Daily Times

For the past several decades, the belief that America has virtually eradicated racial segregation has been common among white US Americans. In a society structured by white supremacy and steeped in racial inequality, this illusion of post -racism has inhibited progress toward racial equality. Today, as more women, people of colour and citizens of different faiths or no religion have stepped into the halls of power, American leaders in the office really have a choice in how to respond: they could see this evolving change as a positive where diversity could make America better and welcome these new leaders, or they could also appeal to people’s fears, exacerbate divisions and try to pit citizen vs. citizen. Looking at what has happened in Minneapolis and over 100 other US cities in recent weeks, one could reasonably argue that today, America is going to lose its nationalist moorings–the ideological basis of American exceptionalism– via its systematic embracing the ideology of white racism.

President Trump explicitly threatened to deploy the military against his own citizens. An unleashed police force apparently not even pretending to protect anyone from anything anymore for the most part being evidenced by the observation: heavily armed masked paramilitaries lining up in Washington. Meanwhile, it’s anyone’s guess what scenarios the man in the White House is playing out in case he’ll lose that election in autumn. The traditionally conceptual history of civil war, as the historian David Armitage has shown, is long, twisted and ambiguous but has a localizable and nameable starting point: ancient Rome. The so- called majestic doctrine called cives Romanus, the Roman citizen, was potential to infuse the idea that the bearers of this legal status could be on one another’s throat instead of their common enemy’s, with all its paradoxical horror– Rome found its form in civil status and its history in the civil war.

President Trump is perceived by many as posing a scowling threat to the system of global governance- established in the post Second World War order. This criticism of Trump often conceals a more serious charge: that by undermining the liberal international order he is actually diluting the power of the American idea itself, the core set of beliefs surrounding its self-image and role in the world. Even worse is the suggestion that he has been hastening the relative decline of the United States as a global power. Trump does not use the language of ‘Pax Americana’, the credo of American exceptionalism, the long-held idea that the United States is the keeper of ‘global peace’. This adds to the prevailing sense of unease among many in America and abroad. In his acceptance speech as the Republican nominee, Trump proclaimed that “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo”.

In 2016, Trump described himself to The Washington Post as “the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.” In the second year of his presidency, that sentiment seemed hardening. That he regularly attacked the institutions and traditions of American democracy while also challenging the very idea that the United States remained a model for other societies to follow. Rhetorically, he has clearly drawn from the American grand strategic tradition of ‘retrenchment’ that seeks to rebalance the US’s sprawling global defence commitments or pass the buck to regional states. The expert Adam Posen of the Chatham House rightly captures the logic well: ‘The United States has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions’, choosing to pursue a globally expansive grand strategy ‘which is unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful’. He argues that America should, instead, forgo any ambitions that are not directly related to immediate national interests.

America now faces unprecedented threats to its influence in the region which may not be easily reversible given the region’s shifting dynamics, accelerated by the politics of COVID-19. America’s regional position and role are changing, maybe even significantly declining. Most recently, the US declined to positively participate in a European Union-led international conference to forge cooperation and pool resources to find a vaccine for the coronavirus; neither did Trump offer any funds for the collective pot of $8 billion to fund a coronavirus vaccine. Sadly, the White House is playing the politics of “vaccine nationalism” rather than promoting cooperation even during a global pandemic.

Sadly, the White House is playing the politics of “vaccine nationalism” rather than promoting cooperation even during a global pandemic

Ungrudgingly, critics say that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric is to rightly blame for America’s dramatic increase of white nationalist movement through perceived activity and organizations since Trump’s entry into the 2016 election. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual report on extremist groups said its count of white nationalist groups has risen 55% over the past three years, from 100 in 2017 to 148 in 2018 to 155 in 2019. White nationalist hate groups in the US have remarkably increased. These groups were systematically counted separately from Ku Klux Klan groups, racist skinheads, Christian Identity groups, and neo-Confederate groups, all of which also express some version of white supremacist beliefs. Since the turn of the millennium, the report says, “American racists have fretted over what they fear will be the loss of their place of dominance in society” as its racial composition changes.

According to the perspective shared by Hill, distributing propaganda through flyers and stickers and planning flash demonstrations is a preferred white nationalist tactic because it allows individuals in those groups to avoid being arrested or unmasked on the internet. Not only is white supremacy activity rising among the American public, it is increasing among U.S. military members as well. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently testified before the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel on the threat that white supremacism in the military has on the nation.

In his first remarks from the White House since massive protests have swept the country, President Trump said that evening that the looting and violent demonstrations in reaction to the death of George Floyd in police custody were “acts of domestic terror.” Speaking in the Rose Garden as protesters and law enforcement held a tense standoff outside, Trump said he planned for a police and law enforcement presence to “dominate the streets” and said he would respond with an “overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled. As protests over police violence engulf hundreds of cities in the United States, China is seizing the moment, seizing on the unrest to tout the glowing American authoritarianism and to portray the turmoil as yet another sign of American hypocrisy and decline. In the given challenge to rebuild the fabric of American nationalism, the next American administration has an unremitting task to address it. Many optimistic Americans hope that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden could be the right man to uplift and transform a downgraded and divisive American system to the hilt.

Concluded

The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan