How would we return to a world without Trump?

f Donald Trump loses this November, it is not only American politics that will shift dramatically from the state of flux that it has been in since 2016. The rest of the world will find itself adjusting to a likely return to certain old realities that were frozen in time by Trumpism. When the thaw is complete, the new American leadership will confront the challenge of addressing key agenda in world politics that the circus of Donald Trump's time in office had overshadowed.

   Trump was a tour de force of distraction. Whatever global issue was of the essence at any time, the injection of Donald Trump into the intricate calculus of the issue robbed it of substance for discussion. Instead, people would end up only talking about the uninformed arrogance of the US president. The primacy of America's role as leader of the free world took a backseat to the triviality of coming to terms with Donald Trump's leviathan-proportioned ego.

   Take climate change, for instance. The moment Trump subscribed to the mental feed that the green doctrine was an American job killer, the international  environmental policy dialogue became a venue for multilateral trade wars instead. Instead of world governments thinking "how can we contribute to efforts to cool the sweltering planet?" they were pied-pipered by Trump to think, "how do we make sure we're not being one-upped by our fellow conservationists?"  

   From a progressive philosophy that did not think in terms of proportional response to a challenge, nations were bamboozled by Trumpism to think "from each according to his means to each according to his needs" which is as Marxist-socialist as you can ever get. But that is Trump's philosophy--he just doesn't know it.  He thinks along the line, "If America is going to put money on climate change, what's in it for America in return?  And it better not be break-even."  Any calculation that shows the United States spending more on anything than it is getting out of it in return, to him, is not in keeping with "America First."  Quantitatively, if America's benefit from an initiative is "X" then America must invest only "X" in pushing that initiative.  

   But that's not how international multilateral initiative is supposed to work.   For that matter, that's not how any team works. Imagine if LeBron James said,"Hey. there's five of us on the floor, why should I do most of the scoring?"  Indeed, if the team won, he doesn't get to keep the trophy for himself, he has to share it with the rest of the other players,"That's just not fair!"  

   It is not fair from the standpoint of effort, but it is the only way to get the job done from the standpoint of harnessing available capability. If LeBron insisted on scoring no more than the lowest scorer in the roster, his team would never win. 

    If the industrial leaders of the world--foremost of which is the United States--are not willing to carry a disproportionately heavier load in the climate agenda, then the liliputians like East Timor, Myanmar, Vietnam, and all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa are certainly not capable of  saving the day. Donald Trump cannot see that, which is why for the last four years the US has not lifted a finger while the mercury rose and the polar ice caps melted.

   That same philosophy informs his standoffish attitude towards NATO. Why should America pick up the lion's share of the tab? No one could explain to Trump that NATO was America's common brainchild with Great Britain, whose ultimate goal was to prevent world War III. Another world war would replicate America's contribution to the casualty rate in the last world war. The same goes with the United Nations whose central organizing principle is the outlawing of war itself. Why should the US pay more for the UN's upkeep? Simply because it was renamed from the League of Nations which was an American invention. 

   This transactional  philosophy is also what that guided his aloofness towards the European Community. If The Europeans are not going to let more refugees in, why should the US relax its border guards down south? Trump has inoculated the developed world with the virus of xenophobia that even the traditionally circumspect Great Britain became inflamed with Brexit fever, trying to channel Trumpian dogma that a modern state should be hermetically sealed against immigrants from "shit hole" countries.  

   Trumpian philosophy relegated the Palestinians into a spectator's role as Israel, the United States and the cartel of moderate Arab States, signed Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives--with everybody signing on the dotted line except the Palestinians.

   Trump assassinated Iran's greatest army general in hopes of provoking an Iranian-backed terrorist backlash that would have aligned the international community squarely behind the US. A well-laid out plan, but the wily Iranians didn't bite the bait.

   For four years under Donald Trumps first term, America exercised the antithetical opposite of the Midas touch: everything it touched turned to rust instead of gold. The problem is the whole world, albeit involuntarily, had been forced to reconfigure all of its operating dynamics to thrive in a Trumpian world. If Trump loses the election, he leaves behind a dystopian world order shaped by global reaction to his irrational geopolitics.  He is the picture of a rabblerouser in "gen pop" in a crowded prison.   After he has triggered the riot of universal ultranationalism between states, walking away from the riot does not instantly stop the orgy of killing he leaves behind.Ⓒ 2020 Joel R. Dizon

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON