Trump supporters all over the world are celebrating, even in Italy, while others are in despair. triumphant return of the repeatedly convicted and condemnable former President Donald Trump invites some historical perspective.
The United States has already lived through a period similar to the current one. Remembering it helps to understand Donald Trump and Trumpism, the big risks that run with him America e the whole world, and a vote that has now confirmed him as the absolute master of the Republican Party and the symbol of America today, or at least of its electoral majority. Narrowly victorious in 2016, narrowly defeated in 2020, disqualified at least he should have been for the coup that aimed to overturn the election results four years ago, Trump would have remained, without November 5, 2024, an annoying and embarrassing presence, but all in all an accident along the way in the presidential history of his country. Now he is the face and soul of the United States. And to think that if the current Supreme Court had not saved him distorting on July 1st, and even before, the letter and spirit of the Constitution about presidential powers these days he should have been in prison.
This is the new face of America.
The New Face of America: Between Isolation and Protectionism
The 20s saw four crucial choices in the United States. The destruction by the isolationist wing of the Republican Party of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson (he came out of it almost mad and completely unsuited to the presidential role) and of his plan to make the United States the axis of international balance by replacing a now financially exhausted Great Britain, after having sided with it in 1917 in the trenches of Europe.
With this came the consequent affirmation of theisolationism that will remain until December 1941 the North Star for the majority of Americans. It cannot be forgotten that the President Franklin D. Roosevelt, determined to help London since 1940, at a certain point before Pearl Harbour authorized the escort of convoys in the Atlantic by American destroyers. Three were sunk by German submarines and Roosevelt did not utter a word, because breaking diplomatic relations with Hitler was equivalent to getting closer to war and large sectors of the American electorate, often Republicans but also Democrats, were strongly opposed. Isolationism itself would not end with Pearl Harbour, and the return of the United States in force to Europe in 1947-48 with the Marshall Plan, the NATO and support for the first steps of the future EU always found a large front of opponents in Congress and in the country.
Trump, the heir to a century of American isolationism
Of this isolationism Trump is the direct heir. As he is an even more direct heir of protectionism and anti-immigration regulations. Both instruments were among the specific measures of the 20s, with the rates that massacred through retaliation and then competitive devaluations the entire economy of the twenty years, especially the second part, and even after. The limits on immigration, then different from the current one and based on agreed rules and numbers, were equally severe, especially for the Mediterranean countries, the Balkans and Central Europe, and for the Jews. Trump conducted much of the election campaign just concluded on immigration and tariffs.
But how can an isolationist and protectionist country be the linchpin of the international system and demand free access to markets? How will Trump be able to speak with authority in any international forum if the American bar is fixed on isolationism? And finally, how can New York continue to be the world financial capital in an isolationist America? Trump and his followers do not seem to realize that the end of the American role is the first of the geopolitical objectives of Moscow and Beijing, but above all Moscow, which does not even have the shadow of China's economic weight to throw on the table of the powerful. In the 20s and 30s, American finance, led by the Federal Reserve of New York, was very active in Europe and elsewhere, affirming New York's role as creditor of last resort and making with finance the foreign policy that diplomacy with its hands tied could not do. But world finance is different today than it was then.
“I see him as a complete aberration in our national history, a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy makes him an unparalleled threat to our nation,” the historian wrote two days ago Jon (sic) Meacham, author of highly praised studies on various presidents.
Trump and Europe: Between Global Partners and Antagonists
In Europe, the watchword until the evening of November 5 seemed to be a nervous but formally calm "we will try to have good relations with whoever the tenant of the White House is". But Will Trump want to negotiate? And how, as a partner or as a neighborhood bully? Trump is a declared opponent of the Europe of Brussels and in favor of a dismemberment of the EU, too big commercially to be pushed around. He and Putin they want for various reasons the itself thing: a 'Europe of Nation-States, small states in the end, with which to be able to have a big say. And the Trump who is preparing to return to the White House will be very different, and much worse, than the Trump of 2016-2020, because everything is ready to dismantle those conditionings that the Washington of Defense, diplomacy and Intelligence, and others, have asserted a few years ago.
Tom Nichols recently wrote for The Atlantic an appreciated one discussion panel between two presidents, George Washington, faithful to his mandate, strong in the face of the blandishments of power and eager to return to his Mount Vernon as soon as possible, and Donald Trump. Power-hungry, not a tenant but a master of the White House. “Trump’s victory would be the end of Washington’s vision of the presidency, and the end of the United States.”
