Straw men

Donald Trump has a downer on paper straws: "they don't work, bring back plastic".

Well, it's good to see that the President of the United States has his eye on the little details that make such a difference to us all. I had vowed, wherever possible, to ignore the ramblings of this deranged megalomaniac, on the basis that if we all stopped reacting to him he might just go away. 

We know he's a shameless attention-seeker but the wider the gap gets between pledges and delivery, the more likely it is that the American people will lose faith. Zeus may have thundered from Mount Olympus but once people stopped believing in him he simply faded into irrelevance. If only real life were like that.

It pains me to say this, and perhaps I'll regret doing so, but, for all the performative bluster, he does sometimes hit on an important issue, though usually for the wrong reasons and drawing the wrong conclusions from it. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and simply because it's Trump saying it shouldn't mean we automatically dismiss it out-of-hand - tempting as that might be. 

What we need to avoid is allowing him to set the agenda so when he raises something, be it plastic drinking straws or buying Greenland, we must be in a position either to instantly rebut it or examine its potential value. His posturing on US foreign aid is a case in point. 

Although a judge has put a temporary block on his plan to gut the USAid agency as part of Elon Musk's drive for government efficiency and cost-cutting, Trump has potentially identified an issue whose wider ramifications deserve closer scrutiny and measured debate. 

The agency spent $40bn last year on supporting humanitarian projects globally in the world's biggest exercise of 'soft power'. Given the scale of this enormous taxpayer-funded commitment it is quite right to review its purpose, cost and efficacy, provided this is done in a non-ideologically driven way.

And there's the rub: everything is ideological for Trump and his MAGA support-base. Objective facts are irrelevant; anything that doesn't fit his skewed worldview is dismissed as either corrupt, fake or woke. Conspiracy theories abound in this QAnon-inspired parallel universe, in which everything is the fault of the liberal elite, immigrants, transgendered people - and China. 

Leaving such Trumpery aside for a moment, there are wider questions to be addressed about a world order that was established after World War II and has basically remained unchanged, and unchallenged, for eighty years.

It's a pity it has taken a disruptor like Trump to force the issue but, unpalatable as he may be, it is nevertheless a valid one that has been dodged for way too long. The War effectively brought to an end the imperial era, with the colonial era limping along until the Suez Crisis of 1956, which saw Britain finally lose its pre-eminence and the USA assume the mantle of a global superpower, facing only the Soviet Union as a threat. 

The bodies created after the war, such as the UN, NATO, World Bank, World Health Organisation (WHO) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) remained largely unaffected by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and, indeed, NATO expanded its sphere of influence into Eastern Europe - something which has incensed and empowered Vladimir Putin, with the catastrophic results we are now witnessing in Ukraine and potentially Georgia.

Surely the time has come, despite or because of Trump's triumphant and triumphalist return to power, to grasp the nettle of change? The existential crisis facing humanity now is no longer one of nuclear annihilation (although that remains a risk, by deliberate action or accident) but climate collapse. We are already seeing regional conflicts and mass migrations driven by climate change around the globe, but especially in the African continent. 

This is having a knock-on destabilising impact in Europe and throughout the wider Western world, with movements of displaced people affecting political discourse and social cohesion, leading to the rise of the sort of rightwing anti-immigrant populism of which Trump is such a dangerous example.

So, sweeping under the carpet the urgent need for crisis management and a drastic reimagining of the old world order or post-war settlement, is no longer optional, it's imperative. We cannot continue to fiddle while Rome burns. We must reclaim the narrative from rightwing populists like Trump, accepting that, while their spotlighting of a problem may be correct, their analysis of its nature and solution is mostly or wholly wrong. 

The agencies that have propped up the Western hegemony for eighty years are clearly crumbling and in urgent need of reform or abolition. Foreign aid and the 1951 Refugee Convention must be included in this reappraisal. The status quo is no longer a viable option. Addressing change, however, will be a painful process, particularly for those millions caught in the crossfire - often literally - but it is essential. 

The world simply cannot go on as it is, accepting the transfer of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons annually from war-ravaged, environmentally compromised countries, to 'asylum' in the West. It may present a short term 'fix' but ultimately does no-one any favours - except, perhaps, the tyrants running those pernicious regimes from which people are so desperate to flee. 

Such regimes are often bankrolled by the West - and increasingly the East (ie Russia and China) - in order to secure natural resources and strategic entrepots. A steely resolve will be required to take the tough decisions necessary to bring about global justice. This may, in the short term at least, mean being cruel to be kind. 

By this I mean refusing any longer to let despots off the hook by accepting a tide of refugees created by their own persecution and corruption. The effects of this are already destabilising many recipient countries, most notably Germany and France, giving a political platform to populist demagogues whose rise to power will do even more harm to global stability.

But we cannot adopt a policy which could have the effect of further punishing the victims without also going after the criminal perpetrators, not only with moral condemnation but the full force of international law. This has itself been coming under increasing attack, requiring a robust overhaul of existing structures like the United Nations (UN), International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

Creating the consensus necessary to achieve this outcome will be extremely difficult but we cannot simply resign ourselves to allowing necessary change to be driven by the whims and prejudices of Trump, the malevolent blocking tactics of Putin and the unenlightened self-interest of Xi.

They do not own the agenda, or offer the solutions.

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