When Joe Biden takes the oath of office in January, the world will breathe a sigh of relief. Donald Trump messed up international relations just that much. From Mexico City to Beijing and back, the last four years tested the glue that magically holds this world together. Now if we can just survive a more cultivated under the table dealer. Starting in January, an Obama White House redux may, magically, make the world a better place.
Who was it that said that “…the world community must learn to shape and direct the process so that civilization might be preserved?” I believe it was Mikhail Gorbachev in an address to the UN General Assembly in 1988. Well, readers might be stunned to discover that I believe he was right. The problem with Gorbachev’s vision, with that of the Reagan era thinkers, is that the liberal world order that’s been in charge of shaping the global community uses archaic methods and flawed vision to accomplish the goal. Or in short, globalization the way the elites shaped it, ended up looking more like colonialism than Utopia for all. Fortunately, Donald Trump proved two things.
First, and foremost, Donald Trump’s calloused and unhinged approach to dealing with nations and individuals proved the viability of Gorbachev’s world community. Somehow, even under the constant assault of Trump stupidity and greed, World War III starting in Iran was averted. Europe did not ban Americans from vacationing, not until Trump’s COVID-19 nightmare shut down travel to almost anywhere by Americans. And China hackers did not shut down the North American power grid to repay the bombastic New York tycoon for 1,000 barbs slung at them. Even with Trump reversing every good thing Barack Obama did (the very few), people from Paris to Petersburg did not give up on the dream that the United States might come around. Trump did not totally destroy detente – what a miracle!
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” ― Edward R. Murrow
Secondly, the Trump years showed us how the world should not work. New forms of fascism, like the reign of The Donald (wolf) can only lead to our ultimate destruction. For proof of what I am claiming, one only needs to extrapolate what four more years of Trump madness would have meant. Given carte blanche by a second term, God knows what this infantile imbecile would have come up with. Sure, conservatives were right to wage war on the liberals for the fear of more Democrat shenanigans or even hot wars, but sooner or later Trump’s brand of dictatorial bossing would have led to war anyhow. Thumbing our noses at the world will not end well for America. The United States is going to have to help direct a new process, just like the former USSR boss said.
Now that we’ve been tested by putting a Mad Hatter in charge of the western world, maybe we can prod Joe Biden to play the right cards, under or over the tabletop. Here’s the thing. Biden is a crook, for sure. So are they all, politicians that is. We’ve known this since we first heard our parents and grandparents bitching about it. There’s no big secret. Come on. What the people of the world need to get a grip on, is how to control this world order through its agents, men, and women like Joe Biden. We must learn to give tribute to the elites, like we always have, without allowing them (The Davos Bunch) to take too much. As an optimist, I see the election of Joe Biden as US President, as an opportunity. Let’s face it, none of these people have much of a moral compass. So, their greed and quest for power make them predictable, and vulnerable too.
Take the Trump economic and propaganda war with China, as a case study. Where was that going? At the end of the day, does anyone out there believe the Chinese leadership is going away – ever? Having transported her people from banana republic status to the rising middle-class success story of the century, President Xi Jinping is going to step down or become a Donald Trump puppet?
Somehow, in some kind of carnival magic trick, Donald Trump had many Americans thinking America can dictate to the Chinese. No, the horse left the barn the day China was let into the World Trade Organization back in 2001. The Bush family and Bill Clinton saw to that. The way to deal with China and the rest of the world is decidedly NOT by dictating to them like a baby Hitler. In the next 10 years, China’s economy will double. How do we suppose to stop this? Why would anyone even try? This brings me to another key point, the convoluted conservatism of Donald Trump.
Traditionally, conservatives believe that the way to a better nation or world is through fixing things at the individual level. Republicans, for instance, used to hold the idea that the power of progress rests in the individual power for incremental change. You can see this concept alive in some of Trump’s following. People in the deep south, for instance, do not typically want things to change quickly. But Trump’s doctrine was about rapid change, and not through conservative action. Trump acted more like an old school Democrat, working to alter society in much the same way, but with harder tactics, as former President Barack Obama. The liberal way of doing things, traditionally, is to alter society with big programs to change fundamentally society. And this is also how Trump saw the world – he was trying to rapidly alter China, Iran, and a laundry list of other nations with a wave of his hand.
“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” ― Mark Twain
Neo-nazism and new socialist ideas aside, the new way cannot be the same as the old liberal order way was. A new Obama administration will end just like the old one, with negotiations for a better world mired down in petty arguments by 10 million special interests. The Neocon way won’t work either, since these ideas are just reorganized socialist dreams anyhow. What is going to be required to fix our busted world, is a fusion of minds aimed at equity for everybody. Drippings from the tables of the elites will no longer pacify billions. The pandemic shows us the big divide. The world is at risk if we cannot re-establish trust. A world revolution is not very far off, and Biden’s handlers must know this. He needs to go ahead and feather their nests, but while shoring up the twigs and the feathers that hold the people safe. Go ahead and rake in your billions Joe, but make damn sure the future is sustainable, for rich and poor alike. And while you are at it, please let America, the EU, Russia, China, and even Iran get along. Even if Israel gets mad. Oh, and the Queen Mother will go along too if you make sure the Rothschilds get their margins as well.
The world has been left in an untidy mess by Donald Trump and the people who put him in power. Our mission, the mission of the people of the world, should be to make sure his successor understands the necessity for his correct actions. Make those deals, work your wiles, but make sure we are happy, for this is the reason for the government, to make the people happy. Joe Biden and the rest of the world order, I leave you with this:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
