The Abnormal Age

An uncomfortable truth about what one has to call ‘the Trump shock’ – in domestic affairs seeking to change the US constitutional order, in foreign affairs changing the order of international alignments – is that it is in fact a reversion to the normal in world history. More accurately, it is a retrogression to the tragic normal in world history. The period between 1945 and (let us say for convenience) 2010 was a very unusual time, certainly in the West; within the West there was, in general, peace and prosperity, leaving aside brief periods of civic unrest in some places, notably in the 1960s – these being byproducts of the very peace and prosperity in question: an interesting point for discussion another time – although the West continued its bad habits of engaging in wars outside the West and asserting economic dominance over all places where raw materials (not least oil) and cheap labour could be accessed in pursuit of profit through feeding its own ever-burgeoning domestic consumer demand.

A survey of history demonstrates that the historical norm is nothing like the 1945-2010 Abnormal Age. It is instead a continually-bubbling ferment of politico-constitutional adjustments (including revolutions) within states, and wars between them. A quick way to illustrate the point is to recall why, after the horrors of the Second World War, the states of Western Europe sought to end their long bloody history of internecine conflict and find a way to live together peacefully and prosperously in their shared continent. I say ‘internecine’ because in effect Europe’s wars were more kin to civil war than war between entities markedly different in culture, religion, ethnicity and race. Europe’s peoples have a shared heritage not just from the Roman Empire and Christendom but in their very genes. Their squabbles with each other were bitter and bloody because they were family squabbles – literally so in the case of medieval wars, fought by different members of an extended royal family claiming each other’s thrones: the Wars of the Roses were in a sense a continuation of The Hundred Years War, the same kinds of issues at stake: claims to territory and power. The narcissicism of small differences (e.g. Protestant v Catholic, mutually-disdaining speakers of Latin- and German-descended languages) and cheek-by-jowl proximity (the land area of today’s EU is much the same as the individual states of Brazil, China and the US) had a lot to do with it. Compare the Mongol invasions of West Asia, Europe and the Levant, the Arab conquests of Persia, Central Asia, the Byzantine empire, Balkans, north Africa and Spain, and the European conquest of North and South America, South Asia, Australasia and Africa: quite a contrast; nothing internecine about these, nothing to do with neighbours and garden fences.

Invasions and invaders, domestic upheavals: that is the norm. Just look at the history of the British Isles: Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, medieval kings and barons fighting each other for power, the Tudor Trump (bloated Henry VIII), Scotland, enclosures, civil war and the decapitation of Charles I, ousting of James II, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Luddites, industrialisation’s slums, strikes, the island of Ireland right up to today – the seething in these islands from Caesar to Brexit has never stopped save for illusory moments.

US history is brief in comparison, beginning in a revolution which within three-quarters of a century led to savage civil war, mercilessly suppressing native populations, fighting Spain and Mexico for territory, criminal gangs running cities, gun violence, a huge prison population versus money and politics putting others above the law, projecting terrifying power over much of the globe financially and militarily; while internally it is a country engaged in several different continuous civil wars both cold and hot because of race, vast inequalities, regional differences, bitter partisan politics, fundamentalist religion and a population 54% of which has a reading age below 11 but most of whom can buy high-powered assault rifles. It is an angry country internally, and a bully externally. Its superb top-flight universities, science, and quality of life for the well-off make it a Mecca for envious eyes, but a glance at streets where addicts and the homeless gather, as in California’s cities (the state has nearly a quarter of the country’s total number of homeless) reveals a Third World underbelly in the world’s richest country. In most states of the US homelessness is a crime – think of that.

Imperfect as all works in progress are, the EU as idea and ideal, is a remarkable thing. It wished to achieve peace within the continent, and project is values by soft power. It has already raised standards in many ways round the world – you cannot trade with the EU unless you meet its quality requirements, and it discourages its own businesses from dealing with companies in other countries whose employment conditions are below par. As is ever the case, however, the efforts of well-intentioned folk are at the mercy of thugs, who do not play by the same rules and pick the wrong historical strands to emulate. Putin has brought war back to the European continent. The far-right, incredibly, looks at its predecessors in the years between 1918 and 1945 and – what? thinks that’s good stuff? Evidently they do: it’s pathological. Over the Atlantic we see a Mussolini-strutting sack of lard ignorantly and narcissistically flailing at the intricate webs out of which the abnormal Western experience of the 1945-2010 era was woven.

Without question, there is a great deal wrong with the Western democracies and their economic order – a great deal. Economic inequality and its correlative lack of social justice, especially for minorities, is the poisoned thorn in its flesh; and its political structures are inadequate to pulling it out. But there are some things that are all right (the mantra needs repeating: a more than notional regard for civil liberties and, pace what the rich and powerful – that’s an oxymoron – get away with, the rule of law). And these all-right things are worth preserving and enhancing, for at the full they could, they would, extract that thorn. They are the best things inherited from the Enlightenment, which sought, and to quite a large extent succeeded, to get many out from under the domination over life and thought wielded by tiny minorities.

But it looks as though this abnormal little interlude in Western history is over. Trump siding with Putin, describing the EU as a conspiracy to bring down the US, talking of more territorial expansion for the US (which, come to think of it, is in its blood – from the Thirteen Colonies’ occupancy of part of North America’s continental margin it has since swallowed a lot of acreage in its outward journey), destabilising and perhaps ending NATO, and – for me a particularly painful consequence – forcing Europeans to do what, from before the Treaty of Rome’s establishment of the European Community, they expressly wished never to have to do: enlarge their armies, spend more on defence, take from what could be spent on health, education, culture, welfare and aid and devote it instead to the business of killing people and blowing things up. This is forced retrogression, by thugs, to what the European Community was boldly and nobly trying to escape: capture by the worst things in history.

The failure of the long-standing ‘balance of power’ doctrine in international affairs has is part in this. A unipolar world, like a chair teetering on one leg, inevitably falls over. What is amazing is that what international relations theorists call ‘bandwagoning’ (falling in line with a dominant power) is happening in an oddly reverse way: Trump aligning with Putin. Does he think he is being ultra-clever in seeking to detach Russia from China? The love-in last week between Xi and Putin, the former eulogising over the unbreakable bond etc. etc., might be regarded as mere cosmetics by the Trumpeters plotting a new map of the world (for which the renaming to ‘Gulf of America’ might be a harbinger), but one should be cautious about how much intelligence is available in today’s White House for the intricate game of chess that is international affairs. Such games, when played by Grandiose Masters, might send pawns and knights flying in all directions, but they rarely end well. As the opening game chaotically unfolds, Europe’s enforced return to Normal History is a sad, sad moment.