Just a month ago, those who occupy significant positions in the so-called international community realized that the coming years would be quite different from what almost everyone had anticipated. To the anguish of many and the joy of some, Donald Trump’s resounding victory in the North American elections had an immediate impact on the mood of almost all the political and cultural elites on the planet.
Among other things, the imminent return to maximum power of such an impetuous character strengthened the Israelis who, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, are fighting against those determined to wipe them off the face of the Earth. It also weakened Iranian theocrats who fear that, unlike Joe Biden, Trump will help Israel eliminate its nuclear facilities. According to Rafael Grossi, the Argentine in charge of the UN atomic agency, Iran has already accumulated enough enriched uranium to provide itself with a nuclear arsenal, something that, for obvious reasons, Israel is not willing to tolerate. In any case, Iran’s withdrawal deprived the Hezbollah jihadists, the militia that the Israelis are in the process of dismantling, of their main source of weapons and money, thus contributing to the resounding fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria.
The seismic tremors that Trump has unleashed are also affecting the European Union: in addition to preparing to face the protectionist offensive that the North American president-elect has threatened to launch from the first day of his administration, the member countries will have to greatly increase their military spending just when a growing proportion of its inhabitants are protesting against tax pressure, hence the seemingly inexorable advance of the “ultra-right” that is taking advantage of the feeling of the end of the era that has spread for the good named Old Continent.
Last week, the French government collapsed after Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s attempt to convince parliamentarians that there was no alternative to austerity because his country would no longer be able to live beyond its means failed. Those who claim to believe that France is about to experience a devastating economic collapse followed by a prolonged decline similar to that of Argentina may be exaggerating, but if you take the numbers seriously, there are good reasons for pessimism.
Likewise, Germany, where the inept Chancellor Olaf Scholz has become extremely unpopular, is ceasing to be the legendary industrial power of other times thanks to the mistakes made by both the current government and its predecessors, including the one led by Angela Merkel. As in the United States and other parts of the rich world, deindustrialization programs promoted by environmentalists concerned about global warming are greatly harming workers and growing swaths of the middle class who, in search of alternatives, tend to find them in movements reviled as right-wing, of which the one led by Trump, the one believed destined to restore “the greatness” of the United States, is by far the most influential.
Although many scholars have become accustomed to minimizing the role of certain people in the history of our species and attribute what happens to blind forces that are rarely detected by those who are affected by them, it seems indisputable that Trump has had a decisive impact on the behavior and thought of many millions of men and women both in the United States and in the rest of the world. In the opinion of some “progressives” who are related to the left wing of the Democratic Party, the fact that Americans have preferred him to Kamala Harris is due to nothing more than an epidemic of stupidity among the ignorant populace. It is a sentiment that French President Emmanuel Macron surely shares when he thinks about the refusal of the majority of French people to help him reduce the already gigantic fiscal deficit. In France, the slogan “there is no money” does not work.
However, both in Europe and in the United States, the most lucid progressives attribute the shift to the right that is drastically changing the political landscape of the developed world to the arrogance of the cultural elites that have formed in recent years. There is no doubt that supporters of the “woke”, that strange amalgam of policies and attitudes based on ethnic and gender differences with which cult activists propose to subordinate supposedly privileged white and heterosexual men to women and people of color, They have provoked a strong reaction against them that has harmed center-left politicians. Everything suggests that the “cultural battle” will gain more intensity in the coming months as Trump and his supporters begin to implement a series of profound educational reforms that are already sowing panic in universities such as Harvard and Yale, whose academic authorities are among the most propagandists. effective of the creed.
For Trump and, even more so, for those around him, men like the fabulously wealthy businessman Elon Musk and the vice president-elect J: D. Vance, woke Americans are “useful idiots” who have put themselves at the service of the sworn enemies of the Western civilization and are doing everything possible to undermine it from within by denigrating its traditions and treating it as a purely criminal enterprise. They see them as allies of Chinese nationalists, Islamists of various stripes, militants of the “global south” and others who not only dream of increasing their own power and influence but also, in many cases, of making the dominant world culture much less “Eurocentric”.
Trump supporters are far from the only ones who think this way. In Europe, even the Scandinavians are reacting against the excesses of those who furiously criticize the ways of their own country without daring to do the same to those of other parts of the world whose inhabitants, they insist, are innocent victims of terrible evil. Western and therefore cannot be guilty of anything. And in Argentina, Javier Milei’s fervent participation in the pro-Western crusade in which Trump is playing a leading role, has allowed him to add extra-economic ingredients to the confusing libertarian ideology that has formed around him in addition, of course, to acquire an exceptional degree of notoriety on the international stage.
As it could not be otherwise, Trump has his sights set on China which, thanks to its demographic dimensions, has an economy that, due to its size, rivals the North American one. Although there are signs that the long period of frenetic growth of the reborn “Middle Empire” that, in just one generation, has allowed it to transform from an immensely impoverished country into one that has regions that are relatively prosperous, is about to end, it is the only one that, for now, is in a position to surpass the United States in the global economic and geopolitical hierarchy, which would allow it to spread its authoritarian culture to other parts of the planet. For Americans, including Democrats in the Biden and Harris administration, it is necessary to do everything possible to stop China before it becomes too powerful. It is to be expected, therefore, that once in the White House, Trump will pressure Latin American governments, including Milei’s, so that they do not fall into the clutches of the voracious Asian dragon.
Until very recently, the conviction tended to consolidate that the West, tormented by doubts of all kinds stimulated by “progressives”, had resigned itself to being evicted from the privileged place it has occupied for several centuries. It would seem that few were concerned that this would be a terrible eventuality for those who believe in democracy, freedom of expression, women’s rights and other benefits of Western origin.
Be that as it may, in recent weeks the West – that is, the international community that is made up of societies that have internalized the values claimed over the centuries by mostly European thinkers – has scored some important successes. Thanks above all to Israel, Iran’s power in the Middle East has diminished so much that the very aggressive ayatollahs were no longer in a position to support the regime of their friend Al-Assad. Also suffering a strategic defeat in Syria was the Russia of dictator Vladimir Putin who, convinced that the West was too decadent to stop it, made the mistake of forcing European leaders to abandon the pacifist illusions that many had adopted after the implosion of Syria. the Soviet Union. While it seems that Putin hopes that Trump will force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cede territory in exchange for an armistice, it is more likely that the American, impressed by Russia’s inability to continue supporting its Syrian ally, will seize the opportunity that ends to receive to warn him that it would be in his interest to terminate the imperial project that has already cost Mother Russia hundreds of thousands of dead and an even greater number of wounded.
