Fewer taxes, more deregulation and duties on Chinese and European products: these are the promises of the new American President Donald Trump who, thrilled by the electoral triumph that brought him back to the White House, announces for the States a new “golden age”. But will it really be like this? A book-interview by Franco Bernabe with Paolo Pagliaro, even though it starts from a harsh indictment of the Democratic Presidents of the USA, from Clinton to Obama, it seems designed specifically to deny it.
The title of the book, published by Solferino, is already a program "Trapped – The Rise and Fall of Western Democracies (and How We Can Avoid Them) Third World war“). Bernabè's basic thesis, which is decidedly out of line, is that the entire West has ended up "trapped" because it was "fatal the idea of exporting liberal democracy, globalization, the liberalization of financial markets and technology, in short of creating a world in the image of the United States" once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved. The US thought in this way to remain at the center of the new world but it was an own goal that puts democracy itself at risk: instead of the end of history evoked by Francis Fukuyama another story has begun, that of the decline of the West, which has also been significantly affected by the unconditional opening of the WTO to China and the marginalization of manufacturing, labor and information in the name of the centrality of finance and technology.
The Decline of the West from Clinton to the Republicans
Bernabè claims that the incredible chain of errors began with the Presidency Clinton who, with his reforms that have pushed for the liberalization of financial markets and the deregulation of technology but also for the dismantling of the social protection model introduced by the President Roosevelt and on the opening to China, has definitively dismantled the old world that had its bulwark in the New Deal.
In the j'accuse to Clinton there is all the disappointment of a sincere Democrat like Bernabè but, to be fair, it does not appear that the Republican Presidents who succeeded Clinton have attempted to correct their aim and it is highly unlikely that Trump will do so. Moreover, it would be a bit reductive to also blame Clinton for the economic-financial crisis of 2007-8, which truly marked a watershed not only for America but for capitalism as a whole.
Bernabè is right in recalling that the crisis was born from the subprime mortgage crisis, the result of the excessive liberalization of financial markets in a period of economic euphoria, but the qualitative leap from the sector crisis (the subprime) to the systemic crisis of finance first and of the economy later derived from the sudden and still somewhat mysterious failure of Lehman Brothers at a time when the White House was not in the hands of a Democratic president but a Republican George W. Bush.
Be that as it may, since then the West has lost its centrality and has never recovered while new geopolitical earthquakes, the climate and demographic crises with the fundamentalisms that accompany them, the digital supremacy of the giants of Internet, the two ongoing wars and the fragility of Europe have accentuated its decline. It is obvious that a weak country like Italy and that the middle class has paid a huge price both in terms of purchasing power and in the lack of security for the future. "We were rich and in the last fifteen years we have become poorer", the Italian per capita wealth is lower than other European countries and the inequality indices, although not having increased after 2016, are perceived as increasingly intolerable especially by the new, more talented generations who leave our country to seek their fortune elsewhere in a bitter re-edition of the Italian exodus.
Trapped: Vision and a surge of pride from the West are needed
But – this is the point on which the book ends – can we hope to turn back from today's hell? In theory, yes, but it would be useful, at least for theItaly but the same goes for theEurope, “a long-term vision and courageous initiatives that the political class is not capable of proposing” because it thinks more of floating than governing. What is certain is that “we cannot think of the West returning to the position it had in the past”: on the contrary, today the West must get used to living with other polarities and other worlds. Given how things have turned out, we cannot even rule out that we will even end up with a new world war, but, in the end, the optimism of the will must curb the very justified pessimism of reason. And “fortunately – concludes Bernabè – our long history is full of turning points even if they have often been caused by deep traumas such as a war. The hope is that this time a war will not be necessary and that the West will find the burst of pride needed to start again”. Good luck to all of us.
