Carolina Cork Mejia
Former Minister of Health, Psychiatrist.
To understand the context of the current electoral process in the US, it is necessary to understand the moment that the world is going through, which implies a reconfiguration of the world order and the hegemony of the US, given the crisis of financial neoliberalism. The post-pandemic further highlighted this crisis of the US in the face of the rise of China, this implies a transition of the world order, the pandemic showed how the capacity of response and global leadership was for its management, this moment constituted a breaking point in the face of the rise of the West, which since the 15th century has been consolidating itself with political and economic leadership in the world, it should be noted that in the 18th and 19th centuries, the West managed to marginalize the most populous universal cultures, to this is added the conquest they made of Africa. However, the third industrial revolution emerged in which communications technologies were imposed that allowed the world to be interconnected with greater flexibility. This industrial relocation was exploited by China with the development of a national project that involved the establishment of joint ventures between international capital and national production, national industrial protection and the obligation to invest the profits obtained in China. They moved away from the wild privatization and foreignization of the productive matrix, thereby avoiding the national deindustrialization promoted by neoliberal financial globalism.
In the 1970s, the Chinese established a relationship with the United States that did not involve subordination, associated capitalism, or acceptance of US military occupations, as occurred in Europe. In the 1990s, the Chinese established a strategic alliance with the Russians to stop NATO’s military advance under the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In this context, China leapt from being a semi-peripheral nation state to being a world economic center.
In the following decade, the loss of US hegemony began, that is, its ability to lead consensus in the world order. This has been characterized by a relative loss of economic power, technological production, and the ability to reach agreements among its NATO allies, such as the war and invasion of Iraq. All of this is reflected internally in the discontent of the working classes and an internal struggle opened between two positions within the dominant political forces in this country, one that defended financial globalism and another that defended protectionist Americanism. Both positions are within the framework of neoliberalism.
The dispute between globalism and protectionism in the US
The internal effects of the US decline in global hegemony are reflected internally in the defeat of Hillary Clinton by the Republicans in Donald Trump’s first election, from there the Republicans launched a protectionist nationalist policy, which strikes at several international treaties with the Pacific to try to weaken the advance of China, Russia and other emerging powers. This is what is called the unilateral unipolarity of the Republicans against the globalist unipolarity of the Democrats led by Clinton, Obama and Biden.
What is clear is that the old world order is unable to stop the new emerging poles of power, and on this basis conservative political projects have emerged in the Global North such as that represented by Donald Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom, which advocate protectionism of the economies, accompanied by an anti-immigrant, anti-rights, patriarchal, misogynistic project that disdains sexual diversity.
In this context, in the year 2000, a criticism arose in Latin America against neoliberal and financial globalism led by Washington. The crisis of the neoliberal regime and the economic rapprochement with the Pacific axis generated the possibility of the emergence of various progressive governments, which challenged the position of “backyard” of the United States imposed by the hegemony held by Washington in alliance with the dominant elites in the Latin American region. The first wave of progressive governments in the region were installed there, with variations that currently place the region with a strength of the progressive field given by the triad of the governments of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, which among other things, have managed to agree to help build an agreed transition in the Venezuelan conflict, outside the designs of Washington, which has historically intervened decisively in the decisions of the Latin American region.
The Chinese, for their part, have strategically postulated a dual relationship with the international organizations of the old world order, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, but they have participated in the creation of new alternative instruments to that old world order, such as the BRICS and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In Latin America, a multilateral integration actor called CELAC has emerged, in response to the decline of organizations such as Unasur and Prosur.
Another aspect that is important to point out is that, given the fall of the United States, the transition is tortuous, since the military industry represents a pillar of its economy and that implies maintaining wars in the world, such as the one in Ukraine, which they have already lost, in the face of the unusual silence of the global corporate press that silences the recognition of this fact. However, the economic and social effects for the European Union as the main ally of the United States and for the United States itself at an internal level are very negative. To this must be added that China has achieved productive supremacy in technological means, access to and production of raw materials, in the midst of a commercial and financial war in what we could call a transition towards a new multipolar world order.
The current electoral process in the US
As we have said, the US is currently facing an electoral dispute between two visions, one that responds to a progressive neoliberalism represented by the Democratic Party and another that implies the reactionary neoliberalism of the Republican Party. The dispute is not different from the competition that arose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, with the difference that at that time the current led by Bernie Sanders was gaining strength within the Democratic Party, which constituted a break with the bipartisan vision, and a proposal for true transformation of the realities of US citizens. Its central question was: Why, if we are the richest country in the world, do our citizens not have universal access to health care and young people to higher education? This question sums up the historical debts of US governments with their citizens and the narrow margins of contrast in their government proposals. Historically, both parties have agreed to lower taxes for the richest, to distribute wealth upwards, favoring the 1%. Neither before nor now is there any substantial difference regarding the genocide perpetrated by Israel against the People of Palestine. As Boaventura de Soussa said, it is not that the US supports Israel, it is that the US is Israel, the latter controls the financial power of this country.
It is important to remember that Trump’s emergence occurred in the context of the 2008 crisis. Instead of saving people from the devastating economic situation, the Obama administration decided to save the banks. This generated a rupture between the working class and the Democratic Party, which Trump managed to capitalize on through his discourse of protectionism and the re-industrialization of the United States in the face of a financial globalism that was exporting workers and young people to war, according to some analysts. It was also not true that Trump was the ally of the workers; it turned out to be an empty populist speech. What is true is that Trump adopted an anti-rights policy, which interpreted the white supremacy of the Civil War, which repels migrants, women and sexual diversity.
This has been capitalised on by the neoliberal Democratic globalism that has reconciled with these sectors, by establishing an alliance, which in the terms of the intellectual Nancy Fraser, is about accentuating the struggles for the recognition of blacks, women, the LGTBI population, what is called multiculturalism, which they oppose to the ethnic nationalism promoted by Trump. In the midst of this framework of division in US politics, a vacuum was created to overwhelm the anti-neoliberal political field represented by Bernie Sanders, who responded to the needs of the majority of families suffering from job insecurity, falling living standards, and growing family debts paying high interest rates to access goods and services. Obama had presented himself as the Change and the Hope and handed these families over to the same minority interests of Wall Street. The Democratic Party itself was responsible for isolating the Sanders faction, which attempted to reach an agreement with Biden to make a redistributive proposal that was also unrealistic.
The current situation is that the United States is trapped in a transition between two political forces that refuse to advance a reformist project of social justice for its citizens, and to work on a global transition towards a multipolar world without wars and that faces the most important global problem, which is the climate crisis, which threatens to destroy the existence of humanity.
The differences between the candidacy of Kamala Harris and Trump lie in that the former will adopt a position of protection of the rights of minorities and diversities, but has announced that she will continue with the war in Ukraine and the genocide of Israel in Palestine, Trump is more determined in his support for Netanyahu, but says that he will not continue with the war in Ukraine, a very determined anti-rights fight is expected on his part. Regarding the transition in the logic of the new world order, no significant changes are observed, surely if Kamala wins that will generate a tailwind for other women to begin to apply for positions of political representation and inspire an equal exercise in the world, which is very important, but is in itself insufficient to make the transformations that the world requires, if this is not accompanied by a reflection that questions militarism, wars, the inequalities that financial capitalism has promoted, the injustices of colonialism and the care of mother earth, parity in itself will be insufficient to achieve changes. These do not seem to be central issues in the US electoral debate.
At the time of writing this column, Harris has taken a lead over Trump, in a scenario that is uncertain given that Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in the same circumstances. The Deep State and the US financial establishment are playing with Kamala and that gives her a great chance of winning. What seems clear is that the formation of a new world order will depend little on this electoral process; it will be the new emerging forces and a global progressivism with greater cohesion and clarity of the need to overcome the civilizational crisis that will build the new multipolar hegemonic historical block.
TAKEN FROM SUR MAGAZINE.
