Editorial: The new world disorder

Donald Trump’s brazen unilateralist ‘America First’ foreign policy is straining to the limits the architecture of international relations that has mediated the different interests of the world’s capitalist powers since 1945.

US imperialism emerged from the rubble of the second world war as the overwhelmingly dominant power among the capitalist nations. But the other victor was Russian Stalinism, which potentially presented a systemic challenge to capitalism – the basis of the ‘cold war’ between the two superpowers.

Stalinism was not an example of genuine socialism, which means the democratic control of the economy and society by the working class, not the totalitarian rule of a privileged bureaucracy. But the planned economy of the Stalinist states – with private ownership of the dominant sectors of industry abolished – struck at the heart of capitalist rule. It was especially dangerous for capitalism as a model in the former colonial countries exploited and underdeveloped by the imperialist powers.

The cold war with Stalinism therefore created a common interest, a glue between the different national capitalist powers to overcome their conflicting interests. Tensions between them persisted throughout the cold-war period, erupting ferociously on occasions, but were subsumed by the check made on world capitalism by the very existence of non-capitalist states.

This international order finished with the collapse of Stalinism in Russia and eastern Europe, rotted by the internal contradictions of bureaucratic rule, leaving the US truly as the world hegemon. The post-1945 international institutions were remoulded in the 1990s under US direction – president George HW Bush’s ‘new world order’ inaugurating an unrestrained globalisation – not to achieve peace, prosperity and the real intermingling and collaboration of peoples, but to give the freest rein to triumphant capitalism.

The resulting "machinery of global co-operation", the Economist magazine wrote, "together form a system that [both] binds America to its allies and projects its power across the world". (4 February 2017) This was a plea after Trump’s inauguration speech for the US not to adopt a unilateralist foreign policy. But the economic, political and military-strategic configuration that sustained the post-Stalinist ‘liberal international order’ is no more, replaced by an increasingly multi-polar world.

The USA’s moment as the unchallenged hyperpower was brief, historically speaking, shattered by 9/11. The US is still the greatest military power, accounting for 35% of the $1.739trn global military spending in 2017, but it faces regional challenges, and its prestige was damaged by Iraq and Afghanistan. Russian imperialism’s sustained intervention in Syria from 2015, its first engagement outside its ‘near-abroad’ since the cold war, and China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, among other flashpoints, show an increasingly contested world.

The 2007-08 financial crisis was another defining moment. Two-thirds of households in 25 advanced capitalist countries saw no increase in their earnings between 2005 and 2014, according to McKinsey Global Institute research. In contrast, it claims, just 2% of households did not see their incomes rise from 1993 to 2005. The recent OECD report on social mobility found that the share of disposable income held by the richest 10% across its 34 member countries rose from seven times that of the poorest 10% 25 years ago to nine times as high today. Wealth inequality is even worse, with the top 10% owning half the wealth and the bottom 40% just 3%.

Unsurprisingly, the age of austerity is also the age of rage and growing political fluidity. In 30 national elections since 2008 the incumbent won in fewer than a third, down from two-thirds before 2008.

Playing on the massive discontent with the results of unleashed capitalism, Trump’s victory was part of that process. "History is back with a vengeance", lamented the Economist, an ideological champion of capitalism. "It is clear that popular support for the western order depended more on rapid growth and the galvanising effect of the Soviet threat than on intellectual conviction".

But Trump is the not the only product of the new world disorder. The stunning victory in Ireland’s abortion referendum is also a reflection of the profound undermining of the authority of the capitalist establishment’s institutions, and the ossified social attitudes that have underpinned them. It is a herald of future struggles to come.

And the threat posed by Trumpian bellicosity will also find its counter-point in mass movements. The New York Times famously wrote that the phenomenal demonstrations in February 2003 of possibly 30 million in 600 cities against Bush junior’s looming war in Iraq showed there "may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion".

That movement was largely an elemental tide of protest – the potential superpower of the street lacked organised form and clear political aims, with the ideological effects of the collapse of Stalinism not yet overcome. But imagine the possibilities now for a similar development – 15 years on and with the revival of basic socialist ideas shown by the Corbyn waves, the Sanders insurgency, Mélenchon, etc – to take the next step and begin a movement that could challenge the capitalist system itself and adopt a full programme for the socialist transformation of society. Strengthening the reach of the socialist media is vital preparation work today, argues Sarah Wrack, editor of our weekly sister publication the Socialist, celebrating its 1,000th issue.