Biden's Last Stand

The attempt to contain Trump continues ...

Far too much is happening! Public domain reporting has, unfortunately, collapsed into a fug of hysteria and propaganda surrounding so-called ‘hybrid war’ interpretations of the multiple crises emerging with, no doubt, more to come. Blowing up a senior Russian General in his home city with an IED is apparently now an act of war and not of terrorism. We see open denial of the fact that a constitutional coup has been mounted in a European State (Romania) in order to buy time for a NATO presence to effect pressure on Russia in the resolution of that same war. The Russian General, of course, was the one responsible for many extremely doubtful claims about Western bio-weapons capacity and who knows who is responsible for the ludicrous drone hysteria on America’s East Coast. There are brute denials of important new facts in the case of a convicted ‘serial killer’ nurse in the UK and attempts to deny that few players in the increasingly sordid Middle Eastern game do not resort to imprisonment without due process in order to retain power or exert power. War crimes are now as acceptable in defence of national security as they were when we incinerated tens of thousands of civilians from the air in the 1940s and as they were to Nazis fighting their deluded and panicked war against ordinary Jewish families. Evil stalks our species once again as it always must and always will.

We are not so much dealing with a world of false facts as one of mass delusion and denial in which every fact is filtered through a lens of some pre-set ideological narrative without a sense of history or context. It is a sign both of the collapse of education in the West and the emergence of a fundamentally defensive hybridised warfare coming out of the East. Only the emerging countries within the BRICS appear to be retaining their sanity. Everything is connected and yet nothing is being connected. We praise this event and condemn another on the basis that it fits or does not fit with some narrative we have inherited, some habit of mind, some unthinking belief. We are becoming excitable fools. The unwitting (because no one is truly clever enough or has sufficient information to do this deliberately) preparation of populations for war continues - the death instinct has taken over as it does periodically in our species. And yet, for most people, this time is like the summer of 1914 or the summer of 1939, a time when everything is happening somewhere else and where a form of fatalism may result in everyone accepting their final destiny of meaningless conflict because of their own functional impotence in the face of a system totally out of anyone’s control. This is both modern democracy and anxious authoritarianism in a nutshell in their dance of death. It is probably in our nature.

Much of this polycrisis in the very short term emanates from one simple fact – the outgoing Biden Administration in the US is not going quietly but is attempting to lock in its ‘deep state’ strategies to the greatest possible degree in order to limit the revolutionary strategic and national potential for change represented by Donald Trump. In doing so, the current Administration is triggering crises amidst uncertainty while those players resistant to historic US policy are attempting to limit their own actions (regardless of provocation) in the hope of having someone in place that they can do business with on their terms. The Biden ploy is working to some extent - Trump has switched position on the US military presence in Syria using the rather lame excuse that American lives are less at stake when it is only 900 operatives in play. Whether 900 operatives are sufficient to help the Kurds hold back the ‘Ottoman’ assault without a serious commitment of devastating air power against them is a moot point. The question will only be how much Trump is aware of this pre-regime manipulation and whether he cares over much or actively resents it. We have no way of knowing.

A key issue that will divide the strategic position of America today and that of Trump in and after 2025 is the overall approach to the delineation of imperial boundaries. All empires oscillate between fortification of borders and buying off threats outside the borders. Trump moves the border back to the US itself (and Israel) and fortifies it. The old order seeks constantly to expand the empire beyond the capacity to sustain it and to seek to govern it indirectly through ‘satraps’ (actually middle class elites with a stake in the economic order that drives the US). The old order had spent considerable resources on containment operations but its global middle class ‘forgot’ about the populations within their own dying nation states, no more so than in the US itself.

Past strategies included attempts to ensure expansion through regime change at the margins of rival empires (e.g. Belarus, Georgia), undermining those empires through promoting secessionary movements (e.g. Tibet, Uighurs) and even trying to promote revolt at the heart of those empires to effect liberal and reformist takeover (e.g. Iran, Syria) with whatever allies came to hand. Apart from Syria, these efforts have been failing or faltering although the Iranians are rattled enough now for hard-liners to start muttering about impeachment of their reformist President who may reasonably be regarded as both what most Iranians want and as a stalking horse for international liberalism and ultimate US dominance (these are all far from incompatible). Yet now time is running out for ‘centrists’ with only a little over a month to the arrival of the Don and this Don does not flow quietly.

The Crisis for the Old Order

Worse, liberal panic has been triggered by ‘blow back’ - the same risks of regime change but now emerging with in their own periphery (e.g. Romania, South Korea) on terms that (as in Georgia and Ukraine) are beginning to raise serious questions as to whether democracy is going to be sacrificeable to preserve ‘liberalism’. This presents a massive internal contradiction for the West’s self image and middle class appeal. Even the British Government is dabbling with organisational changes to defer indicative local council elections for fear of the result. Although the moment has passed, the perfectly legitimate AfD in Germany has only just escaped attempts to ban it after a campaign of vilification. Lawfare and regime change strategies, albeit in a lower key, are moving out of Washington (where Trump can almost certainly be relied on to slash State Department and CIA funds for foreign intervention).

Instead we are seeing bungling, inexperienced and chaotic alliance interventions without any necessary direct US involvement as more and more people in Europe and East Asia (although not necessarily a majority yet) start to question politically-driven economic strategies that threaten to pauperise their own populations in order to effect grand strategic ends of no interest to them. Ironically the revolt replaces political Americanism (rule by middle class elites through only weakly democratic ‘liberal democracy’) with a radicalised form of economic Americanism - libertarian economics within self-defining nation states where the driving interests are entrepreneurs and technologists at every level rather than technocrats and managers.

The ultimate irony is that working class populations can now be divided into those with a subordinate but vulnerable and weakening stake in the old order (mostly in the public sector) and those abandoned by middle class elites who see opportunities in libertarian economics and cultural norms. In the latter case, the systematic destruction of both traditionalism and socialism by liberal elites is slowly bring these two mental models into increasing alignment so that a right wing populist like Farage can surprise by calling for the nationalisation of a Thatcher era utility and a left wing populist like Galloway can take strongly traditionalist positions on social questions. Similar processes are taking place in the dialectic between the BSW and AfD in Germany while Tulsi Gabbard and RFK represent similar radical responses that can apparently work well with entrepreneurs like Musk and Ramaswamy.

A great deal of what has been happening in these last days of the Biden Administration can thus be explained as an attempt to take as much ground as possible before Trump arrives (e.g. by supporting rebel assaults on Syria and the buttressing of Ukraine) or as actions by allied ‘centrists’ supportive of the ‘West’ in trying to ensure, in an often clumsy and ill-considered way without US involvement, that they can hold on to assets by any means possible (Georgia, Romania, South Korea). As things stand today, the Georgian pro-EU coup seems to have failed, the Romanian election to have been anti-democratically cancelled on fairly spurious grounds and the South Korean President to have been humiliated, now reliant (as in Romania) on constitutional judges coming to the rescue. Increasingly, centrism is relying on judicialism and not democracy to counter democratic populism. This is a logical but a dangerous line to take in a West that claims democracy as a core principle. It tears away the curtain that hides the Wizard of Oz. The Church is pulled in to help the King control the Barons.

Trump’s Challenge to Global Liberalism

There is, of course, much more at stake than liberal democracy in its constitutional form. Centrist ideology is associated with at least four other positions under threat from Trumpism: a) the very notion of an international order which has been largely shattered by the processes of intervention since the Iraq War, leading to the West tolerating Israeli ‘national security’ incursions while condemning Russia in Ukraine (which is intellectually absurd); b) the commitment to Net Zero and state support for policies to manage climate change where ‘forced savings’ to effect a new phase of industrialisation are borne entirely by the lower economic echelons of society; c) the ideal of global collaboration on financial stability and against tariffs (in essence, the core of ‘globalist’ neo-liberalism) which enriches the large global middle class but sees national working classes increasingly disadvantaged and d) cultural politics that emphasise identities and lifestyle freedoms at the expense of traditional values which bind otherwise local, class and kin communities. The agents of the international community (such as the UN) are confused – they oppose the US on a) but believe in b) and have a qualified acceptance of c) while not wanting to get involved in too many squabbles about d).

Trump challenges all four of these: he is pragmatic, is not interested in international law, understands national security as an issue that supervenes it (hence the support for Israel and lack of outrage over Ukraine); he is not interested in Net Zero, supports the fossil fuel sector as part of American strategic dominance and has a visceral dislike of the Biden Administration taking taxpapers’s money to subsidise the Green Agenda but expressed as increased national debt; his disruptive MAGA economic policy outrages globalising liberals; and his populist support base tends to lifestyle traditionalism. Lifestyle traditionalism is shared in this respect with Russia, China (neo-confucianism), Iran and a growing minority of Europeans (expressed in increasingly populist terms). Although the US is divided on the last three, it is now fairly united on the first but interpreting what this means in different hard or soft ways according to party and operating now against the values and interests that maintained the unwieldy Western alliance. Trump is only accidentally on the ‘side of the workers’ and spuriously so but it is clear that many working class and lower middle class voters see his populism as preferable to the existing order.

Trump himself has been uncharacteristically silent. When he does speak it is to reaffirm his ‘revolutionary’ attentions and to continue to surprise. His invitation of President Xi to his Inauguration next month was such a surprise although the lack of enthusiasm for inviting Prime Minister Starmer is less so (though no doubt he will get his invitation eventually). The messages coming out of Trump’s camp are not ones of confrontation but ones of grown ups coming to a deal in their national interests. The US’ national interest can no longer be assumed to be that of any particular European or East Asian power. Even the UK is considered no longer the 51st State. Canada is now racked with an internal political crisis created by Trump’s tariff position. The ‘Five Eyes’ will continue probably because it is ‘useful’ but it is no longer politically decisive. It is Israel that is treated as if its defence would be the same as that of Alabama or Alaska - that is, the decisions are made because Americans are broadly united in seeing Israel as ‘one of us’.

We now have four major crisis centres – the state of the European economy, the EU and NATO fighting a war on two fronts against rising populism and against Russian-led resistance to liberal expansionism, the consequences of the fall of the Syrian regime to stability in the Middle East and anticipation of the tariff/crypto complex of populist economic libertarianism disrupting the global economy. Some past crises are partially resolved insofar as (say) the Sahelian states have established their ‘independence’ from European post-colonialism. Other crises just continue as before such as the loosely interconnected anarchies in Sudan and the Horn of Africa. We cannot predict new crises but the still not fully resolved crisis in South Korea suggests that one may be a wider electoral revolt against attempts by the ‘West’ to control and command its own Pacific rim with a shift of local public opinion towards a more peaceful trading position with China. A renewed assault on Venezuela is likely to be on the list as Trump’s Washington encourages an ideological proxy war across Latin America between Maduro’s socialism and Milei’s libertarianism

Working Through The Polycrisis

The state of the European economy is best characterised at the moment as highly vulnerable rather than worse than that. Europe has less to lose than East Asia from a radical protectionist stance in Washington but it still has a lot to lose. The general view is that the era of high inflation is now over so attention is shifting to how to avoid low growth becoming deflationary under conditions where both of the main motor economies of Europe (France and Germany) are in relative trouble (although this is offset by strong economies on the near-periphery). The issue is fundamentally political but most people are not seeing the increasingly worried faces of high ranking technocrats (including the IMF). They see issues of ‘productivity’ but also mounting debt triggering crises in the future. Tough centrist solutions to current conditions in the core economies would normally be deployed at this point but they now face popular electoral revolts that make traditional governance impossible. The trigger point remains the forthcoming German Election (February 23rd) with conservatives tending increasingly to US-style neoliberal and even moderated libertarian policies to counter the threat from the Right. Outside the EU, the UK economy is already a potential basket case under an administration which seems to be startlingly second rate.

Trump’s negative comments about NATO on the other hand should not be taken entirely at face value. There is still an air of panic emerging within Europe not so much at his statements but at the difficulty of inspiring legislators under populist pressure to adopt a ‘war mentality’ and so vote in the ‘necessary’ subventions that would replace any reductions in American financial support. Both Europeans and Biden are still pouring massive resources into Ukraine and maintaining an aggressive propaganda front but the bottom line is that the Russians continue to advance incrementally. Periodically they send in highly destructive missile attacks. Western populations seem meanwhile to be losing interest. Ukrainians themselves increasingly want peace but Russia wants cast iron guarantees regarding its security. This makes a ceasefire difficult. If Harris had been elected, the threat would have been of a major counter-offensive in the Spring but this threat is receding despite the flows of funds and equipment. However, such an offensive is still a possibility – cue the usual fog of propaganda and the possibility (which is very dangerous to Europeans) of having Trump use negotiating tactics with Putin more suitable to acquiring prime property in New York.

The situation in the Middle East is also so uncertain as not to allow any definitive current analysis. We have a weird liberal-Islamist alliance in Syria whose internal contradictions are going to define the terms of its ability to restore itself as a nation. Western media have sold themselves on a narrative that understates the complexities. The new regime (equally weirdly in view of its origin) has effectively ceded control of the bulk of Syria’s southern frontier with Lebanon to Israel and has become complicit in the attempted starvation of resources to Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance. This is actually rational if Syria can trade back the border later for guarantees on Israeli security but one of the complexities here is that both Druze and radical right wing Israelis may not be in trading mood. The Syrian regime starts its history with a possible betrayal of historic lands not only in the south but possibly in the north where Erdogan is openly speaking of seizing old Ottoman territories lost in the humiliation of the First World War.

The Turks and US-backed Kurds remain in a state of incipent and sometimes actual war as part of an aggressive vision of Turkish national security. The US continues to try and keep a lid on what amount to ISIS bandits in the hinterland and to protect its Kurdish assets. The Russians sit with huge military assets in their two bases and have become a potential defender of the Christians and Alawites in the North. But the real issues here are economic – Syria is a total basket case, thanks to a combination of aggressive Western sanctions and the incompetence of the previous regime. The moralising over corruption, of course, forgets that corruption and organised crime are necessarily going to emerge whenever sanctions are deployed as a form of warfare. Trump is unlikely to provide supporting funds, the Europeans are sending plasters for major body wounds and the new regime is going to have to rely a great deal on Gulf and emigre Syrian capital (perhaps China) even to start the process of reconstruction. These interests are all going to require stability in an area where nothing is truly stable.

Finally, we have the manouevrings over responses to Trump’s tariff commitments. Our own expectation is that he will surprise many by attempting to ‘cut a deal’ with China along MAGA lines. This may build a new mercantilist trading relationship of friendlier competition that helps to restore the East Asian ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere’ but effectively excludes the Europeans globally until the Europeans start changing their leaderships or their leaderships start learning to adapt to reality. There are signs of the UK trying to build a cogent foreign trade strategy in anticipation of this but it is on the back foot thanks to the total incompetence of preceding governments in developing a dynamic post-Brexit strategy. This development of a civilised relationship between the US and China is speculation but it would fit with some of the underlying messages currrently coming from the Trump camp. Key issues are the degree to which Chinese interests embed themselves in (for example) Mexico at the expense of Trump’s policies. Canada too is anticipated to suffer disproportionately from politically-inspired tariff arrangements with the liberal Trudeau very much caught between a rock and a hard place as an increasingly unpopular ‘liberal’ who is possibly now well past his political sell-by date.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the Biden Administration, which is ideological in many of its commitments and represents the last gasp of the Clinton triangulation of the 1990s, has about a month to create the conditions for the survival of at least some aspects of its vision of American leadership. It is gambling that Trump is, indeed, a pragmatist and, faced with reality as set up by the outgoing administration, that his radicalism will be weakened by the ‘facts’ – that he will retain engagement in NATO, that he will continue to support Ukraine in order to get a ‘fair peace’, that he will retain the US military and even aid presence in Syria, that he will moderate his protectionism and see the dangers to the US of the libertarian crypto economy. There are probably no hopes of a change of policy on Net Zero, support for regime change operations or an end to populist rhetoric that drives destabilisation within the network of allies. With sufficient sympathetic conservatives in Congress, Democrats are just hoping to keep the old order on life support until the next Presidential Election. We shall see.