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Strongman Geopolitics Nationalism, Populism and Sovereignism. The Return of the Strong Men Keys Strongman Geopolitics Lluís Bassets1 tion that the great American nation had been known Journalist and Political Columnist, Barcelona for since its foundation. So, the current President’s slogan does not only connect with the nationalism apparent during the rise of fascism, but also revital- Nationalism is coming back and with a strength that izes a line of foreign policy in Washington which, un- has rarely been seen since the 1930s. And with the til now, was thought to have been definitively thrown Nationalism, Populism and Sovereignism return of nationalism, as if often the case, come the on the scrap heap. strongmen. If there were any doubts about the return of a political ideology that was responsible for the most devastating event of the 20th century, these Nationalisms and Populisms were washed away with Donald Trump’s election in November 2017. The new President of the Unit- The return of nationalism also marks the return of pop- ed States came to power under an unquestionably ulisms, a controversial but useful term to describe nationalist and populist banner, with “America First” numerous movements and parties that have emerged 55 written all over it. from the right and left in reaction to the economic and America First was the name of a non-interventionist political crises. They are the result of newly impover- association steeped in antisemitism created in Chi- ished populations, the declassing of the middle class- cago in 1940 in opposition to the United States’ par- es and a divorce between citizens and the elite, which ticipation in World War II. Its leaders included the quickly translates into a defamation of institutions, tra- aviator Charles Lindbergh, a sympathizer of the Nazi ditional parties and representative democracy. regime. The name of this far-right anti-war lobby was The syncretism of nationalism – the nation before an echo from the verses “Deutschland über alles/ all else – and populism – the people against the über alles in der Welt” (Germany above all, above elite – inevitably requires a leader who embodies the all in the world), lines from the German national an- nation and becomes the voice and expression of the them that were subsequently removed from the offi- people. This is an evanescent figure of political action, cial version adopted by post-war Germany. who only acquires a voice and face if the people iden- A full cycle has just come to completion with the ar- tifies with and places its trust in a single and singular rival of Trump in the White House. The United States leadership. Let’s call him a “strongman,” although in had led 70 years of liberal globalization through a sys- reality he is a commander, a boss or a Führer, words 2019 tem of multilateral institutions set up under the coun- still reviled in common parlance. try’s own initiative following victory over Germany and This apparent return to the past contains something Japan in World War II. That undertaking, headed by new that openly differentiates it from previous popu- President Roosevelt and brought to fruition by Tru- list incarnations. The strength and breadth of the cur- man, changed the isolationist and unilateralist tradi- rent national populisms would not be possible without Mediterranean Yearbook 1 Lluís Bassets is a journalist and political columnist and current head of the Catalan edition of El País. He is the author of, among other books, Javier Solana. Reivindicación de la política, Editorial Debate, 2010, El año de la revolución. Como los árabes están derrocando a sus tiranos, Med. Med. Taurus, 2012 and El último que apague la luz. Sobre la extinción del periodismo, Taurus, 2013. IE two intertwined singularities that did not exist during el example of populist nationalism, as indeed he is of Keys the time of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco: economic the strongman. Individualist, erratic and out of con- globalization and technology. The crisis that hit the trol, yet with his eyes firmly fixed on his grip on pow- former is at the root of the populist wave sweeping er, Trump is admired and invoked by populist leaders across the globe, triggered by the collapse of Wall throughout the world on his march towards personal Street in 2008, the Great Recession and its subse- power through the ballot box. Trump, in turn, admires quent monetary, social and political shockwaves. These those who imitate him, but perhaps more still the have reached all around the world not just affecting strongmen whose paths have not included the ballot the West, as would have been the case before the box, such as, Xi Jinping in China, Kim Jong-un in North decolonization that took place 80 years ago. The lat- Korea, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Mohammed bin ter, particularly social media and mobile telephony, Salman in Saudi Arabia. provides populist movements with new, exceptional instruments for peaceful mobilization. These have trans- formed party systems and the very idea of democracy, Masculinization of Power by bringing into question interventions in the econo- my, trade, journalism and politics. One after the other, nationalist and populist leaders Nationalism, Populism and Sovereignism There is a dual nature to the impact new technologies are democratically elected to govern as institutional- have on politics. They were instrumental in the 2011 ized and recognized autocrats in authoritarian regimes. Arab Springs, weapons of liberation against the strong- Their strongman geopolitics gathers strength in the men of a fading era. Yet, they are also weapons of ac- alliances and relations they weave with one another. tion and even control for the strongmen of the new, And, we say men because, if there is something that emerging times. They served to topple Mubarak, but typifies this new era of personalized power, it is the were used by Trump in his rise to power, in the refer- heavy masculinization of power and ideology, which endum-winning Brexit campaign and by Putin in his is, at times, openly anti-feminist and hostile toward 56 hybrid wars in Ukraine or his electoral interference in “gender ideology” and the rights of minorities and Western countries. They are part of the fourth indus- sexual identities. Absolute personal power has always trial revolution, which revolves around big data and been masculine, but in its more contemporary incar- Artificial Intelligence, but are also key factors behind nation, male-chauvinism, anti-feminism and an aversion the latest wave of totalitarian population control, im- toward homosexuality have become the programmes plemented by autocratic states like Russia, China or and banners flaunted at the ballot boxes for obtaining Saudi Arabia. democratic consensus. The rise of populist leaders could also be associated with today’s geopolitics of hate, their success stories at the polls clearly owing to the effectiveness of a dis- There is a dual nature to the impact course of resentment and loathing towards the other, new technologies have on politics. whether this be foreigners, immigrants, muslims, sex- They are part of the fourth industrial ual minorities or even underprivileged social groups. revolution, but are also key factors Duterte wins elections in the Philippines under a ban- ner of physical and extrajudicial extermination of drug behind the latest wave of totalitarian dealers. Narendra Modi has won a landslide victory in 2019 population control, implemented by India with a programme that is anti-Muslim and based autocratic states like Russia, China on Hindu supremacy. Bolsonaro has risen to power in or Saudi Arabia Brazil on another programme of exclusion: of leftists, the poor, indigenous peoples and sexual minorities. The same can be said of Viktor Orban in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy, the Law and Justice Party of Ja- Mediterranean Yearbook Nobody better embodies the new technological strong- roslav Kaczynski in Poland and Marine le Pen in France, man than Donald Trump, directing the political world all of whom peddle an agenda that exploits fear and Med. Med. IE from his unpredictable Twitter account. His is a mod- the continent’s wave of immigration. The strongmen are coming back. Although, strictly the ruling families, even when no succession regula- speaking, they have not really ever left, despite the rel- tions are in place, as is very often the case. Keys ative democratic progress made since 1989 with the The strongmen in what used to be called Third World breakup of the communist bloc and disappearance of countries have based themselves on a solid structure the Soviet Union. A substantial cohort of strongmen, of military and police power, the underpinning govern- prior to the current generation, arose from the frus- ance of post-colonial countries. The most successful trated or false transitions in the old socialist camp, a model, however, sees the army and party fused as direct result of leadership succession in the commu- one, as is the case in the People’s Republic of Chi- nist parties: this was the case of Milosevic in Serbia, na. Until the arrival of Xi Jinping, this was the most and his Croat counterfigure, Franjo Tudjman; it is also explicit example of a depersonalized, collegial dicta- the case of a good number of ex-communist dictators torship, although it has now returned to its old ways who emerged from the defunct Soviet Union: Alexan- of accumulating personal power, even bordering on der Lukashenko en Belorussia, Islam Karimov in Uz- a Maoist-style personality cult. bekistan (who died in 2016), Nursultan Nazarbayez The Russian case is an odd one, as the root of power in Kazakastan, until his apparent resignation in 2019, there does not lie in the army, but instead the intelli- or Ilham Aliev, the second President from the same gence services, following the end of the party-state family clan, in Azerbaijan.
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