Trump and the new World order

Donald Trump has won the American presidential election and the globe is agitated. But why? Who didn’t see it coming? On the morning the results were declared, my 20-year old daughter called from school to say, “Daddy, I saw it coming!” If a small university girl could see it coming and Europe, Asia and particularly Africa did not see it coming, it is rather too unfortunate. The indicators that the nations of the earth are tired of this globalization thing and genuinely yearn to contract into nationalistic shells have been overwhelming. And so, how could anybody, including Hilary Clinton who contested against Trump, claim not to have seen what was as glaring as early morning sun?

Conflicts usually build in three stages. The first two stages offer opportunity for prevention and intervention to ensure peace. Beyond these, it becomes an open war, which has to be managed or contained to minimize the arising pain on mankind. In the intriguing build-up to the D-day last Tuesday, Donald Trump could not be prevented from picking the GOP nomination and when the drama ascended to stage two, the voting population in America also failed to intervene to stop an unfortunate climax.

Now, the world has crossed into stage three with the Trump crisis. He is in the White House, the most powerful and significant leadership location in the world. The protests that followed Trump’s victory in some cities in the US is like applying medicine after the patient has died. Where were these people, who are now saying Trump is not their president, when the polls were ongoing and there was a better opportunity to stop Trump without having to come out in cold winter nights to move against what has been constitutionally ratified?

Except some kind of amendment to the US constitution is hurriedly constructed and delivered to allow protest or even a referendum to change the result of a presidential election that was conducted within the provisions of the constitution, I would advise the protesters to retreat and prepare for a rematch in 2020. In fact, what they are doing amounts to an attempt to overwhelm the America constitution and create a new basis for leadership recruitment in the world’s most powerful nation. If it were in Nigeria, the president-elect would patiently wait until he is sworn-in and then bring charges of treason against the protesters. While their trial would be on, he would build more prisons in his first 100 days in anticipation of the mass conviction by a court of competent jurisdiction that would follow.

History so often, repeats itself. I wouldn’t know why it is that way. But it is largely true. We hardly can learn from the lessons of history and often than not, we return quite mournfully to the starting point to relive the bitterness of the same experience in the unending journey of life. In other words, after a lull of about a century or so, the world is back to the nationalistic sentiments that kept Europe, especially, troubled for ages.

There is now a growing gap between nationals and immigrants in many nations of the world. The attendant frustrations in establishing a dichotomy in a world that pretends to be uniform is leading to the emergence of evil men as champion of humanity. Suddenly, America, about the only nation on earth where everybody is an equal owner is frantically seeking to change character. In a compelling electoral narrative, Donald Trump was able to establish that America belongs to some people and that the time had come for the owners of the country to rise in one accord and retrieve their heritage from usurpers whom he called pollutants so that life could be better again.
Other times, this yearn for ownership comes with an exaggerated sense of superiority on the part of the claimants, which could result in the most tragic expression of man’s inhumanity to man. This was the case in Germany under Adolf Hitler. The Germans felt immigrants, especially Jews, were parasitic and should be decimated to free the host – Germany – from being drained to death. This had fired up Nazist nationalism to retake the world for the exclusive benefit of the so-called Aryan super race. In record time, the country recovered from the crushing defeat of the First World War to mobilize its economy and populace for the upheavals of the Second World War.

The Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, told the world that Germany needed land. Others in European geo-politics became relegated as Hitler opened his land grabbing campaigns. He unilaterally repudiated the Treaty of Versailles and worked relentlessly to return Germany to pre-World War I territorial, military and economic frontiers. He continued till the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which forced Britain and France to declare war on Germany on September 3, to touch off the tragic events of World War II.

Today, there is a leader in Europe, who like Hitler, is bent on recovery of lost grounds. He is Russian Vladimir Putin. He is pained by the loss of the Soviet Union, which before its disintegration in the late 80s to early 90s controlled about a third of the world land mass. Putin thinks a lost paradise can be regained anyhow and he is working hard to make it happen. He and Trump are friends. Both men are bind together by the new wave of nationalism sweeping across the advanced world. They have sunk the ideological gap between the US and Russia for the convenience of the moment. Trump feels the same way about the purported lost glory of the US as Putin feels about the old Soviet Union. And all over Europe, regional integration has become a burden that nations are working hard to discharge.

Like joke, Britain has exited the European Union, even as France, the most cosmopolitan of them all has started dropping the toga of accommodation and assimilation for self-preservation in the face of real threat by radical Islamists. The French far right National Front led by Ms Marine Le Pen is gaining popularity. The party, which does not want to hear stuff about Brussels and immigration now has two seats in the National Assembly and won 25 per cent of the votes in the French European Parliament.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is currently in trouble. She had advertised Germany as having infinite potentials to accommodate immigrants including millions fleeing crises in the Middle East. Germans are not happy with her and they are seeking option in the Alternative for Germans (AFD), a right-wing party launched in 2013 by elements opposed to Brussels (EU). In Italy, the ultra-right Northern League is pushing beyond its base in Venice into mainstream Italian politics to address specific yearnings.

On the whole, there is hardly any country in Europe today from the West through East to the Scandinavian North that does not preach exclusion in order to feel secure in a challenged world. The deep-seated hatred among nationals against immigrants and a tendency to kill in order to survive is only being managed politically.

Donald Trump came and stripped bare everything with opposing rhetoric. He gained instant traction and proved unstoppable till he braced the tape ahead of Hilary Clinton last Tuesday. The reality on ground is that the world order is changing and in the emerging new world order, there shall be no free lunch for strangers and slackers anywhere in the world, including Freetown. The complacency that has kept African countries perpetually at the bottom of the ladder as Third World Countries may have to be self-discharged because in the new scheme, the hitherto benefactors will be too bogged down by their own challenges to offer help. If they could, their efforts would be repackaged and delivered as neo-imperialism. Mr. Trump did actually note during his campaign that Nigeria learnt nothing from the British and suggested re-colonisation of the country for it to imbibe the right lessons.

Let me also add that nationalism can be driven down to micro levels. African countries where exploitation and utilization of natural endowments do not reflect ownership, and injustice is raised to a level of state policy, should brace up for nationalistic agitations. Such is already happening in Nigeria. There is indeed so much to teach and learn from the Trump revolution at all levels.