THE annual Armistice Day memorials in Europe on Nov 11 marking the end of World War I are usually somber affairs that draw leaders from across the world.
This year was special for two reasons. One, it has been exactly 100 years since guns went silent on the western front, and two, the souring “bromance” between United States President Donald Trump and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron came out in the open and largely eclipsed the gravity of the occasion.
Macron’s keynote speech in fact directly attacked Trump’s “America First” posture by pointedly declaring “nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism”. He, moreover, warned the world leaders in attendance that Europe was rushing back into the embrace of race-baiting demagogues whose unchecked ambitions had sparked the first great war.
Coincidentally, recent shifts in the headwind of continental politics have seen fire-breathing conservatives rise to power in Italy, Hungary, Poland and Austria. The French president’s alarmist thesis aligns with the left-leaning global media’s current narrative of demonising conservative leaders for the simple reason that they offer a dissenting opinion on the impact of political and economic globalism.
From his speech, it is clear that Macron equates patriotism, or love for one’s country, with globalism and to a degree, humanism. Conversely, nationalism to him is wed to the worst instincts of race and religion that sharpen contradictions among communities and marginalise minorities.
His spin on the current state of the world would have you believe that Trump and his fellow nationalists are evil incarnate, yet the deeper politico-economic integration of the world has clearly harmed enough people who then reflexively rose up to place far-right political outsiders in power. This story has been replayed from Brazil to Myanmar.
Macron, the self-styled champion of centrist politics in Europe and perhaps the most vocal counter-ballast to Trump, however, contends rules-based globalism is inherently virtuous because it is inclusive, compassionate and conciliatory.
He believes politico-economic unions, and none grander than the European Union, have so profoundly intertwined the fates of member states that disagreements leading to armed conflict would doom both sides. They are, hence, the perfect deterrent to war.
And even if we merely focus on the economic merits of globalism, proponents claim the quantum leap in choices of goods and services available to consumers at greatly reduced prices with speedier innovation more than makes up for the jobs lost to business process outsourcing and offshore manufacturing.
How? The higher-value jobs created in such economies once the robotic tasks are performed offshore free up workers to spend more hours on self-actualisation than toiling through clerical humdrum.
Naturally, any economic order with competing interests creates friction which necessitates multilateral dialogue to resolve disputes under the aegis of international rules-based institutions like the World Trade Organisation.
Such forums to redress complaints are crucial in the era of finely-tuned global supply chains that comprise many moving parts working with clockwork precision, lest consumer confidence in their ability to deliver erodes and sinks the entire enterprise.
Likewise, even if we narrow the conversation to political stability, the global forums custom-built to facilitate interstate dialogue such as the United Nations and European Parliament have been instrumental in preventing the world from sliding into another great war after 1945.
Moreover, pacts built on the desire for collective defence, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation have admirably deterred the advances of expansionist Russia and the terrorist groups, Daesh and al-Qaeda respectively.
Yet, Trump and the climbing number of European populists have turned into lightning rods for the frustration of millions because something is clearly broken in the system. To cheerleader Macron, Trump highlights the ghost towns of the American Rust Belt that once hummed with the chorus of automotive engines, but lost out to China and other Southeast Asian states when their corporate patrons raced abroad to stay competitive in a global market.
Mass unemployment followed, as did a significant decline in middle-class standards of living. Others like the UK loathed the free movement of continental labour that was taking work and benefits away from the locals, and voted to “Brexit”.
Furthermore, even as China and the US are locked in the embrace of economic interdependence, the unfair trade surplus the former racked up over decades is indicative of globalism’s failure to level the playing field.
And if Trump detests multilateralism, he believes he has very good reason to do so. Global forums for dialogue and diplomacy have summarily failed to stem the flood of refugees to Europe, failed to prevent war and famine in Yemen and Syria, failed to stop the perpetual bloodletting in Palestine, and failed to stop Russia from unlawfully annexing the Crimea.
Plus, of what use is dialogue when only strong-arming gets North Korea to the negotiating table? Then there is the big question mark over Macron truly believing his own proclamations. His recent alarmist remarks about Russia and China, and the resulting urgency to create a robust “European Army” to defend the continent do not tally with his specific definition of patriotism.
If Macron, too, can draw a firm line between those countries that deserve dialogue and those that don’t, how is he any better than Trump? If he truly values cooperation as the surest path to peace, then why not try to find a middle ground with Moscow and Beijing, instead of scaremongering in classic Trumpian fashion?
Or was Macron’s rousing speech at the Champs-Élysées on Armistice Day a political gimmick in the continuing saga of his now public feud with Trump? If the latter is true, his intellectual dishonesty is regrettably why the flag of liberalism is being kicked down all over Europe.
The writer is an Ipoh-based independent journalist.