Nations rise, dominate, then fall

Aug 19, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I did two columns before on the similarities between the rise of Trump and Hitler. Please see the following; Saturday, April, 8, 2017, “Hitler and now Trump shows how nonexistent is the human mind,” and Sunday, September 13, 2015, “A new book on Hitler that reminds one vividly of Donald Trump.” With the bizarre emanations of President Trump on the violence created by white supremacists last week, it is time again to look back at Trump and that uncanny similarity with the rise of Adolf Hitler.
There is nothing this columnist can add to a huge ocean of literature on the reason why great nations fall. “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” by Paul Kennedy, is perhaps required reading in an advanced course in International Relations in most universities. Kennedy’s book may be breathtaking, but he is not alone in predicting why great countries rise up to dominate the world then become ordinary lands.
There is a pattern that goes back to the battle between the two giants – Athens and Sparta – in ancient Greece, and its takes in the demise of great African empires, the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, European empires, the Third Reich, Pax Britannica, the USSR and now the USA.
One of the most conservative exponents of American domination of the world is Charles Krauthammer. I once read a column in which he said that the USA will one day go down, it may be coming soon, but while it is the world’s only superpower, it must enjoy its domination. The fact of history is that a nation rises up, becomes all powerful, then after a long time, its power wanes.
The story of Donald Trump is the story of the Republican Party that wants the US to remain the world’s greatest superpower that controls the nerve centres of modern civilization. That happened after 1945. But seventy-two years after, Paul Kennedy’s prediction lies before the eyes of the world.
We tend to blame Trump for every conceivable political and racist vice in American politics today, but Donald Trump is the culmination of decades of a racist mentality and a dangerous conservatism that resemble fascist tendencies in pre-war Europe. The way Trump feels about the non-white races, is a predisposition the Republican openly carries with it for decades now. One has to be a poor analyst if one doesn’t know that the essential core of the Republicans’ rejection of Obama was racially based. That party’s harassment of Obama in his second term took on evil overtones, especially from overzealous right-wing Senators.
What we are seeing with Trump is a longing by certain Republican politicians and sections of White America to bring back the glory days of the US, where White power dominated the US and the US controlled the world. That cannot happen, because as Kennedy argues, these great nations that become empires do not have the resources to maintain empire status. This is no great discovery by Paul Kennedy. It is a lesson in financial commonsense. It takes unimaginable sums of money to buy jetfighters, tanks, warships, missiles, keep a large military force, and spend money on influencing other nation-states. The resources run out at some point.
The 21st century is not a uni-polar world any more after the USSR disintegrated. It is not even a bipolar structure, with China competing with the US. Global affairs have been diversifying since the rise of the European Union, China, Pacific nations like Japan, and other countries like India and Brazil. The US no longer enjoys domination in world trade. Trump’s attempts to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, shape NAFTA to suit American interests, and demands for trading changes from China, are all endeavours to recapture resources that the US has lost over the past thirty years.
The domestic twin of this foreign policy desire to make America great again is the white supremacist agenda. Their cultural and sociological demands compliment the foreign policy dreams of Trump and the Republican Party. So there are two main currents taking place in the US today. The elites want a return to Pax Americana. The white working classes and anti-immigrants racist strata yearn for the US they knew at the turn of the 20th century.
They feel the American dream got derailed and they blame the non-white races. It is impossible to get them to understand that the dream didn’t die because immigrants and non-white people took their jobs and their opportunities. But Trump and the Republican Party can only be successful if they tell them this. Trump did exactly that and became President. We have to wait and see if he can make America great again.

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