Angel Jaramillo Torres
What does Trump’s arrival at the White House herald? Will he be a figure of the decline of the United States, or will he lead to a rethinking of its role in the world?
We still don’t know if Trump is a figure of the imperial decline of the United States or a personality of the rejuvenation of the world’s oldest liberal democracy.
For his supporters, Trump could be an avatar of Andrew Jackson, that populist personality from Appalachia who shelved the hegemony of the Bostonian and Virginian aristocracy, regions from which the first six US presidents came. Indeed, perhaps unwittingly, Jackson transformed American politics and moved it in a more democratic direction.
However, Trump could also be a failed president capable of sinking a country that is losing its hegemony in the world. Today, the United States produces approximately 16 percent of the world’s output, while at its peak, it contributed around 50 percent. The stratospheric amount of its debt seems to prove thinkers like Paul Kennedy right, who argued in his famous The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) that a combination of increased military spending and increased public debt has led to the fall of empires in human history.
It is assumed that Trump came to power in part to rectify his country’s policy of military intervention in the world. Now, we know that this is not necessarily the case.
Trump may want to return to the gunboat diplomacy of presidents such as William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and even Woodrow Wilson. He wants to end US military and economic interventions for humanitarian reasons. Trumpism does not have a theory of just war. His economic or military wars will be hegemonic or imperial, founded on intimidation and aggression.
His biggest problem, however, will be domestic. Although he presents himself as someone who will radically change US politics and society, he does not have a mandate to be a totally transformative president. Not only are his majorities in Congress weaker now than in his first term, but at least half of the population is not dissatisfied with the United States as it is today.
At the end of the day, Trump may become a president like John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, or Richard Nixon, who all faced wide-ranging constitutional crises.
Trumpism today is a minority that is trying to transform the status quo, but the fact that it is a small faction does not mean that it can fail. Let us remember that in human history, the great revolutionary transformations have been carried out by ideological minorities with a great sense of history and with enormous will and energy. Think of the Bolsheviks in Russia or the Maoists in China.
In any case, we should no longer regard Trump as an ideologically isolated president. Around him, a current of opinion has formed, and his novel political philosophy has gained influence not only in the United States at large but also in Washington, D.C., where his ideologues have established think tanks.
Trump’s bet is risky and ambitious. It is rooted in anger and resentment. His idea is to eliminate the gentle ethos that Democrats and Republicans have shared until now in favor of a choleric spirit that has occasionally taken hold of the American soul. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of “the blonde beast” as the caste of masters who, according to him, invented human civilization. Perhaps “the blonde beast” in the White House heralds a new, more corrosive, unjust, and predatory world. We will soon find out. ~
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