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European elections, followed by domestic elections in France, the jump-starting of the United States presidential campaigns, the electoral parodies in Venezuela and Iran, and the unhindered war courses in Ukraine, Gaza, South Lebanon, South-West Syria and Sudan are interfacing and reconfiguring the international political scene around tangled scenarios, whereby domestic politics and global power dynamics intersect. The era of internal and international political consensuses has come to an end and paves the way for intertwining destabilization dynamics. The cultural and political watersheds within Western democracies are coarsening and bordering on cultural wars, if not civil wars. Conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East grafted onto internal political discords are reminiscent of the erstwhile Cold War era and its conflict dynamics.
The European elections have yielded an obvious tilt towards the right and so did the French elections. The intricacies of the French political scenery have veered towards an institutional crisis whereby the French are caught off between parliamentary instability, a weakened presidency and the dilemmas of regime change. Nonetheless, the cultural wars elicited by wokeism, unregulated migration, financial and economic logjams, and the weaponization of cultural and international wars in domestic affairs are quite indicative of substantive political differences that are being largely instrumentalized by the nascent neo-totalitarian axis and its acolytes. The same configuration seems to define the British post-electoral political scene, with less ideological overtones, a more consensual strategic purview and a high dose of political pragmatism, which contrasts sharply with the strident ideological complexion of French politics. Whatever the incoming political scenarios to undo the political ligatures, the heart of the problem lies on the frontlines that separate populist France from conventional party politics and their dilemmas (Christophe Guilluy).
The US political theater highlights the severity of cultural wars, the deepening divides between native populism and the global elites who operate quite dismissively and seem to overlook the basic tenets of civility structured around Christian humanism and axiological pluralism, America’s messianic stature, its bipartisan political culture and consensual politics, and the structuring role of the constitution and the American civil religion. What the rising American Left, with its self-righteous and doctrinaire ideological posturing, has never come to realize, is the deep estrangement from the realities of ordinary America. The cultivation of cultural distinction, antipathy towards native America and its cultural icons and historical political legacy, for the sake of ideological mantras and the destruction of sovereignty, account largely for the widening ideological and political rifts. Aside from the fact that the de-industrialization dynamics, the financialization of the economy and its decoupling from the real economy, the deregulation of migration, the marginalization and stigmatization of native America, the deliberate relegation of the Civil Rights tradition of Black Churches for the sake of a reinvigorated Black radicalism, the solipsism of identity politics (gender, sexual orientation and lifestyle politics) and the degradation of national commonalities and a common civic culture account for the rise of the symptomatic figure of Donald Trump and the rage that underpins it.
The demonization of Trump and the deliberate distancing of the ideological Left from the realities of non-elitist America and its subcultures exemplify the growing divide and increasing polarization within American politics. The attempt on Donald Trump’s life, the clever choice of J. D. Vance, and the re-engineering of the Republican Party are quite emblematic of the profound political transformations taking place within the American political conservatism and its power radius. The featured tour de force of Trumps’ ongoing campaign is the announcement of a post-Trump era and the launching of a new defining political agenda revolving around populist America and its set of priorities. J. D. Vance said it plainly, “No more Wall Street politics.” The Democratic Party was engulfed by its leftist factions and the last attempt of President Biden to salvage the legacy of Bipartisanship and to be in tune with the traditional democratic constituencies were overshadowed by wokeism and the overlapping layers of arrogant elitism, cultural and political estrangement.
However, in retreat on the domestic political agendas, the ongoing international wars still matter and need to be addressed urgently. The Western democracies, while reordering their international priorities, are bound to address the conflict in Ukraine, contain the subversion politics of Putin, challenge the destabilization politics of Iran throughout the Middle East, preempt the re-editing of the Cold War scenarios in Latin America, overhaul the Transatlantic alliance and uphold the strategic security of the European Union. The presumed shift to the East doesn’t negate the need to counter the Chinese and Russian inroads in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, and to maintain unwavering support for opposition within their spheres of influence. J. D. Vance’s input is quite reassuring in this regard, in spite of his statements which, understandably enough, give primacy to America’s internal priorities. The continuous bloodletting in Ukraine has come to a limit for both parties, it has become financially and logistically unsustainable, humanely tragic and with poor political outcomes. A negotiated solution based on the reaffirmation of Ukrainian independence, unrestricted territorial sovereignty, a resolution to the territorial contentions, and a firm halt to Putin’s inroads in Europe is crucial for stabilizing the region and restoring balance to international relations.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long outlasted its political usefulness and should be urgently extracted from the magnetic field of Iranian power politics, neutralizing its proxies, putting an end to the surrogate warfare and restarting negotiations over mutual recognition, Israeli security, Palestinian self-determination and the adequate institutional engineering: Two states, or a loose confederacy based on the Swiss model lately advocated by novelist Metin Arditi. The Israeli parliamentary vote against the Two States solution is equivalent to the hackneyed doxa of Palestinian extremism (no reconciliation, no recognition, no peace) professed by generations of militants and ordinary citizens. The ongoing war and its tragedies should open the road to an overall settlement, and end the cycles of violence. The legacy of previous mediations and peace agreements are of good omen and should serve as a guide for the immediate future.
The resurgence of leftist fascism in Latin America renews the impediments that have prevented it from normalizing its politics, rescaling its public policy priorities and moving onwards beyond caudillismo, endemic civil wars, the narco-traficante and rentier state patterns with their devastating consequences and the well-entrenched and metastasizing effects of systemic corruption. The legacies of Fidel Castro, Ernesto Guevara, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas, Abimael Guzmán and the Sendero Luminoso and the FARC-Pablo Escobar narco-traficante power nexuses, the terror state of Nicolás Maduro and their coteries of drug cartels and terror groups (the Maduro, al Aysami clans and their Hezbollah tributaries, Sinaloa, Angeles Caído, Los Zetas, el Tren de Aragua), the criminal gangs of Central America (Mara Diez y Ocho, Mara Salvatrucha, etc.) have been instrumented in the past and continue to be through their legatees. The “Utopia desarmada” (Disarmed utopia) of the tropical fascist leftism and its new Faustian bargain are regaining a foothold on the crossroads between the new “axis of evil” and its partners in crime and international terrorism. America has no choice but to lead the struggle against totalitarianism and rearticulate its international agenda on this basis.
