US presidency of that supreme coxcomb, Donald Trump.

Attributing Trump’s success despite his UMNO-style unpopularity to his dominance of ‘non-traditional’ media during the presidential campaign, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi urged his UMNO accomplices and supporters to do likewise.

But as usual Zahid was talking total crap in thus trying to portray UMNO and Trump as similarly underdogs and thus birds of the same feather, given that UMNO has for decades dominated Malaysia’s traditional media, not to mention all the other influential institutions in the nation, allegedly including, crucially, in this context, the Election Commission.

‘UMNO-BN can hardly emulate Trump’

And in any case, UMNO-BN can hardly emulate Trump in making the kinds of promises, however empty they will doubtless prove to be, that arguably won him the election, media or no media.

The idea of UMNO-BN’s promising to ‘make Malaysia great again’ would be ridiculous in light of the fact that the ruling regime has consistently led the nation further toward disgrace than anything remotely like greatness.

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And as for the possibility of its plagiarising Trump’s promise to ‘drain the Washington swamp’, surely even Zahid would have to draw the line at promising to drain the Putrajaya cesspit, given that it was UMNO-BN who dug the thing, and has spent decades filling this stinking morass to overflowing.

Meanwhile, not to be trumped in the talking-cock department by Zahid, Malaysia’s supreme rooster, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, was busy speaking, or, more appropriately, beaking about national unity.

Addressing a ‘Moments of Unity’ event organised by the Malaysian National Unity Department, he declared that “our theme today is ‘moments of unity’. But the truth is, we don’t want just moments of unity. What we want is unity always.”

He then went on with lots more in this tedious vein, before pointing-out that “Malaysia is a multicultural nation,” and therefore “unity has to be translated into action and cannot remain as merely words or thoughts.”

All of which came across as a load of typically self-serving poppycock, in light of his infamous threat at an UMNO Annual General Assembly some years ago to bathe his keris in Chinese blood, and his administration’s strenuous efforts since then to keep ruling the races by dividing them, while pretending to promote racial harmony.

But at least there’s one grain of reality in Najib’s urging for unity. Never in all the years that I’ve been observing Malaysian politics has any Prime Minister/head of UMNO so powerfully and increasingly unified Malaysians in their loathing of himself, his party and his ruling coalition.

And what with the Scorpene submarine scandal and the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder still unifyingly fresh in our memories, and the multi-billion-dollar 1MDB scam still ongoing, and massive ‘leakages’ being revealed in not just Felda and related companies, but also Tabung Haji and doubtless countless other regime-linked organisations yet to come, this Year of the Rooster looks like the most anti-Najib and anti-UMNO-BN unifying year yet.

And hopefully a wake-up call that will finally awaken enough Malaysians and fire them with a burning desire to put an end to this cock-up of a regime, or, in other words, to seal its cock-a-doodle-doom.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia’, ‘Even Madder about Malaysia’, ‘Missing Malaysia’, ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

 

A Britisher in Philadelphia: Prime Minister Theresa May speaks to the Republicans

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January 27, 2017

A Britisher in Philadelphia: Prime Minister Theresa May speaks to the Republicans

The first foreign leader to visit Donald Trump, Prime Minister Theresa May spoke to Republicans on her country’s special relationship with the United States, bringing back memories of Ronald Reagan and Dame Margaret Thatcher.  Listen to this eloquent leader who is a “conservative”, not a populist. We are not sure about political leanings of President Donald Trump except to note that the 45th President of the United States is all about America First and Making America Great Again.–Din Merican

Trump’s Victory is a Wake-up Call

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January 27, 2017

Trump’s Victory is a Wake-up Call: America First

By Michael S. H. Heng*

*Michael S. H. Heng is a retired professor who has held academic appointments in Australia, the Netherlands, and at 6 universities in Asia. He has published 5 books.

http://ippreview.com/index.php/Home/Blog/single/id/337.html

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The Controversial, Contentious, and Perplexing 45th President of the United States–Donald J Trump

Even without the benefit of hindsight, Donald Trump’s victory in the November 2016 US presidential election was not surprising. Although the majority of mainstream newspapers and opinion polls had predicted a victory for the Democrat candidate, a few sharp observers and analysts had been saying that the opposite would happen.

In 1989, Michael Moore made a movie “Roger and Me” about the devastation that descended on the city of Flint, Michigan after General Motors closed the car plant there. Since then we have seen 8 years of Bill Clinton and another 8 years of Barack Obama. What have the Democrats done to address the social and economic ills of Flint? Now the city is saddled with a water crisis, where the tainted tap water cannot be used for drinking, cooking or bathing. In the recent presidential election, the state of Michigan went to Donald Trump. This should have been predictable to any clear headed political observer.

The Bill Clinton presidency of 8 years was not as Hillary Clinton had put it: a great time of economic progress. That is what they like to think and persuade others to believe. Those were years that continued to favor the neo-liberal seeds planted earlier with the blessings of Ronald Reagan and the senior George Bush, with catastrophic blowback in the form of the 2008 financial crisis. The following 8 years of the junior George Bush were an unmitigated disaster with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But then came along Barack Obama with the promise of Hope and Change. The Great Recession ushered in by the financial crisis of 2008 was not used as an occasion to galvanize the nation to roll back the hanky-panky activities of the financial sector and to reinvent the economy. For 8 long years, his green shoots of recovery proved to be a disappointment. Millions of people just ceased to register as job seekers, because the jobs they were looking for had vanished. It was not unusual for a hotel doorman in New York City to juggle 3 jobs and his wife 2 jobs in order to make ends meet.1 Wages were so low and work so hard to come by.

The victory of Trump constitutes part of a global trend. It is a trend where the failure of ruling parties in the West and elsewhere to address the real and deeply felt grievances of their citizens have thrust political power or influence onto demagogues and xenophobes.  The populist backlash in the US was attributed in an analysis by Niall Ferguson to five factors: (a) surge in immigration, (b) rise in inequality, (c) increase in perception of political corruption, (d) the ongoing Great Recession, (e) the emergence of demagogues. When people are extremely fed up, they would prefer to listen to wild allegations and promises than to the “rational arguments” which have cheated them for too long.

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Rather than being consumed by rage, hate, and despair, it is better to treat Trump’s triumph as the serious symptom of a disease that has plagued social, cultural-intellectual, economic, and political life in the last few decades. Politically, it should be taken as a wake-up call for the political, media, bureaucratic, business, and academic elites who have benefited enormously from globalization and immigration.

Unless and until the problems faced by the working class are solved, it is safe to predict that phenomena more horrible than Trump’s victory are going to happen. In the worst-case scenario, they may pave the way for the demise of the peaceful and prosperous world order as we know it.

Without trying to be funny and cynical, it may be argued that Trump’s victory as a wake-up call is politically more valuable than a victory by Hillary Clinton. Her victory would have lent weight to the belief that the US has been doing pretty well. Sure, there are problems, but here comes another Clinton to solve them and make America even better.

History has provided many examples of how resistance by vested interests has resulted in the country experiencing economic difficulties and even demise, with vested interests buried with it.

Thinking along this line, it is wrong to disparage those angry and long-suffering citizens who turned anti-establishment and voted the thug-like and mendacious Trump into power. To blame those who voted for Trump is tantamount to blaming the victims of the past few decades for complaining and protesting. Instead of focusing attention on the gloomy horizon, it is better to think of ways to navigate away from it.

A good news is that Trump did not manage to win the popular vote, something that could have given him more political gravitas. Elsewhere, populist politicians have increased their influence, but are not strong enough yet to capture key political offices.

To reverse the further descent of politics, mainstream political parties will do well to do some sincere soul-searching. They have been living too long in their cozy world of make-believe, detached from the people they claim to serve, and uncritically swallowing the prescriptions of neoliberal economists. Have they for far too long been recruiting into their ranks ambitious people who take politics as an avenue for career advancement, just like their peers in the business world? Why have they failed to recruit those who are keen in their youth to take up politics as a calling? Why have they failed to fire up the enthusiasm of the youth in politics?  Have they been too nice in accommodating to the demands of big vested interests?

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At the level of ideas, there is a critical and urgent need to roll back the influence of market ideology in arenas that are patently not suitable for it, arenas such as healthcare and education. The political philosopher Michael Sandel has argued against the notion of the market society,2 and the political scientist Philip Bobbitt has written about the challenge of market state.3

At the level of the economy, there is an obvious need for reform. The US has the most enviable human resources and research infrastructure to conduct breakthrough scientific discoveries and technological innovations, which underpin high value-added economic activities. But somehow this great country has channeled its resources into financial engineering, which has inflicted destructive havoc on the real economy, and brought misery to millions of Americans and many more elsewhere in the world. The real enemy of America is Wall Street and other vested interests. Unless the value-destroying financial sector is tamed, with the rich sharing part of their wealth with the poor, and resources redirected to productive areas of research and development in the real economy, the once appealing American Dream will become more like an elusive dream, and to the most disadvantaged, a real nightmare.

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Perhaps the most challenging task is at the level of politics. How can the political class sink their petty quarrels in a genuine effort to make America great again? It calls for political reform that will demand a compromise from vested interests in both the economy and politics. History has provided many examples of how resistance by vested interests has resulted in the country experiencing economic difficulties and even demise, with vested interests buried with it. The challenge now, greater than ever before, confronts those politically conscious progressives to unite in their lofty project in order to pressure the elites to bow to economic and political reform.

At a philosophical level, here is a profound insight from Tao Te Ching by Laozi.4

Disaster is that on which good fortune depends.
Good fortune is that in which disaster’s concealed.
Who knows where it will end?

Notes

  1. Lie, C-I (2016, November 20). Private communications.
  1. Sandel, M. J. (2013). What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  1. Bobbitt, P. (2008). Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century. A. A. Knopf.
  1. Henricks, R. G. trans. (1992). Tao Te Ching. New York: Random House, chapter 58.

Additional Reading:

1.Michael Lind: Donald Trump, the Perfect Populist

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-the-perfect-populist-213697

2. Book Review: Theresa Gessler.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/book-review-what-is-populism-by-jan-werner-muller/