Mainstream pundits are mourning the loss of the old order. After all, it was their bread and butter. The refrain is, “The world we knew is dying, slain by the would-be emperor on the Potomac.”
For one thing, Trump didn’t kill the international order. For another, the earth is dying. So the old order needed to die.
In the next breath, analysts announce, “But something else is becoming visible: a new world is waiting to be born.”
There may be a new world waiting to be born, but it sure as hell won’t be based on national sovereignty and national security, which were the givens of the international/multilateral order.
It’s true that “it is not just Trump who is an unreliable ally; sadly, it is the US itself.” But that still misses the mark. Trump’s America is merely the catalyst for the accelerating collapse of the post-world war, post-Westphalian order that’s been occurring since the Bush-Cheney “global war on terror.”
Let’s connect the dots. The jackboots at ICE are killing mothers and male nurses in Minneapolis, and violently pulling disabled young women from their cars because they drove into the wrong intersection at the wrong time. Bush’s global war on terror has come home to America under Trump.
At the same time, the USA is sending an “armada” to attack Iran as the Trump Administration’s “domestic terrorist” propaganda backfires. Where is this entire situation heading?
It’s obvious what the deranged man at the rudderless helm of the most powerful military in the world will do when he’s cornered. He’ll do the same thing he’s done with the diversions of attacking Venezuela or threatening to invade Greenland, just on a larger scale.
He’ll start a war, a real war. That’s what the American armada is on its way to Iran to give the child president the option to do on his malevolent whim.
If it’s true that “a new world is waiting to be born,” it awaits the complete collapse of the old order. Without a “whisper of hope,” which is the last gasp for the continuity of the past, a new foundation has to be poured before the last strut crumbles under the weight of war.
But what is the new foundation? And can we see the outlines of an imperfect but true order through the fog of chaos, and form a basic strategy, before war breaks out?
We feel the ground on which every animal on earth, including Homo sapiens, is shaking beneath our feet. Living in California all my adult life, I’ve been in my share of earthquakes.
With regard to a big one, I was living at the epicenter of the Loma Prieta earthquake. During that 7-point quake, the infill from the last really big one, in 1906, which destroyed San Francisco, liquefied, and an entire section sank.
The lesson? It’s stupid to build, much less rebuild on top of the old rubble. Yet that’s just what many politicians and pundits are proposing, just as they did after the USSR collapsed.
To mix a metaphor, China is fishing for countries in the dead zone of the international order for middle and little countries. And European nations (acting separately from the EU), are taking the bait.
Canada is also aligning with the European states. As Mark Carney said during his Davos discourse, “Canada is forging a new strategic partnership with China.”
An editorial in the Global Times, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, said the world risked “returning to the law of the jungle” and that China and the EU should cooperate in building “a shared future for mankind.” What do they mean by that?
They certainly don’t mean the self-determination of all peoples, including the Taiwanese, Tibetans and Uyghurs. Or for that matter, Ukrainians, under a vicious, interminable siege by Russia, enabled by China. Therefore what China is proposing is a sham, no better, and undoubtedly worse than the American-made international order collapsing around and upon us.
Middle powers like Canada and little powers like Ireland are making the mistake in thinking they have to choose between the USA and the CCP. However, China’s “shared future for mankind” equates China’s national interest with a shared future, and China’s national security with self-determination.
The militarization of Europe and the UK, under the guise of defending against the American frenemy on one side and the Chinese frenemy on the other, is an even greater delusion.
The chestnut that Putin is toasting vodkas and Xi is toasting baijius at the crumbling of the international order doesn’t comport with reality. Chinese policymakers acknowledge, “We have always believed that we are the greatest beneficiary of the international order after the cold war,” adding ‘it is difficult for us to accept that the current order is undergoing a major transformation.”
The transformation must be at the core of consciousness within us, effectively ending man’s atavistic tribalism, based on identifying with particular groups for security. If not, we’ll just rebuild on the infill from the collapsed inter-national order.
Ending man’s ancient pattern of tribalism depends on a deeper transmutation — the awakening of awareness and igniting of insight in a sufficient number of people around the world.
With respect to a basic strategy, can California and Governor Newsom step away from Trump and the federal government enough to see that this state, with the fourth largest stand-alone economy in the world, has the cache and clout to lead on the world stage?
That certainly doesn’t mean California seceding and forming its own military.
The window of opportunity is short however. And the vision of California drawing the best people from around the world to step into the global ethical and leadership vacuum has to begin to be implemented now.
Tactically, Governor Newsom needs to ease up on the in-your-face-Trump maneuvers like he displayed in Davos. As he accurately but rather impolitically said there, “It’s time to buck up, it’s time to get serious and stop being complicit. I can’t take this complicity. People rolling over. I should have brought kneepads for all the world leaders … this is pathetic.”
Trying is lying, and dopes live in terms of hopes.
Global citizens cannot roll over for Xi’s China anymore than they can continue to lie down before Trump’s America. Minnesotans are demonstrating what resistance to tyranny looks like in the United States.
Can human beings from around the world who are pouring spiritual and philosophical foundations in insight unite with people with economic and technological resources to step into the vacuum before it’s too late?
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