Donald Trump is America’s first elected autocrat. Seventy-seven million American voters — more than supported the Democrats — chose this outcome. Trump’s MAGA movement is driven by authoritarian populism. Trump is reveling in his role as a disrupting influence who is smashing America’s democratic norms, culture and institutions — and expectations of what is normal and even possible. As much as it enrages his detractors and others who find him contemptible, Donald Trump is a great man of history. There is America before Trump and Trumpism and MAGA and there is America after Trump and Trumpism and MAGA. Donald Trump is a nexus point.
Trumpism and MAGA’s rise to power here in the America is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of a global turn towards authoritarian populism (and outright fascism and naked authoritarianism).
This revolt against Western-style democracy is driven in part by growing wealth and income inequality, an elite class that is out of touch with the mass public, globalization and the neoliberal order, disruptive technologies such as the internet and social media (which have made propagandizing and manipulating the public much easier through disinformation and misinformation), future shock and other challenges to the existing social order.
Globalization, rather than unite the world has split societies asunder: creating a wine-sipping, somewhat wealthy, and sophisticated class which is swept into the wonders of the wider world; and an embittered working class that cannot compete as well and are consequently embittered.
The leaders of this authoritarian populist movement have no real interest in uplifting and empowering the broader public. Populism, for such leaders, is a way for them, in their primary role as self-interested actors and political entrepreneurs, to harness public discontent to personally enrich themselves and to transform their countries into kleptocracies and plutocracies that further restrict human flourishing and freedom.
In this emerging new world order, America under Trumpism will not be a “shining city on the hill” and the world’s leading democracy. Instead, as highlighted by Trump’s public ambushing and betrayal of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy on Friday, America will be more closely aligned with if not fully embracing malign actors such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia and other enemies of democracy and the West.
At The Economist, Adam Roberts writes:
Do you also hear that rumble from the east? It’s the sound of Vladimir Putin rubbing his hands with glee as America does his bidding in Europe. Even Mr Putin could not have scripted the eruption, on Friday, of a disastrous shouting match in the White House between Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and Volodymyr Zelensky. Mr Zelensky behaved foolishly. He might have been tired or frustrated, but should not have let himself be goaded by America’s vice-president. Mr Vance behaved shamefully. He set out to provoke and belittle the Ukrainian leader. Mr Trump then piled in, delighted to see his vice-president again behaving as an attack dog. The sad result is that Ukraine looks more isolated from America than before.
In her newsletter, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat contextualized Friday’s awful events this way:
In 2018, before the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, Trump said that he saw Russia as more of a “competitor” than an “enemy.” Seven years later, that competitor has become an ally. Whatever forms Russia-U.S. collaboration will take, more Americans will come to understand that the man they elected to “save the country” is far more interested in solving Putin’s problems than in governing America. That means wrecking American democracy at home and dismantling American power abroad.
In an attempt to gain some perspective on this dizzying time, the potential for more wars and armed conflict, and an international order that feels increasingly dystopic and on the verge of anarchy and chaos, I recently spoke with Robert D. Kaplan. He is the bestselling author of 23 books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including "The Loom of Time," "The Good American," "The Revenge of Geography," "The Coming Anarchy" and "Balkan Ghosts." His new book is "Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis." Kaplan holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic for many years, and is a former member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel.
How are you feeling given all that has happened so quickly in these last few weeks and months with Trump's shock-and-awe campaign against democracy and civil society? It's a moment in world history where so much has been unsettled so quickly.
I am 72 years old and have lived my life in the benevolent shadow of the postwar order. I have memories of President Eisenhower on television. Now I watch a president who has dismantled USAID, created by President Kennedy, and seems uninterested in NATO, created under President Truman. It is shocking to observe. But the postwar order has lasted 80 years since the end of World War II, and that is an incredibly long time by any standard. History teaches that nothing is permanent. But that can be a cruel lesson.
Given your expertise, how do you make sense of both the granular events and the bigger picture?
I am reading as much history as I can, and intervening only when I feel I have something original to say. The Russian Revolution of 1917 is especially revealing: It demonstrates how a people can challenge a regime with one goal in mind, and get the opposite result, a far worse tyranny. I have a feeling that many of those who voted for President Trump will at the end of the day be very unhappy with the result. Radical populism such as Trumpism often ends badly.
How much of the global democracy crisis and the rise of authoritarian populism was predictable? Was it path-dependent?
I think globalization made it inevitable. Globalization, rather than unite the world has split societies asunder: creating a wine-sipping, somewhat wealthy and sophisticated class which is swept into the wonders of the wider world, and an embittered working class that cannot compete as well. It is from that embittered class that authoritarian populism gets its followers. What we are seeing is the backlash to globalization.
It strikes me that the global democracy crisis is a symptom, and not the primary cause, of deeper societal problems, not just here in the U.S. but within liberal democracies around the world.
Mass democracy does not necessarily bring peace and order. It can also lead to the tyranny of the majority, where the 51 percent that wins an election tyrannizes the 49 percent that loses. Such tyranny occurs when the political center dissolves and gives way to the extremes. The Republican Party has moved from the center-right to the far right. And the Democratic party has moved from the center-left to the progressive left. Without a center, elections become wars of survival, with a take-no-prisoners mentality.
I do not feel Trump is a fascist or a neofascist. He cannot be compared with people like Hitler and Mussolini. His crimes are simply not in their league. He is a populist radical, who is seeking to overturn the system that was created by elites at the end of World War II. The truth is, no system, not even a mass democracy, can function effectively without bureaucratic elites. He is at war with this class of people, who happen to be fine, highly qualified, politically moderate types who we desperately need in government.
How has American exceptionalism, along with other cultural myths, created a type of myopia or blindness to the types of discontent, rage at the elites and collective anger that helped to birth the democracy crisis and the Age of Trump?
American exceptionalism is problematic because it assumes that our history with mass democracy is more relevant to every other country than their own history. This got us into trouble in the Middle East and elsewhere. The world is incredibly varied and complex, and we don’t have the answers for many of its problems. We inherited our institutions and system of government more or less from early modern England. We are not in a position to lecture countries in the developing world that are trying to create new legitimate systems from scratch.
Words mean things. The average American, and I would say the average journalist, who is likely a generalist, does not have a real understanding of the language often used to describe this moment of democracy crisis and rising illiberalism. In basic terms, what is meant by “globalization” and “neoliberalism”? I would also ask about “populism” and "nationalism.”
Globalization is the export of Western culture and management practices throughout the world. Neoliberalism is mainly about the benefits of free trade to liberal societies. Populism means rule by the so-called common people as opposed to rule by the elites. Nationalism is identification with one’s own nation to the exclusion of other nations and national groups.
Whatever happened to "the end of history"?
The phrase the “end of history” is misunderstood. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama meant it to mean the end of the search for the best system of government, which was answered after the collapse of Communism at the end of the Cold War. Liberal democracy, he said, has won the historical competition for the best, most sustaining system, where people are happiest. That is still a defensible proposition, despite everything that has happened.
America has been described as the indispensable nation, a "shining city on the hill," and the world’s leading democracy. How is that being reassessed in the Age of Trump?
America for over a century has been the bumper sticker for the superiority of mass democracy. I confess that the Age of Trump has certainly blemished America’s reputation, and with it the reputation of democracy the world over. Liberal democracy in the abstract may be the best system of government, as Fukuyama argues, but it will face serious challenges in the years and decades ahead. It is something that must always be struggled for.
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