| Dismantling Nationalist Bullshit: 19:47 - Dec 8 with 6497 views | Shaky |
The double life of Trumpian nationalism
By Edward Luce
FT, December 7, 2018
A pig is still a pig no matter how much lipstick you apply. The same goes for the law of the jungle with a diplomatic philosophy smeared on.
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, is the latest of President Donald Trump’s officials to try. Other countries should adopt their own versions of Mr Trump’s America First approach, he argued this week. Anything that dilutes national sovereignty, such as treaties or global bodies, was a bad thing.
“Our mission is to reassert our sovereignty,” Mr Pompeo said in Brussels. “We want our friends to help us and to exert their sovereignty as well.”
Mr Pompeo’s pitfall was not his choice of venue – though no city than Brussels puts more faith in the multilateralism he was there to attack. Nor was it his lack of diplomacy – though describing Brexit as a “wake-up call” for taking back control was unlikely to endear him to a Brussels audience.
Mr Pompeo’s failing was that he tried to pull off the impossible. His task was to convince America’s allies that a new global liberal order would arise from the spread of America First imitations. The west should fear the rise of China and Russia, Mr Pompeo said. Yet each should nevertheless pursue their narrow self-interest.
The contradiction demands unravelling. There would be little point in Mr Pompeo – or Mr Trump – making the nationalist case in Moscow, Beijing or Pyongyang, for example. Their rulers already agree wholeheartedly. These are the countries that pose the biggest threats to the global order, according to Mr Pompeo. The best way to confront such adversaries is to abandon multilateralism, he said.
Bodies such as the EU, UN, World Bank and the IMF should be reformed or eliminated. They are fetters on our freedom of action. “The more treaties we sign, the safer we supposedly are,” Mr Pompeo said. “The more bureaucrats we have, the better the job gets done. But was that ever really true?”
Mr Pompeo’s answer was “no”. Rarely have so many straw men fallen victim to one rhetorical question.
Therein lay Mr Pompeo’s second insuperable obstacle: fitting the facts with his philosophy. The number of bureaucrats is not the issue. It is what they do.
With 32,000 employees, the European Commission is not huge. By contrast the US Department of Veterans Affairs employs more than 10 times that number, with 377,000 people. The US Department of Agriculture has 105,000. With just 10,000 employees, the World Bank is smaller than the US Department of the Interior. The same applies to the IMF, with 2,400 officials, and even the relatively bloated UN with 44,000. The EU deserves many criticisms, such as opacity and lack of accountability. Mr Pompeo did not advance any of these.
By the same token, few would argue that the quantity of treaties improves our security. That, too, was a straw man. People do make the case for robust international deals. Mr Pompeo did not propose any. Instead, he listed the ones the Trump administration has abandoned. These include the Paris deal on climate change, the Iran nuclear deal, the International Criminal Court, the UN Human Rights Council and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Range Forces Treaty.
The next target, he hinted, would be the World Trade Organization. China’s advance was the “poisoned fruit” of America’s global retreat. It is easy to quibble with that too. How did the US build global bodies when it was in retreat?
But that is beside the point. Mr Pompeo did the world a favour this week: he crystallised the dissonance that runs through the Trump administration. Mr Trump’s aim is to contain China’s global rise. He also wants to remove the tools with which to blunt China’s rise. He offers with one hand what he removes with the other.
Mr Pompeo called for a new global liberal order of “noble nations”. In the same breath, he called on them to pursue their go-it-alone destinies. Nowhere in his speech did the words “west” or “western” occur.
Countries that abandon mutual endeavours do not naturally see eye to eye. A good example is the WTO. Mr Trump sees it as a globalist plot. To his friends in Britain, the WTO is an ocean on which the UK should gloriously set sail. Common sense tells us that nationalists will find it harder to pursue mutual interests with their brethren in similar countries. Brussels received Mr Pompeo’s speech in silence. The audience would have leapt to its feet in Beijing.
https://www.ft.com/content/340c8cc4-f903-11e8-af46-2022a0b02a6c |  |
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| Dismantling Nationalist Bullshit: on 18:06 - Dec 10 with 1303 views | Catullus |
| Dismantling Nationalist Bullshit: on 18:01 - Dec 10 by Lohengrin |
He’s quoting Blackadder, mun.  |
Does it make my marmite comment any less disgusting or are you saying other politicians aren't oily ticks?
Westminster could do with Blackadder, well baldrick anyway, they need someone brighter than them to put things right. |  |
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| Dismantling Nationalist Bullshit: on 18:07 - Dec 10 with 1300 views | Lohengrin |
| Dismantling Nationalist Bullshit: on 18:06 - Dec 10 by Catullus |
Does it make my marmite comment any less disgusting or are you saying other politicians aren't oily ticks?
Westminster could do with Blackadder, well baldrick anyway, they need someone brighter than them to put things right. |
Guy Fawkes? |  |
| An idea isn't responsible for those who believe in it. |
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