30 Years From The Wall's Fall and 3 Years From Trump's Rise

Happier days

This morning one of those Facebook memories reminded me that it's been three years since November 9, 2016. (They rarely remind me of happy things.) The 8th was election day, but the 9th was the day that the reality of what had happened set in. A little while later I realized that today is also the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In Germany this day is called "Schicksalstag" (Day of Fate) because it was on November 9, 1918, that a revolution toppled the Kaiser and on November 9, 1938, that the Nazis perpetuated the pogroms of the Night of Broken Glass. It is a reminder of the unpredictable careening of history and its utter lack of permanence. In that light it's appropriate that we think of Trump's rise and the Wall's fall on the same day.

The Soviet bloc's demise inspired Francis Fukuyama's now infamous theory about the "end of history" (which must be said was much disputed even at the time.) With Leninism in the grave there was supposedly no other game in town other than liberal capitalist democracy.

The Islamic revolution ten years before in Iran ought to have been a clue of how limited such a thesis was, but I digress.

Pretty immediately after the fall of the Wall it was apparent that nationalism was stepping back into the political vacuum. Czechoslovakia broke up in the Velvet Divorce, Yugoslavia broke up in a civil war that included genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo. Right wing violence against immigrants spiked in Germany, and Le Pen came in second place in the French presidential election of 2002. Events like 9/11 put nationalism off the radar of international observers, however. It was still gaining strength, of course. The new Putin regime, founded at the start of the new century, showed the effectiveness of a marriage between authoritarianism and nationalism, especially in countries with new democracies. After the economic collapse of 2008, a bunch of other nations started down this road. From Poland to Hungary to India to China an anti-democratic, anti-pluralist populist nationalism is the globe's most disruptive political force. It's hardly a mistake that Russia is the world's foremost exporter of nationalist authoritarianism. It pioneered this political form and is a nation run by former intelligence operatives who understand the importance of misinformation and soft power.

History is made up of trends and events, and while the trends are like tides, events have much more contingency attached to them. The fall of the Wall was haphazard and unexpected because the East German official who announced the opening of the border to the West did not reckon that crowds of East Germans would flood the Wall. If he had known that, he would have been more clear and the scenes that are so famous likely would not have happened. The same goes for the election of Donald Trump. The man himself was not expecting to get elected! He lost by three million votes, but the Electoral College, James Comey, Wikileaks, a tepid HRC campaign, and other factors helped put him into power.

He was in a position to benefit from these accidents because the Fall of the Wall did not bring about an end to history. Instead, it brought complacency. Even if you didn't buy into Fukuyama, it was still very tempting to see democracy in America at least as permanent. Unfortunately, the end of the Cold War did not bring a peace dividend for America. Soon enough there would be more war. In 1989 public discourse was alarmed at social inequality, that problem only got worse and worse. In the moment of triumph any real attempt at self-reflection was completely avoided. At around the same time, conservatives decided to embark on a scorched earth political agenda.

Now we find ourselves in a situation where an authoritarian nationalist rules America. He puts immigrant children in camps. He bans Muslims from entering the country. He fills the courts with reactionaries who despise reproductive and civil rights. In many states Republicans are limiting the vote, preventing Democratic governors from ruling, and challenging the results of legitimate elections.

The Cold War is over, but both sides lost. The Soviet Union's defeat was made manifest on November 9, 1989, America's on November 9, 2016. The movement of history's tides today is clear, but we need to swim against the current one even if it exhausts us. The post-1989 complacency cannot be repeated if democracy is going to live.

The Cold War Is Finally Over (Both Sides Lost)

We tend to think that the Cold War ended in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, or in 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I tend to think nowadays that it finally ended with the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency.

The Cold War was, in many respects, a conflict destined to destroy both of its participants. It just so happens that the Soviets lost the war of attrition first. Their stagnant economy could not sustain its military and imperialist commitments as belief in communism eroded. While America claimed to emerge victorious, its society was already crumbling into steep inequality and cynicism in the 1980s. Those trends have only continued to the point of absurdity to the present day. The Cold War demanded a massive level of spending and multiple wars. As America's military might increased, the standard of living for its people took a dive. America may have "won" the Cold War, but people are drinking poison in Flint, and parts of cities across this country still look like they've been bombed. Much like Britain after the two World Wars, victory does not save the empire.

Meanwhile, in the international arena, America tried to extend the life and reach of Cold War institutions, rather than replacing them. Hence NATO moving into Eastern Europe, for example. The post-1989 presidents still maintained America's commitment to a global projection of power, changing the enemy from communism to Islamism after the 9/11 attack.

As awful as the United States behaved during the Cold War, it at least had a somewhat idealistic self-conception of its behavior. Trump has set about shredding the institutional webs of the Cold War world, not out of ideals, but out of craven nationalism. Beyond that, of course, he was supported in his quest for power by Vladimir Putin. The ex-KGB agent got the last laugh, avenging the end of the Soviet Union by helping to install a destructive idiot at the head of America. Obama tried to repair the damage done by Shrub to America's standing in the world, Trump has torn that work to shreds. Now that damage will be permanent. I don't think there's any going back from this.

In 2018, that aforementioned idiot is driving the nation into the ditch. Despite this accomplishment, Putin's Russia is still economically weak and irrelevant. The USA and USSR both managed to bury each other, making way for an ascendant China. The Cold War is finally over, and both sides lost. 

Breaking Point Or Crossroads?

British soldiers during WWI in Ypres, Belgium

Looking at events in the world today I can feel the tectonic plates of history shifting beneath my feet in ways I have rarely felt. What is happening does not seem to be the usual tumult of world affairs, but something different and deeper.

As I mentioned on the eve of the Brexit vote, we appear to be heading to the end of the post post-Cold War world. Plenty of folks, including yours truly, have mocked Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis over the years, but now we seem truly to be at the definitive end of a world where someone could think that global capitalist democracy was the only ideological game in town. Nationalism and Islamism (and nationalist Islamism) are driving world events, and the Left has been reawakened in countries dominated by neoliberalism in recent decades.

The old political consensus in the West simply is not holding. Brexit may very well lead to the end of the UK, and the vote has shaken the major political parties there to their core. The EU's validity as an institution is in serious doubt. In Germany nationalism has crept back into the political mainstream for the first time since 1945. A far right candidate may very well achieve the presidency in Austria, and nationalists with an undemocratic bent have taken over in Hungary and Poland. In America a nationalist television personality gained the Republican nomination, and a socialist (well, at least he calls himself that) came close to getting the Democratic nomination. Congress has refused to even consider the president's nominee to the Supreme Court, an unprecedented act that would have spurred a constitutional crisis in less tumultuous times.

I look at all of this, and wonder if we are at a historical crossroads, or a breaking point. It is definitely one of the other. In terms of a crossroads, perhaps we are seeing something similar to the early 20th century, when the strains of laissez-faire capitalism and fear of worker uprising led to reform. In America this is referred to as the Progressive Era, but similar changes occurred in Europe as well, when voting rights and worker protections were expanded. We seem to be at a similar point, where forty years of neoliberalism and globalization have drained resources from the masses and funneled them to the wealthy. If you look at the income gap in the United States, it currently resembles that of the Gilded Age more than it does the postwar period. I doubt that the political status quo can be maintained under such economic conditions. There's a chance that in fifty years the Occupy movement of 2011 will be seen as the harbinger of a new era.

Unfortunately, the forces for political change in the West on the right are currently much more powerful than those on the left, as Brexit, Trumpism, and recent elections in Eastern Europe have shown. These forces also seem to have little use for the current world order. The lack of credibility possessed by the elite maintaining the global order only gives more fuel to the fire of the likes of UKIP, Trump, and Victor Orban. I can very well see a breaking point on the horizon, a world of closed borders, diminished or shredded international institutions, and perpetual war. The film Children of Men may turn out to be quite prophetic.

That might sound alarmist, but historically people have not been aware of the changes building up around them, until they explode. Few predicted the collapse of Communism in 1989. Few if any foresaw a world-altering revolution when the Estates General were called in 1789. When the guns of August of 1914 sounded, most did not anticipate a political and cultural earthquake that would level empires and engender revolutions.

I have been avidly reading Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, her memoir describing her experiences in World War I as a nurse. She talked about how the news of the coming war barely registered with her in the summer of 1914. By the time it was over, she lost her fiancee, brother, and two of her closest friends, and everything seemed to have been changed forever. Obviously no war on the scale of the Great War is currently raging, but I do wonder if we are indeed stepping into a new political world. Are we too sleepwalking into the abyss? Time will tell, I guess.