Nationalism vs. Globalism
By Ethan Draper
During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both spoke about job loss and how job growth would need to be addressed in the next presidential term. The Old-left argued that more trade deals needed to be done in order to give America its fair share of imports and exports. They argued defending the position of Globalists. While the Old-right argued that trade deals needed to be thrown out the window, the US needed to raise tariffs, and they took the position of the Nationalists. What both sides neglected to argue was how Americans are losing their jobs to robots, algorithms, and the rise of technology.
The 2016 election was a failure not of strategy which asks the question: Are we globalists or Nationalist? But a failure of identifying the correct problem, asking the right questions.
In 2016 Nationalism spurred by fear of terrorism and a stagnant local economy, beat out globalism. President Donald J. Trump intended to bring back American jobs, focus on the nation, and become a more isolated country by actively diminishing other ones.
In theory, this sounds like a plan every American can get behind. Stabilizing the American economy, getting Americans off of welfare and back to work, and shifting our focus on isolated issues that only concern Americans.
But is that how America got and maintained its superiority over the rest of the world? Beginning at the end of World War II, this country’s main focus has been promoting and advancing our way of life through our foreign policy of interventionism. It hasn’t always worked out. The Vietnam War, the global war on drugs, and the War on Terror, now seem like obvious blunders. But directly after World War II, we had the best position to lead by example. It was also a time where we had a way of life that was worth exporting, still not perfect but the best path forward. Through our example and strength, the U.S. helped democratize Western Europe, and transform post-war Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, culminating by having a hand in uniting Western and Eastern Europe.
In contrast, President Trump’s idea is to leave globalism behind and return to Nationalism. His reason: security. President Trump proclaimed that a wall must be built between the U.S. and Mexico because Mexicans are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists” while assuming still some immigrants are good. In another tactic to promote nationalism, he implemented a travel ban on seven countries in the middle east that are prone to terrorism, though this has since been overturned by a federal court in Washington. Clearly, even after the election, the game that Old-Washington is playing is still the wrong game. It is still nationalism vs Globalism.
President Trump is speaking to a select group of people in the United States that fear globalization and the growth of America’s outreach. Which is the one thing Trump has correctly identified: people’s disdain for globalism when it comes at the expense of local communities. What is the purpose of the nation state if it is not to protect its inhabitants’ well-being? In other words why export a broken system?
The American people fear that more and more of their jobs are getting shipped overseas. Combine those fears with the constant fear of an impending terrorist attack, and you have a country that was looking for a savior. They looked at Trump and wiped out the whole idea of globalism in a single election, and Trump and his electorate brought back Nationalism by mandate.
The President talked about raising tariffs that allow American jobs to come flooding back into the labor force. He’s also planned on talking to China about moving American companies out of the country despite the low cost of manufacturing in China that saves companies huge amounts of money. While bringing back jobs in factories and in manufacturing companies may sound easy, President Trump ought to realize is that the cost of manufacturing in the USA is much pricier than manufacturing overseas and this may actually not create as many jobs as he believes. With a minimum wage set in this country, employees working in these jobs will be making at least 10 times the amount as the people working in Indonesia or China, shooting labor cost through the roof for employers. With labor cost being so high, employers will most likely not hire as many people as President Trump expects and demands, making these talks with China very difficult.
This highlights the exact problem with globalism. Globalism sought to export Democracy, the system that values human individuals. Yet, as we exported our market economies into other cultures, instead of exporting our way of life. We shifted our business and took advantage of humans in other countries. Instead of exporting freedom and democracy we exported our labor to countries that would turn a blind eye to abuse. Yet we still wear the Nike’s and buy the latest iPhones, as the Foxconn employees jump out of buildings. What we say we value and the results of our actions create a massive disconnect.
Since the beginning of his campaign President Donald Trump has boasted about giving coal miners their jobs back and possibly even creating new jobs for these hardworking men and women. When repealing Obama-era environmental protection legislation surrounded by miners saying that these are “Special people. Special workers, We are bringing it back, and bringing it back fast.” The only issue with that is, there are only 83,000 coal mining jobs in the whole United States. And 174,000 blue-collar, full-time, permanent jobs related to coal in the U.S.: mining 86,035, transportation 31,000, and power plant employment 60,000. To put that in perspective, the solar power industry employed 373,807 solar workers in 2016, but the solar companies have not been getting the same amount of buzz from the President.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/2017%20US%20Energy%20and%20Jobs%20Report_0.pdf
A Global Solution To A Global Problem?
I believe there is a larger theory here when President Trump speaks on the coal miners and bringing back their jobs. In a recent TED Dialogue, historian Yuval Harari raises an interesting point about how Nationalists and climate change correlate. He explains that since Global Warming is a global problem we need global solutions to solve it. He argues that exploitation of natural resources can only be beneficial locally because it comes at a cost of damage from a globalist perspective.
Now, this is not saying that all nationalists are climate change deniers, just as it is not saying that all globalists believe in climate change. What Harari is saying is that the outspoken climate change deniers are usually the ones with loyalties and special interests that look at profit and selfish acts over its own country’s benefits. The narrative of nationalism supports their own desire to exploit the environment and finds value from conquering outside itself.
President Trump may care about creating jobs for the coal miners, and job growth anywhere within the United States is something that should be celebrated, but Donald Trump’s loyalties to the coal industry is valuable to him politically, even if the industry as a whole reduces the value, not localized profit, of America as a whole though climate change. Special interest groups exist on both sides of the political system– and they always will as long as Citizens United is in place– but the coal industry special interest is a particularly tricky group. As the United States grows and progresses, coal and oil will become more obsolete due to renewable resources, but as of today, the United States still runs on oil and coal. These industries employ thousands and thousands of Americans, which is great for the American economy, but our environment is suffering the consequences. This is where nationalism and patriotism are really dividing our country: the nationalists do not see or care about the harmful long-term effects of these industries. They are looking only at the local profits and justify the
There is a beneficial middle ground that could help both nationalists and globalists though, and that is accepting that the coal and oil industries are beneficial to the United States as of 2017, but we must start preparing a workforce for other resources that are renewable. Sooner-rather-than-later, the United States economy will be powered by solar, wind and other renewable resources. A globalist like Harari doesn’t think that a nationalist ideology can solve the global problem of climate change. He explains that loyalty does not have just one layer to it, he says, “but in order to confront climate change, we need additional loyalties and commitments… and that should not be impossible because people can have several layers of loyalty. You can be loyal to your family and to your community and your nation, so why can’t you also be loyal to mankind as a whole?”
Harari insists that this is only possible through the use of force, or through a political governance. Harari’s view is that “it is all just a story” and he reduces cultural heritage and wisdom to a mere mental trick. Is globalism even worth exporting, if it comes at the cost of our local communities, heritage, and way of life? Harari asks these hard questions, but rather than suggest what ought to be, he only identifies what he thinks, “will be” without entangling himself in the suggestions. The future he sees requires a global government, but he also sees that this probably won’t happen unless there is a “catastrophe” in which intelligent people could take advantage to unite the masses. It is a pessimistic view and one that lacks leadership and vision. The future will happen, and how we get there very much matters. If we get global capitalism with the morality of China and Russia, then the West has lost. It is not just about if globalism wins the game versus nationalism, but if this so called “win” that globalism provides maintains an environment where people can still play the game.
If this country begins to phase out the coal and oil industry at a gradual pace, it will give time to other industries time to progress and create a job force, that within a few decades, could take over the United States economy and provide a cleaner future for the country. But that makes us ask the larger question, of how efficiency and automation are playing a larger role in our society. And how we have to re-imagine these scoffed at “stories”, what we call narratives, as they become the most deterministic factor in our lives, and also in the physical universe.
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In order to move ahead, we first must establish where we are. Otherwise, like a disoriented person in a shipwreck, you may think you are swimming to the surface only to find your hand hitting the bottom of the lake.
The world has gone through two revolutions before, first was the agricultural revolution and this began around 7500 years ago when humans switched from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to a sedentary lifestyle where humans grew and raised their own food. This revolution lasted the longest out of the two (so far) and it has gone so far that humans are modifying the genetics of plants and animals to taste and look better to us. The second revolution began in the 1700s in the England this became known as the Industrial Revolution. This revolution allowed nations and cities to grow exponentially and this was the golden era for inventions and advancements. The Industrial Revolution led the way for easier travel with the steam engine being invented and agricultural life became much simpler when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Now the world is going through its third revolution and it is the technological revolution. Within the last 50 years, communication, travel, warfare, and jobs as a whole have all been drastically changed due to this technology boom.
The problem with this technology boom is that politicians seem to just keep ignoring the changes it is bringing to society. There is blame on both sides for neglecting to accept that technology is taking away jobs. Nationalists put all the blame on the globalists for expanding job growth to other countries and creating
Ian Bremmer is a political scientist who spoke on how Americans are not losing their jobs to the Mexicans or Chinese, but they are losing it to technology. Mr. Bremmer quoted the World Economic Forum and stated, “86% of manufacturing job losses in the US between 1997-2007 were the result of rising productivity, 14% because of trade”. While most politicians, especially the President, are focused on how trade is “killing” the US job market, technology is slowly creeping up on the American economy and “stealing” jobs right from under Americans feet. With the neglect that is being given to this issue, it is easy to understand why most Americans fear that China will one day take over as the world’s number one superpower or are scared of immigrants coming over our border and taking these manufacturing jobs in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. President Trump campaigned hard in the “rust belt states”, which are states that are known to run on manufacturing jobs. He promised to bring back all the lost jobs that have been shipped overseas, but in reality, those jobs will just never come back because they never left. Technology has just become so advanced that it is out working the American people and creating a different sort of job market.
With Nationalists turning a blind eye to the technological boom, the globalists could have taken the lead with this revolution, but instead, they’ve allowed other countries to take control of our open trade policies and leave the at home technological boom on the back burner. The globalists in America have become so content with the growth of the economy over the past decade that they have neglected to prepare for the future where, within the next 50 years, millions of people may be out of their jobs due to technology. Too many times have globalists in the United States have gone against traditional American values and turned their backs on the American workers. The vast majority of globalists will look for any way to take businesses out of the United States so that they can find a way to make a larger profit and it has crushed the American workforce, leading to a diminished middle-class and the rise of American nationalism.
The rise in nationalism is a backlash against the globalist ethos. The Globalist ideology is right in identifying that some issues require global cooperation. But our current model, our system, our narrative, or our current “story,” is incapable of finding value through cooperation and is established and created on old-values that wrongly think that there is more value in dominance over nature over than there is in human cooperation.
Only very recently has there been a strong push to get young adults to go towards engineering or coding jobs and there is very little being done in schools, especially in urban areas, that allow kids to have the opportunity to learn and understand how important learning one of these trades may be when looking for their career paths. Our education system is based on an old industrial model, is not preparing children for today, and is completely ignoring the challenges of tomorrow. Too many politicians, on both the nationalist and globalist side, have ignored the problem that job loss is not being created because of foreign workers, it’s because technology is advancing faster than what had been expected, predicted, and planned for. Why should we trust your global vision if your plan is failing to provide a way to prepare for itself?
Our policies do not reflect the change of environment, that our policies are making. This makes our citizens question the underlying fabric of society: “Is our worth tied to the labor force?” These are the big issues, not globalism vs Nationalism. But the very worth of individual life as we shift to a post-labor society.
The fight between globalists and nationalists has been going on for well over a decade now but the 2016 Presidential campaign was what really shed the light on how far apart the fight has divided both sides on very terrifying, yet important, issues. Mankind is at such a fascinating time in history where humans are their own worst enemies. With climate change, humans have every ability to change the fact that our environment is dying around us and both globalist and nationalists are too stubborn to come to a middle ground to resolve this issue.
Both sides can benefit from a new job force arising and moving away from nonrenewable resources. While there is so much money already invested in oil and coal, nationalists have to come and understand that renewable resources such as wind and solar can be just as valuable as coal, and even take us out of the conflict in the Middle East. Globalists also have to understand that while we must move away from coal and oil in due time, they are still very beneficial to the American economy. With job loss being a more pressing issue, both sides have to understand that America is its own worst nightmare right now.
Ignoring the issue facing technology in the job force will only hold America back and President Trump has to drop the idea that Americans are losing hardworking jobs to other countries when the facts are all right in front of him. It’s not from other countries but from technology. We either serve to benefit special interests like the Oil Industry, or we serve within our values, a country which represents us on the global stage. Something that President Trump is failing to do.
The American people have to change our strategies in order to maintain or values. Technology forces us to reorganize and prepare for a drastically different society that our future generations will be facing: The battle between American and Human Values, and increasing pressures from a global cartel of special interests.
No match is worth winning if it goes against how we think the game should be played.
