SLIDE 4 Three questions
- 1. Who is going to participate in the reform of globalization in a multipolar global order and in a “G-Zero world” (Ian
Bremmer)? Only the West with its open society model is interested in protecting itself from increasing penetration by illiberal and closed models such as China, the Middle East, Turkey or Russia; the emerging illiberal powers prefer the status quo of “wild” globalization to continue since they are closed and not penetrable by open societies, having created a one-way
- process. Examples: China’s New Silk Road (Road and Belt Initiative), port of Piraeus, Daimler – China wants to become the
new Germany, i.e. high quality manufacturing, while Germany and Europe lack a (joint) global strategy and foresight. Example: Official warning issued jointly by the 28 EU ambassadors in Beijing in April 2018 that the New Silk Road is an expansionary measure by China to undermine fair trade and the international order, an attempt to dominate Europe and to provide unfair advantages to Chinese state firms according to the authoritarian and expansive Xi Jinping Doctrine “The New Chinese Dream / China’s New Place in the World”.
- 2. Is Trumpism, as some U.S. and European theorists (Cato Institute, Fred Dallmayr, Peggy Noonan, Victor Davis Hanson, Ken
Masugi, Hans Köchler) and influential opinion makers (Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich) put it, “the” expression that multipolarism is being taken seriously for the first time by the U.S. and the leading Western powers - contrary to Europe with its persistent “inverse imperialism” as “global civil power”? Is it “the” expression of the recognition of the new multipolar
- rder by a new Western pragmatic realism that is at the forefront of defending the open societies from the grip of closed
models such as China? Or is Trumpism, in contrast, just a symptom of decline? Example: Trump’s domestic versus foreign
- policies. Example: Surprisingly many in the U.S. support Trump’s trade war with China as well as his re-nationalization policy
towards U.S. global corporations as “necessary before it is too late”.
- 3. Is Trumpism (i.e. re-nationalization and de-pluralization) just a temporary phenomenon, or is it here to stay? Does the
answer to this question depend more on a) the progression of inequality or b) the reform of asymmetric elite internationalization, i.e. the perception of the citizen’s fundamental powerlessness and helplessness in Western democracies and open societies, in which everybody has a voice but nothing changes, with other social models becoming more successful? In this the driving force for the future of democracy lies in a great paradox. Example: The Western migration crisis
- not a global crisis, but a specific crisis of open societies, since the vast majority move to the open (developed) societies and
not vice versa, making it a unilateral shift on which, nevertheless, the West has only a minority say. (Example: Trump‘s USA withdrawal from negotiations on the new global migration agreement by the International Organization for Migration IOM in December 2017 for “Infringement of sovereignty”.)