Opinion Sur
The American two-party system is broke. The Republican Party is no longer –either in substance or form. The Democratic Party has become the party of the status quo by default. One way or another, with whomever comes to pass, the next administration will be short lived, and will either prolong the geopolitical impasse of pax americana, or usher it onto a more precipitous decline.*
As the political season in the United States heats up, it behooves us to consider some fundamentals about American politics and their impact upon the world. There are several unique features of this political season –some of them with long-term implications for international relations. In this article I shall enumerate them. In order to avoid the traps of prediction in which all social sciences are frequently ensnared, it is important to do two things: first, to view the current situation with the long-range lenses of history, and second, to examine alternative scenarios for the mid-term.
With the long-range lenses of history, for a good perspective let us consider ancient Rome. Republican Rome gave way to the Empire when the republican institutions and the republican political culture could no longer cope with the challenges of global expansion and eventual overreach. For the first five hundred years Rome was an austere and well-organized predatory republic (just as America has been a predatory democracy since its foundation), always growing; for the second five hundred, it became a tributary empire that peaked, declined, and collapsed. Of the 150 emperors only five were reputedly really good (by most accounts the most attractive was Marcus Aurelius). Quite early in its imperial phase, Rome managed to survive some crazy ones. Their antics are remembered to this very day. After the perverse Caligula Nero was the most erratic and corrupt. I focus on Nero for one reason only –one that resonates today. He was cruel and arbitrary. Romans sighed in relief on his demise, but one of them noted that something fundamental had changed.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman senator and a historian of the Empire and this is what he wrote (I am dusting off my old Latin books from high school):
Finis Neronis ut laetus primo gaudentium impetu fuerat, ita varios motus animorum non modo in urbe apud patres aut populum aut urbanum militem, sed omnis legiones ducesque conciverat, evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romae fieri. An English translation reads like this: “Welcome though Nero’s death had been in the immediate emotion of all who rejoiced, yet it had roused not only volatile passions in the capital among the senators, the citizenry, and the military in the city; but also all the legions and their commanders: the secret of power having been divulged, that an emperor could be made elsewhere than in Rome.” The bold italics are mine because I think they are brilliant and perceptive lines. Nero had been challenged by outsiders and driven to commit suicide. From then on, Roman rulers would frequently come from outside the capital’s establishment—mostly adventurers, profiteers, and ambitious military commanders. Not only had the republic succumbed to the empire, but the empire had fallen prey to the energoumenos –energetic outsiders possessed by a devilish zeal.
Fast forward to Donald Trump, the vociferous tycoon that has taken the US by storm. He succeeded in orchestrating the hostile takeover of a fractious party –the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower. The Republican Party had it coming for some time, having shown greater capacity to stall government than governing itself. During the last presidential primaries it fielded too many weak candidates beholden to vested interests but pretending to give voice to social groups that liberal globalization has marginalized, in particular the declining lower middle class and very especially white Christian males. These presidential aspirants only succeeded in debunking each other and finally left the ground to a more genuine outsider: a real estate mogul who did not need sponsors to finance his campaign and who was willing to give a strident voice to the resentful petty bourgeoisie. In fact, Trump’s core support consists of the wailing cry of a group upon which history is about to roll. Trump has managed to turn an established party (now destroyed) into a movement with a relatively narrow but extremist social base: white supremacist, xenophobic, nativistic, nationalist and isolationist. With this base he seeks to storm the presidency as he has stormed the GOP. Other things being equal, he is unlikely to succeed. But will things be equal? He lacks a hard organizational core, strong allies and backers, and the support of significant elites. But a major scandal among Democrats, a catastrophic event on US soil, or a severe outbreak of open war in some hot spot of the world could turn the tide in his favor. Even if and when he fails, the damage has been done.
As in Rome after the death of Nero, in the United States of America the secret of power has been divulged, that a president could be made elsewhere than in Washington, by a man bold enough or by a gang of energoumenos riding a tide of popular fear and discontent with existing elites and institutions. History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Adolf Hitler failed miserably in his first attempt to seize power (the beer-hall putsch of 1923). But ten years later, under more dire circumstances for the German Republic, he succeeded, this time within the bounds of established political procedures and a mass following.
One way or another, as in post-republican Rome or in post-republican Germany, so in post-republican America: alea iactae sunt for the Romans, Die Würfel sind gefallen for the Germans, and for us… the dice are still in the air!. The tempo of history has quickened. What it took 500 years for pax romana to fizzle may take only 50 for pax americana to do the same.
One way or another: on the Republican side, if Donald Trump is defeated, the GOP may be dragged down with him and lose control of all, or at least half, of Congress. It might be its worst electoral defeat since 1964, when Barry Goldwater lost to Lyndon B. Johnson. There is an even worse scenario for the GOP: if Donald Trump wins in November, the party will have to live with his disastrous policies for four years, and be burdened for ever with this sorry baggage. Trump would make America small again. One way or another, the Republican Party as we knew it is dead.
The other pole of the tattered American two-party system –the Democratic Party—has different issues, and for the moment will survive the insurgency at the right-end of the spectrum. The party finally has come to rally behind the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, but somewhat reluctantly and primarily to block Trump. The democrats are also split and have sustained their own insurgency, this time from the left in the movement around Senator Bernie Sanders. In my opinion the movement will not fade but rather grow, especially under her future administration, if it comes to pass.
Mrs. Clinton is far from being a beloved figure except among her staff and courtesans. She has been a formidable, relentless pursuer of the presidential prize by setting up electoral machinery that is much better in its operation than in the goals to which it is applied, except the pursuit of power for power’s sake. The Clinton Foundation is a case in point: it is clever scaffolding for climbing to power, with charitable works as a collateral enterprise. Moreover, the instrumental nature of her personality and her actions are much too visible as such, and hence incapable of eliciting enthusiasm. Given the Republican disarray, under a Clinton administration the Democratic Party will become the party of the establishment and of the status quo, albeit sugar-coating the maintenance of the system with a number of progressive initiatives that will not go to the heart of the problems afflicting global capitalism: acute inequality, advancing automation, decaying infrastructure, debt-fueled growth, and poor education of the populace. Behind the Clinton apparatus stand the mainstays of the establishment: the media, the high-tech sectors, the financial world, and Hollywood of course. It is an ancien regime making gestures of reform, with Marie Antoinette turned policy wonk.
A future Clinton administration would nevertheless push back the insurgency on the far right and strengthen some institutions (none of them democratic by the way) that will contain populist adventurism, in particular the military and the Supreme Court. This might create time and space for a more rational and truly progressive movement to coalesce and to grow. That is a glimmer of a ghost of hope: the reformation of the Republicans into a genuine conservative party rather than a neo-fascist faction, and the emergence of a well organized and updated left with and without the Democrats.
One way or another, in the medium term the American political system will struggle to limp along and the country will confront a series of strategic impasses around the world. Inside the US parties could be overtaken by movements while abroad the international arena might witness multiple confrontations between nations much less able than before to rally around blocks or to reach a reasonable consensus on the challenges that will affect us all. In geopolitical terms we are back to an older “balance of power,” to Realpolitik, and to the Hobbesian universe of pervasive conflict.
One way or another, the next American administration by either party (or what remains of it) will be most likely a one-term presidency: if by so-called liberals, with a distracting cover of political correctness; if by so-called conservatives, with a distracting cover of witch hunts and scapegoats. Meanwhile in many parts of the world the life of man and woman will continue to be nasty, brutish, and short.
I would not have liked to live in the post-Roman Europe of the fifth century, and do not cherish spending my remaining years in a post-American world that has lost its compass. But in the end some compass will be found and an alter-globalism may emerge from the confusion of the present. In the next few articles I will try to situate the new points of light in the sunset of the West.
* In this article I use upper-case and lower-case versions of “republican” and “democratic.” In upper case the terms Republican and Democratic refer to American political parties, while the lower-case terms republican and democratic refer to long established concepts and traditions in political theory.
