A world of bullies

Bully (Source: here)

Since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008/2009, international relations have been steadily deteriorating. We have now reached a point, where the bully boys rule; conventional diplomacy has almost entirely given way to brute force.

In fairness, the rot began long before the financial crisis. The United Nations (UN), whose main purpose is to resolve international conflicts, has for many years been prevented from doing its job due to self-serving vetoes by the permanent members of the UN Security Council, rendering the General Assembly unable to take effective action against those who breach international law.

Then, five years after the GFC, it suddenly becomes clear that Western powers no longer have the will to define, let alone enforce any notion of right and wrong in geopolitics. The pivotal moment arrives when the British Parliament, stung by lies spun by the Blair Government to justify British involvement in the Iraq war, votes against military action in response to Syria’s Ghouta chemical gas attack in 2013. The British parliament's ‘no’ shatters the Obama-led coalition against President Assad, thereby signalling that Assad and other dictators are free to do as they please.

The next major implosion in international relations happens when Trump is elected president in the United States. Trump commits himself to putting 'America First’, which he interprets to mean withdrawing from the world (time will undoubtedly reveal that the US national interest is better served by remaining engaged). During his first term and continuing in his second term, Trump retreats not only from free trade, but also from funding international aid and multilateral agencies. Trump even questions important Western alliances, such as NATO, and refuses to get involved in resolving humanitarian crises overseas.

The collapse in US global leadership under Trump is nothing short of spectacular.

Without Western leadership, the international arena quickly becomes more unlawful, more unpredictable. As the world grows increasingly scared of itself, nations opt for insularity as a means of defence and adopt overtly nationalist and xenophobic policies to cover up the inevitable fallout from closing off their economies to the rest of the world.

It is no small irony that nationalism only worsens international relations, making the world even scarier; we have embarked on a vicious cycle. Today, the world is one in which the strong and the ruthless take advantage of the weak and vulnerable, with near-complete impunity. This is why we see Russian forces in Ukraine, Israelis committing genocide in Gaza, and Turkey’s President Erdogan riding rough-shod over the country's democratic opposition.

The utter irrelevance international law is now so glaring that authoritarian regimes the world over extend their territorial and political ambitions far beyond their nearest neighbours. Sudan is a case in point. The United Arab Emirates is one of the main actors in Sudan, supplying mercenaries, arms, and other resources to the Rapid Support Forces, who are pursuing a gruesome genocide-like campaign against civilians in the Darfur region, as part of its war against the Sudanese government.

And no one bats an eye.

Because the biggest bully of them all, the United States, is out there in the lead showing everyone else that it is perfectly fine to ignore international law. Trump's most recent stunt of striking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific - in clear violation of international law, according to the United Nations - is a clear case in point. As I type these words, Trump is also escallating tensions with Venezuela, possibly with an eye to ousting Maduro from power and taking over Venezuela’s oil reserves, which are the largest in the world. Again, this would be a flagrant breach of international law.

Trump could not care less.  Trump and other populist Far Right leaders are capitalising on the global power vacuum. We are seeing the emergence of an actual, if still informal, alliance of fascist governments from Argentina through the United States to Israel, Hungary, Russia, North Korea, and El Salvador.

As I explained in an earlier blog, the biggest threat to fascist regimes is their own incompetence, but so far none of the big fascist states have imploded. Nor is it certain to happen, especially as long as moderate Right-wingers, the conventional Left, and other supporters of democracy lack vision and urgency in countering fascism domestically.

In fact, as things stand, domestic opponents of fascism are likely themselves to become victims on account of their gross under-estimation of what they are up against - see here for a very recent example of clear political persecution in the United States. To aid in his endeavour to crush his opponents, Trump is building a para-military force, which, ominously, looks very similar to Hitler’s Brownshirts.

If fascism is not stopped at home then it will eventually have to be stopped in the international arena - which means the world as a whole faces very dark times. Specifically, I see two likely directions events can take from here:

One possibility is that the world enters a protracted period of bully conflicts, much like we are seeing today, but steadily getting worse and more widespread. Emboldened by the likes of Trump and Putin, fascists elsewhere will be tempted to enter the fray to take a stab at using brute force to pursue their own territorial and political ambitions around the world.

The other possibility is that the world’s still-democratic nations get a grip and begin to mount effective opposition to fascism. Given that the US and Russia are already in the fascist camp, this will clearly not be easy. Europe would probably have to undertake a major volte-face and align itself much more closely with China, which, let us not forget, is still the world's least imperialistic super power.

Europe is still very far from this point. Indeed, the most committed democracies in Europe are still distancing themselves from China and sucking up to Trump and doing everything they possibly can to avoid a direct confrontation with Putin. If it ever gains momentum, the confrontation with fascism will ultimately involve a major and likely destructive conflagration, exactly as we saw last time Democracy took on and defeated fascism in World War II.

So far, though, all the evidence points to the former scenario as the bullies is doing all the running and supporters of democracy are weak and divided. There is, as far as I can see, no coherent effort, let alone a plan, for tackling fascism.

The End