Donald Trump is approaching the end of his first year as president of the United States. By now, everyone — supporters, opponents, even indifferents — seem to agree on one thing. His pronouncements and his actions are unpredictable. He ignores precedents and behaves in ways that constantly surprise people. Supporters find this refreshing. Opponents find this terrifying.

Yet very few have remarked upon what is I think his most singular achievement. He has managed the trick of being the most unpredictable actor on the U.S. and world scene, and being at the same time the most predictable actor.

He has deliberately surrounded himself with a panoply of advisors who push him in directly opposite directions. He constantly fires some of them and appoints others. No individual seems to last too long. The result is that he makes it clear to all and sundry that the final decision is his and his alone. He may accede for a while to what some advisors suggest, sometimes undoing their advice the very next day. This is what makes him seem unpredictable.

But in the end he always reverts to what is sometimes called his gut feelings, whether the issue is health care or immigration or tax reductions or military action. This is what makes him so predictable. The bottom line is always the same. Anyone who observes him or works with him or opposes him should therefore be able to predict where he will end up. And for most of the world, where Donald Trump will go is not where they would want a U.S. president to go.

Trump and the United States are faced with a large number of issues about which there are strong and divisive opinions on both sides. These divisions seem to many intractable. Not to Donald Trump. He believes in himself and his ability to complete his national and world agendas. For him nothing is intractable.

In September 2017, the two most urgent foreign policy decisions have to do with North Korea and Iran. In both, the conflict with the United States revolves around one crucial issue, nuclear weapons. North Korea has them. Iran does not, but at least some major internal actors think it essential that Iran acquire them.

The U.S. official position is that North Korea should disband its nuclear weapons and that Iran should cease any and all activities that move in the direction of acquiring such weapons. These positions are not new ones invented by Donald Trump. They have been the public position of the United States under all previous presidents for some time now.

What is different with Trump is that he refuses to admit how difficult it is to achieve these U.S. objectives and how dangerous it would be to pursue them by military action. Previous presidents have therefore sought so-called diplomatic solutions. In the case of Iran, diplomacy seemed to work under President Obama with the accord signed by both countries (and other powers). In contrast, diplomacy has thus far achieved very little in the case of North Korea.

In both situations, President Trump’s gut feelings seem clear. He wants to use military action to force North Korea to disband nuclear weapons. He wishes to withdraw from the accord with Iran and use a military threat to obtain their permanent renunciation of nuclear weapon development. There are two questions about Trump’s foreign policy. Can he in fact arrange to start the military actions? And if he can, will the military actions achieve what he hopes they will?

Donald Trump promised his supporters that he would prove a true friend of the U.S. military by giving military men key positions in his administration and by seeking to expand funds for the military. He has done this. In the latest reshuffle of his staff, he placed a military man, John Kelly, in the position of Chief of Staff with broad powers to change the staff and to serve as a filter to access to the president.

Military men of course appreciate more funds. But curiously, most of his military advisors are relative doves. They do favor expanded funds for the military. They all seem to believe that wars are truly a final resort, one with enormous and unavoidable negative consequences. They have an ally in the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. Whenever Trump has followed their advice and eschewed his harshest rhetoric, he seems to find it very uncomfortable to do so for more than a brief moment. He always reverts to his bottom lines.

The first question is whether Trump can in fact launch serious military action. It will be less easy than he imagines. Military bureaucrats have all sorts of ways of slowing down, even stopping, actions with which they disagree. In Trump’s regime, they are actually encouraged to do so by a further personality quirk of Donald Trump. He likes to take credit for successes but to blame failures on others. So just in case the military actions would be a failure, he is outsourcing the actual decisions to the military. If there were to be a failure he could blame them. In case of a success he would be the first to claim exclusive credit. However, outsourcing necessarily means delay and invites sabotage.

The cases of the two countries are different. North Korea does in fact have bombs, ones that can in fact reach U.S. territory. Furthermore, U.S. intelligence seems to be saying that North Korea is improving its military capacity at a very fast pace. The Trump regime is now talking of “preventive war” — the most wonderful oxymoron ever invented. Should the U.S. launch preventive war, one can be certain that North Korea would respond in a major way.

In contrast, Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons. They publicly insist they have no intention of acquiring them. At least half the authorities seem ready to renounce any effort permanently in return for various kinds of economic benefits. It would be far harder to renounce the accord than Donald Trump believes. For one thing, it has co-signers – Germany, France, Italy, the European Union — who have said they would not go along with such a renunciation.

But let us suspend for the moment the question of whether military action would work and ask what would be its consequences. In the case of Iran, it is very likely that the major world allies of the United States in Europe, not to speak of Russia and China, would increase the distance they take not merely from the Trump regime but from the United States as a country in the future. A non-diplomatic pathway would prove to be a diplomatic disaster.

In North Korea, the consequences would be far greater. Suppose the United States bombed all known nuclear weapon locations in North Korea. Some bombs miss their targets. It seems in addition that the United States does not even have a complete list of locations. North Korea may be able to launch a bomb from a submarine. Let us imagine for a moment that after a U.S. preventive war, North Korea had one bomb left. Whom would they bomb with it?

In any case, the U.S. preventive war bombs and the one North Korean response bomb would result in nuclear fallout of incredible magnitude and geographic spread. It could well be that the results of such bombs would waft across the Pacific Ocean to inflict tremendous damage to U.S. lives. The fact is that Trump’s bottom line cannot be a winner. It can only be a worldwide human disaster.

No doubt, the reader will want to know my prediction of what will actually happen. It is, sad to say, unpredictable.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 September 2017
Word Count: 1281
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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In what I call the pan-European world (North America; western,  northern, and southern Europe; and Australasia), the basic electoral choice for the last century or so has been between two centrist parties, center-right versus center-left. There have been other parties further left and further right but they were essentially marginal.

In the last decade however, these so-called extreme parties have been gaining in strength. Both the radical left and the radical right have emerged as a strong force in a large number of countries. They have needed either to replace the centrist party or to take it over.

The first spectacular achievement of the radical left was the ability of the Greek radical left, Syriza, to replace the center-left party, Pasok, which actually disappeared entirely. Syriza came to power in Greece. Commentators talk these days of “pasoksation” to describe this.

Syriza came to power but was incapable of carrying out its promised program. For many, Syriza was therefore a great disappointment. The most unhappy fraction argued that the error had been to seek electoral power. They said that power had to be achieved in the streets and then it would be meaningful.

We have since had other cases of an emergent radical left. In Great Britain, the leader of the radical left, Jeremy Corbyn, became the leader of the British Labour Party by obtaining the support of new members who entered the party to vote in the primary. In the United States, Bernie Sanders challenged the Establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton,  and had a surprisingly strong degree of support. In France, the party of the radical left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, also did surprisingly well and obtained more votes than the mainstream left party, the Socialists.

Today, in all of these countries there is an internal debate among radical left militants about future tactics. Should they seek electoral power or should they seek to control the streets? The dilemma is that neither works well. If they come to state power, they find that they have to make innumerable “compromises” of their program in order to remain in power. If they seek power only in the streets, they find they cannot make the changes they want without power in the state, and are able to be held in check by state agencies using state force.

Is it therefore hopeless to pursue a radical left program today? Not at all! We are living amidst the transition from a dying capitalist system and a new system yet to be chosen. The efforts of the radical left today affect the choice of the replacement system in the middle run. The tactical debate is essentially a debate about the short run.  What we do in the short run affects the middle run even if it realizes little in the short run.

What probably makes most sense as tactics in the short run is to use both tactics, the electoral route and the street route, even if neither pays off in the short run. Think of the short run as a training ground for the middle run. This would work if we understood the time distinction and therefore were encouraged rather than discouraged by what we achieved in the short run. Can we do this? Yes we can. But will we? We shall see.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 August 2017

Word Count: 546

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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.

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If one looks back at the 2016 elections in the United States, there is really a quite simple explanation as to why Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. The so-called hard core of Trump’s supporters was extremely fired up by the possibility that he might win. They were enthusiasts. They campaigned vigorously. They made sure that their voters voted. They put pressure on other Republicans and Independents (and even on some Democrats) to work for Trump, even if they had reservations.

The story with Hillary Clinton was quite different. Her hard core was less hard and worked less hard for her. Many of her voters and possible voters supported her only because they were anti-Trump. There was little enthusiasm, and it showed. Even if they voted for her, they spent far less energy on mobilizing others. They put less pressure on potential voters. They were sure they would win, and could afford therefore to do less.

If we look at the political situation in July 2017, there has been a major shift in enthusiasms. The hard core of Trump supporters is now like the hard core of Clinton supporters in 2016. They support Trump because they are anti-Democrats. Nancy Pelosi is their symbolic force of evil.

They are “disappointed” in Trump. He has not delivered what he promised. He is surrounded by the Goldman Sachs people he once denounced. His approval ratings, low at the beginning of his term, have continued to fall, even among the hard core. They are still supporting Trump because the other side seems far worse. But they drag their feet a bit. The proselytize less. They campaign less. They put less pressure on friends and family. They do less to get out the vote.

If one looks at the Democrats, the opposite has happened. They smell a chance. They have never been so united in their refusal to support Republican propositions. While the Republicans in the Senate struggle to get near unanimous support of Republicans for their proposals, the Democrats sit back and let them fight among themselves. They organize locally, and at the level of the separate states.

While on paper this seemed like an election the Republicans couldn’t lose, in the last two months or so bloggers are putting forth analyses showing that it might be possible for the Democrats to win back the Senate and even the House of Representatives. Possible is not certain, but even possible seemed not so long ago a fantasy.

To be sure, the Democrats are divided on a major issue — their electoral strategy. The question is a very clear one. Should they put forth candidates who are “centrist” on the grounds that this will attract the centrist votes that the Republicans seem to be losing? Or should they move to the left — nominate someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren on the grounds that this will energize an enlarged left base. In short, should they bank on utilizing enthusiasms, or not?

The Democrats are arguing about this. But the camp for a left program has grown notably stronger. In 2016, everyone across the spectrum moved right. Will everyone move left in 2018? We can’t tell yet. But it depends on mobilizing enthusiasms.

Now, suppose the Democrats move left in 2018 and then actually win back the national legislature and some gubernatorial races? Will this be the “revolution”? Far from it. But it will mean some better short-run decisions that will, as I like to say, “minimize the pain” for the poorest members of the population. So, it’s a short-term plus. The middle-term battle about the world we wish to build to replace the flagging capitalist system in which we have been living still needs to be fought. However, the organizing experience of a short-term left campaign by the Democrats in 2018 will enhance the skills of those who are ready for the bigger middle-run battle.

The next six months or so should be very interesting to watch if we keep our eye on the ball — energizing the left and remembering the major struggle we face after 2018.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 July 2017
Word Count: 679
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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You have to give Donald Trump credit for superb public relations. No matter what he does or says or what is going on anywhere in the world, he manages to remain a constant center of attention in the United States and throughout the rest of the world. People may love him or hate him, attack him or defend him, but they talk about him incessantly.

There is a joke circulating about him. An anti-Trump voter reminds us that Trump said during the electoral contest that if voters elected Hillary Clinton, they would find the United States governed by a president fighting constant criminal charges from Day One. The voter continues: Trump was right. I voted for Hillary and I find the United States governed by a president fighting constant criminal charges from Day One.

Most anti-Trump activists are very fearful that Trump’s public relations skills mean that he will be able to deflect these charges successfully. Donald Trump himself seems to be less sure. He appears to fear that the charges might stick and force him from office.

This is the heart of the issue concerning the Special Counsel. Utilizing a law passed after the Nixon resignation from office, the Deputy Attorney General appointed a so-called Special Counsel whose duty it is to investigate whether or not various members of the Trump administration, and possibly Trump himself, have violated the criminal code in any way.

No one knows what the Special Counsel will eventually find. He may absolve everyone. He may charge some associates of Trump but absolve Trump. He may incriminate Trump. The whole process could take a long time, quite possibly a year or so.

Trump is obviously nervous. There are now rumors that he may decide to do something that is within his legal powers — fire the Special Counsel. The situation is analogous to that encountered by Richard Nixon in 1973, analogous but not identical.

Nixon sought to fire the person investigating the so-called Watergate break-in. He ordered first the Attorney General and then the Deputy Attorney General to fire him. They refused and resigned. He finally got the accord of the third in line in the Department of Justice, the Solicitor General, to do it.

The whole set of events is called now the Saturday Night Massacre. Most analysts attribute Nixon’s downfall a year later to Nixon’s actions at this moment, which was the point at which he significantly undermined public and Congressional support.

The dilemma for Donald Trump is whether to fire the Special Counsel now or to risk an unhappy set of charges somewhat later on. This is a classic lose-lose situation. Whichever of the alternative processes Trump decides to pursue, he loses. There is no way he can resolve the dilemma.

The basic reason is that he has been unable to deliver on the electoral promises of changes he said he would achieve immediately on assuming office. His poll levels of approval and support have dipped steadily. As a result, he is no longer either revered or feared. Rather, he is ignored.

Does Trump know this? He is notoriously smart but also notoriously hotheaded. His gut no doubt tells him to fire the Special Counsel now before things get worse. He shrugs his shoulders when he is told that many people may resign from his government. He has shown little loyalty to his associates all the while that he demands 100% loyalty from them. I suspect most persons presently serving him in high posts count the days that they will remain in these posts.

The internal discussions of the Trump administration are practically an open book. The leakage is massive. It seems that most advisors are saying to him (in muted tones) that he should remain cool and not do anything, including not tweeting about it. It also seems he is impervious to this advice, and actually probably resents getting it.

My guess is that he will find himself one day so angry about the charges that he will explode and fire the Special Counsel. But he has surprised us before and he may do so again.

The basic thing the rest of us have to remember about this is that, for Trump personally, this is a lose-lose situation. How the Republican Party will act to avoid being dragged down by Trump is another question. It is definitely too early to know yet. The leaders of the Party do not know themselves.

Finally, for the rest of us, we should beware of cheering too readily about Trump’s dilemma. Trump is awful. Pence could be worse.

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 July 2017
Word Count: 762
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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In the circles of family and friends in which I move, I don’t believe there is anyone who voted for Donald Trump. This is probably equally true of most middle-class professionals in the United States. Furthermore, a very large percentage of such people are obsessed with Trump and cannot wait until he ceases to be their president.

I am regularly asked to project for them how long he can survive in office. My standard answer is two days to eight years. This never satisfies those who pose the question. They cannot believe that this is a serious assessment. Those who pose the question see Trump as an “evil” person and find it difficult to believe that this view is not widely and increasingly shared by a majority of the population, even including those who voted for Trump.

For my questioners, it seems to be a question of ideology and/or morality. If others do not see this (at least yet), it must be because they are ill-informed or insufficiently-informed of what Trump believes and how he acts. They may draw from this two possible conclusions. The optimistic conclusion is that light will eventually shine on the benighted and Trump will be ousted. The pessimistic one is that nothing much can change the attitudes of most people and therefore the situation is hopeless.

I believe that this is a very wrong way to frame the issue. Trump is not an ideologue. To be sure he does have an agenda that he will pursue to the best of his ability. But the agenda is absolutely secondary to his top priority which is to remain the president of the United States, a position that he equates with being the most powerful individual in the world. He will do anything to remain in this post, including sacrificing any part of his agenda, temporarily or permanently.

He is extremely proud that he is the U.S. president. As he said to one reporter, he must be doing something right since he is the president and the reporter is not. He is validated by being in the post. He seeks praise from others and lavishes praise upon himself. He says he is the best president the United States has ever had and will probably ever have.

So, why do I say that Trump will remain in office two days to eight years? This is because he is not the only one who shares the priority of remaining in office. This priority is shared by almost all members of the U.S. Congress. There are at least two ways of removing a president, impeachment or invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment about incapacity to fulfill the tasks of president.

What would move those in Congress, and especially in the Republican Party, to seek to remove Trump from office? They would have to believe that for them to remain in office depends in large part on whether to leave Trump in office or remove him from office.

The choice is clear. What is not clear to them at this point is which option is better for them. So they waffle and will continue to waffle for a while yet. At the moment, they clearly see no advantage in supporting those persons (almost all Democrats) who are urging a process of removing Trump.

Assessing the relative advantage of the two options is not at all an easy task. It is in large part a reading of shifting public opinion, a notoriously hard thing to calculate. So they read the polls (but which ones?). They meet with voters in their district (but which ones?). They talk to financial contributors (but which ones?).

As with most relatively blocked situations, the blockage could open with one small entirely unexpected event that leads others suddenly to scramble and a momentary rush to get on board a transformed tide. That could happen two days from now or never happen while Trump completes two terms in office. It is unpredictable. It is not however about ideology or agenda. It is about remaining in office for the sake of being in office.

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 June 2017
Word Count: 681
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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The period 1945 to the 1970s was one both of extremely high capital accumulation worldwide and the geopolitical hegemony of the United States. The geoculture was one in which centrist liberalism was at its acme as the governing ideology. Never did capitalism seem to be functioning as well. This was not to last.

The high level of capital accumulation, which particularly favored the institutions and people of the United States, reached the limits of its ability to guarantee the necessary quasi-monopoly of productive enterprises. The absence of a quasi-monopoly meant that capital accumulation everywhere began to stagnate and capitalists had to seek alternative modes of sustaining their income. The principal modes were to relocate productive enterprises to lower-cost zones and to engage in speculative transfer of existing capital, which we call financialization.

In 1945, the geopolitical quasi-monopoly of the United States was faced only with the challenge of the military power of the Soviet Union. In order to ensure its quasi-monopoly, the United States had to enter into a tacit but effective deal with the Soviet Union, nicknamed “Yalta.” This deal involved a division of world power, two-thirds to the United States and one-third to the Soviet Union. They mutually agreed not to challenge these boundaries, and not to interfere with each other’s economic operations within their sphere. They also entered into a “cold war,” whose function was not to overthrow the other (at least in a foreseeable future) but to maintain the unquestioned loyalty of their respective satellites. This quasi-monopoly also came to an end because of the growing challenge to its legitimacy from those who lost out by the status quo.

In addition, this period was also one in which the traditional antisystemic movements called the Old Left — Communists, Social-Democrats, and National Liberation Movements — came to state power in various regions of the world-system, something that had seemed highly improbable as late as 1945. One-third of the world was governed by Communist parties. One-third was governed by Social-Democratic parties (or their equivalent) in the pan-European zone (North America, western Europe, and Australasia). In this zone, power alternated between Social-Democratic parties that embraced the welfare state, and Conservative parties that also accepted the welfare state, only seeking to reduce its extent.

And in the last region, the so-called Third World, national liberation movements come to power by winning independence in most of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and promoting popular regimes in already independent Latin America.

Given the strength of the dominant powers and especially the United States, it might seem anomalous that antisystemic movements came to power in this period. In fact, it was the opposite. In seeking to resist the revolutionary impact of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, the United States favored concessions with the hope and expectation that they would bring to power “moderate” forces in these countries that would be willing to operate within accepted norms of interstate behavior. This expectation turned out to be correct.

The turning point was the world-revolution of 1968, whose dramatic if short-lived upsurge of 1966-1970 had two major results. One was the end of the very long dominance of centrist liberalism (1848-1968) as the only legitimate ideology in the geoculture. Instead, both radical leftist ideology and rightist conservative ideology regained their autonomy and centrist liberalism was reduced to being only one of three competing ideologies.

The second consequence was the worldwide challenge to the Old Left by movements everywhere that asserted that the Old Left was not antisystemic at all. Their coming to power had changed nothing of any importance, said the challengers. These movements were now seen as part of the system that had to be rejected in order that truly antisystemic movements take their place.

What happened then? In the beginning the newly-assertive Right seemed to win the day. Both U.S. President Reagan and U.K. Prime Minister Thatcher proclaimed the end of previously dominant “developmentalism” and the advent of production oriented to world market sale. They said that “there is no alternative” (TINA). Given the decline of state income in most of the world, most governments sought loans, which they only received if they accepted the new terms of TINA. They were required to reduce drastically the size of governments and eliminate protectionism, while ending welfare state expenditures and accepting the supremacy of the market. This was called the Washington Consensus, and almost all governments complied with this major shift of focus.

Governments that didn’t comply fell from office, culminating in the spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union. After some time in office, the compliant states discovered that the promised rise in real income of both governments and most workers did not occur. Instead, these compliant states were suffering from the austerity policies imposed upon them. There was a reaction to TINA, marked by the 1995 Zapatista uprising, the 1999 successful demonstrations against the attempt in Seattle to enact mandatory guarantees for so-called intellectual property rights, and the 2001 founding in Porto Alegre of the World Social Forum in opposition to the World Economic Forum, long-standing pillar of TINA.

As the Global Left regained strength, conservative forces needed to regroup. They shifted from exclusive emphasis on market economics, and launched their alternative socio-cultural face. They initially spent much energy on such issues as anti-abortion and insistence on exclusive heterosexual behavior. They used such themes to pull supporters into active politics. And then they turned to xenophobic anti-immigration, embracing the protectionism that the economic conservatives had specifically opposed.

However, supporters of expanded social rights for everyone and “multiculturalism” copied the new political tactics of the right and successfully legitimated over the last decade significant advances on socio-cultural issues. Women’s rights, first Gay rights and then Gay marriage, rights of “indigenous” peoples all became widely accepted.

So, where are we? The economic conservatives first won out and then lost strength. The succeeding socio-cultural conservatives first won out and then lost strength. Yet the Global Left seems nonetheless to flounder. This is because they have not yet been willing to accept that the struggle between the Global Left and the Global Right is a class struggle and that this should be made explicit.

In the ongoing structural crisis of the modern world-system, which began in the 1970s and will probably last another 20-40 years, the issue is not the reform of capitalism, but its successor system. If the Global Left is to win that battle, it must solidly ally the anti-austerity forces with the multicultural forces. Only recognizing that both groups represent the same bottom 80% of the world’s population makes it likely that they can win out. They need to struggle against the top 1% and seek to attract the other 19% to their side. That is exactly what one means by a class struggle.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 May 2017
Word Count: 1,127
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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There will be parliamentary elections on June 11 and 18. The winner of the presidential election hopes to obtain a parliament with more of their supporters. This means there will be local and regional electoral battles all over France. Those with party structures throughout the country can be expected to do better. Here is Macron’s real weakness. He has no party. However, whether Macron or LePen is the winner, the new parliament will be scattered, and political compromises will be the order of the day.

This has been a wild fluctuating campaign, in which the first round’s outcome seemed almost impossible to predict. The principal reason was the enormous number of persons who were unsure how they would vote. There were persons, many persons, who were not sure as they entered the poll booth whom they would choose.

Let us review the ups and downs. At the start of the campaign, most people anticipated that the two traditional center-right and center-left parties, Les Républicains (LR) and Le Parti Socialiste (PS) would choose respectively Alain Juppé and Manuel Valls. But they were both surprisingly eliminated in the Right and Left primaries.

Instead, the LR chose a further right candidate, François Fillon, and the PS chose a further left candidate, Benoit Hamon. The splits in the two traditional parties seemed to strengthen the hand of the far-right FN candidate. The polls showed at first a three-way voter split that left the situation unclear.

At this point, Macron sought support as a candidate neither left nor right nor even centrist. He presented himself as the one who could stop LePen, support Europe, and promote a multicultural policy. His stock began to rise steadily but so did that of Fillon. It was the PS that seemed most grievously wounded.

Suddenly, scandals engulfed Fillon, accused of dubious self-enrichment. LePen also was accused of misappropriating funds to fund her party. Fillon’s support began to sink significantly. Le Pen’s support seemed to stagnate.

Meanwhile, on the left, there was a different drama. Hamon of the PS was competing with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of the far-left La France Insoumise (Unbowed France) to corral left votes so that they could seriously challenge both Macron and LePen as different versions of the right. Mélenchon began to win out, eclipsing Hamon. Hamon was simultaneously weakened by desertions of the right wing of the PS to Macron, who was far closer to their own views on both internal and external issues.

Fillon now fought back. Essentially he admitted guilt and then argued that LR voters had to support him anyway or find themselves without a candidate. He succeeded in rallying support and rose again. With the return of Fillon and the rise of Mélenchon, the week or so before the first round of the presidential elections, the polls showed a four-way split between Macron, LePen, Fillon, and Mélenchon.

They were all close enough to each other so that the outcome was essentially unpredictable. One now has to add in the other candidates. Hamon remained on the ballot with about 5% of the predicted vote. Philippe Poutou of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) had about 2 percent. They both pledged to support Mélenchon on the second round (but not the first). There was a far-right candidate who was also strongly anti-LePen, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. He said he was opposed to her as a Gaullist. His party Debout La France (Stand-up, France) seemed to be in the vicinity of 4-5 percent.

In the last week before the first round, as it seemed quite probable that LePen would be in the second round, everyone else spent their energy attacking each other in order to be the second person on the second-round ballot. Macron’s claim that he should benefit from the vote utile (the useful vote) paid off and he came in first on the first round. He was the victor of the anyone but LePen vote.

The very first poll after the elections showed him winning the second round with 61% of the vote. This suggests that Mélenchon probably could have beaten LePen as well, if by a smaller margin. Now we are into the question of who will switch votes where and who will simply abstain.

The LR voters are largely turning towards Macron, encouraged by the leaders of all the factions. Hamon and Poutou voters seem to be choosing Macron, but in smaller percentages. Mélenchon voters have been urged not to vote for LePen but Mélenchon has refused to choose between a Macron vote and abstentions, which will probably be significantly large. These voters are facing the same kind of disappointment and anger as Bernie Sanders voters did in facing the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

In this interval, LePen has been suddenly strengthened by an announced deal between her and Dupont-Aignan, in which he has been promised the Prime Minister’s post if LePen wins the presidency. Once more, the quest for political power is taking priority over ideology.

Whoever wins the second round will probably call for new elections, in order to obtain a parliament with more of their supporters. This means there will be local and regional electoral battles all over France. Those with party structures throughout the country can be expected to do better. Here is Macron’s real weakness. He has no party. However, whether Macron or LePen is the winner, the new parliament will be scattered, and political compromises will be the order of the day.

If LePen wins, how much of her program will she be able to implement? We have seen with Trump the difference between campaign rhetoric and promises and the capacity to implement a program. Because of the powers of the French president, LePen would no doubt do better than Trump, but how much better?

If Macron wins, his capacity to rule may be even less. In particular, how much of his neoliberal austerity will he be able to put into practice? I suspect not too much at all. If Resist seems strong in the United States, wait until a resistance movement plays out on the French scene, a country with a long tradition of such movements.

Does it sound as if I’m saying that it makes less difference than everyone is predicting who wins the second round? I do think it will make some difference, but not all that much. A Mélenchon government or even a Hamon government would have signaled real change. In France, as in the United States and many other countries, real change may be coming, but it will require some more years of struggle for that.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 May 2017
Word Count: 1,098
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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President Trump seems to have a foreign policy that is constantly changing. Many analysts have documented how he says one thing on a twitter post and says or does another thing a few hours later.

This repeated uncertainty about what he thinks or intends to do has been deeply disconcerting to almost everyone. Within the United States, his own major appointees seem to take positions that are different from his. And in any case, they are often not forewarned about shifts in line. Even some of his most faithful popular supporters find the changes confusing (although they may not find it a reason to cease supporting him).

Outside the United States, presidents, prime ministers, and diplomats seem disturbed by the unpredictability or lack of clarity of Trump’s views. This is often stated in the following fashion: We now know x, but this is a tactical position. What is Trump’s long-range vision, or does he have one?

If one puts oneself in Trump’s shoes, the picture might be very different. First of all, if I Trump am unpredictable, I have some extra strength in my position, since the others may try to accommodate in advance what they think is my position.

In addition the incoherence of my position is a way of gauging what is the position that will best serve my interests, which is to increase my power within and outside the United States. Maintaining my personal position and secondarily that of the United States is my primary goal. I do not have and do not want to have a “vision” or long-term commitment. I am not an ideologue but a person who seeks a position of dominance.

Now let us shift to the perspective of that of the majority of the world’s population who are not Trump supporters. Indeed, the majority fear Trump’s “incoherence” since, as president of the United States, he controls the U.S. military and its terrible weaponry. We, the majority, fear that he is not in control of himself. We fear that he is egoistic and very thin-skinned, and may launch irreversible actions in a moment of pique.

For this reason, we would be relatively happier if he did have a long-term vision and therefore a commitment to certain activities that would override moments of pique. In short we want him to be coherent. We want him to be committed to something, whether that something is human rights or immigration control. We want greater certainty.

So there we have it. Almost everyone dislikes the lack of long-term vision. Almost everyone thinks it would be better from their point of view if he had one. Almost everyone wants him to be an ideologue. The principal dissident from this hope is Trump himself.

I personally think this whole mode of analysis is upside down. I think it would be worse, not better, if he had a vision, a commitment, an ideology. Let me explain. It has to do with what can minimize the damage that Trump can do to the United States and to the world in his double capacity as (1) uncontested leader of a worldwide social movement and (2) the elected U.S. president plus leader of the Republican Party.

I am interested in what we all can do to affect his actual decisions. There are now resistance campaigns in the United States and elsewhere. There are major world powers (I think particularly of China, Russia, and Iran) that seek to force him to modify his positions.

As far as I can tell, both the resistance campaigns and the efforts of other major world powers have indeed had an effect, and have led him at various points to modify his position. I think they have a fair chance of keeping the United States from too much involvement in the Middle Eastern quagmire. Too much is not zero. But reducing the involvement is better than nothing at all.

The reason that these efforts may force a modification of his position is precisely because he does not have a firm commitment to anything. His unpredictability is the sole weapon the rest of us have against Trump the warrior. To make him less unpredictable means to make him less open to change. In a way, it would doom us.

What we should keep our eyes on in the coming months is further arrangements with China. The recent meeting of President Xi of China and Trump was a good start and is evidence for the position I took a short while ago that the two countries will move closer and not further apart. We should watch whether anything really serious is done to “punish” Russia, or to break the improved relations with Iran.

I suspect that Trump may turn out to be the great “undecider.” This will of course weaken his position. But doing anything else will weaken his position even more. Hurrah for unpredictability!

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 April 2017
Word Count: 814
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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Feminist and women’s rights movements draw their strength and their ideological arguments from one simple observation. Throughout the world and throughout very long historical time, women have been oppressed in multiple ways. There is now an enormous literature presenting a very large gamut of views both about what explains this and what ought to be done about it.

I would simply like to explore here what are the major unresolved tactical issues that feminism as movement and feminism as ideology pose for all of us in the global struggle that is the central feature of the structural crisis of the modern world-system.

Given that we are all located in a whirlwind of constantly shifting situations that we call chaos, there are two different time horizons about which we must make decisions about alliances.

In the short run (up to three years), it is imperative that we defend ourselves against attempts to worsen the immediate situation. For example, there are constant attacks on the rights of women to control their own bodies or to reverse gains in the access of women to occupations that were once closed to them.

Fighting against these attacks on acquired gains will not end patriarchy or end inequalities. But it is very important to do what we can in the short run to minimize the pain. In this short-run struggle, whatever alliances we can build constitute a plus that we cannot disdain.

These short-term alliances however do not make it more likely to win the middle-run struggle to replace a doomed capitalist system with one that is relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian. And here we must be very careful that we are building alliances based on common objectives. To do that we need to discuss further what should be our objectives and what we can do now to move in the direction of tilting the balance between us and those who wish to replace capitalism with a system that is at least as bad, if not worse, for all of us, of course including all women.

Feminists and women’s rights groups have been divided on a number of major questions: What is the long-term relation of feminist goals and movements based on race, class, sexuality, and/or social “minorities”? What should be the role of men, if any, in the struggle to achieve complete gender equality? How can we achieve a transformation of historic subordination of women in all the major religious traditions of the world?

How we answer these questions depends in large part on our epistemologies. We are perhaps past the point when our guiding epistemology is a binary one of universalisms versus particularisms. However, merely endorsing the rights of all groups to pursue their own particularisms does not answer the question.

The end product of a totally particularist vision of social life can only be a total disintegration of social life. We need to think through how we can meaningfully combine the practice of particularist values with a global movement that is politically on the left. If we fail to do this, we shall fall prey to the capture of our forces by those who would, in di Lampedusa’s words, “change everything in order that nothing change.”

We have twenty to forty years to hone a practice that would resolve this dilemma. That is the great challenge of feminism and women’s rights movements to all of us. The oppression of women is probably the longest-lasting social reality we have known. It therefore provides the soundest basis for intelligent reflection, moral choice, and political wisdom.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 April 2017
Word Count: 590
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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People do not always behave the way we think they ought to behave. We often perceive others as behaving in ways we think is contrary to their self-interest. This seems crazy or foolish. We then accuse these persons of “false consciousness.”

The term itself was invented by Friedrich Engels in the late nineteenth century to explain why workers (or at least some workers) didn’t support workers’ parties at the polls or didn’t support strikes called by a union. The answer for Engels was that, for some reason, these workers misperceived their self-interest, suffering from “false consciousness.”

The remedy was twofold: Those with the approved level of “class consciousness” should seek to educate those whose “class consciousness” was deficient. At the same time, they should pursue as far as possible the political actions that are dictated by class-conscious individuals and organizations.

This mode of remedy had two advantages: First, it justified the legitimation of whatever action “class-conscious” organizations pursued. Secondly, it allowed them to condescend to those accused of “false consciousness.”

The concept of “false consciousness” (although the term is not used today) and the remedy it suggests has its parallel in the widely-shared analysis that is currently made by well-educated professionals about the behavior of persons with less education. Large numbers of workers have been supporting Donald Trump and so-called far rightwing organizations (as have similar groups in other countries supporting figures similar to Trump). Many well-educated opponents of Trump perceive his support by poorer persons as an irrational failure to perceive that supporting Trump is not in their interest.

The remedy is also parallel: They seek to educate the misguided supporters of Trump. They also continue to try to impose their own solution to contemporary political problems, ignoring the weak level of support from the lower strata of the population. Their scarcely-veiled scorn for the misguided poorer strata comforts them in their own actions. They at least are not falsely conscious.

They understand what Trump’s real program is, and understand that it is in no one’s interest apart from that of a small minority of the population, the 1 percent. Paul Krugman expresses this view regularly in his column in The New York Times. This is what Hillary Clinton meant when she made the maladroit statement about half of Trump’s supporters coming from the “basket of deplorables.”

It never aids anyone in analyzing the real world to presume that others do not act in their self-interest. It is far more useful to try to discern how these others envisage for themselves what is their self-interest. Why do workers vote for rightwing (even far rightwing) parties? Why do those whose standard of living has been declining or who live in rural areas with weak infrastructure support a man and a program based on decreased taxes for the wealthy and reduced safety nets for themselves?

If one reads the statements they make on the internet or in answers to queries from news reporters, the answer seems clear if complex. They know they have been doing badly in terms of income and benefits in the regimes led by more traditionally Establishment presidents over the previous twenty years. They assert that they see no reason to presume that continuing the previous policies will improve their situation. They think it is not unreasonable to assume that they might do better with a candidate who promises to govern in a completely different fashion. Is this so implausible?

They believe that the slightly redistributive promises of the previous regimes have not helped them. When they hear these same regimes boast of (and vastly overstate) the social progress they have made in aiding “minorities” to be better integrated into governmental programs or social rights, it is easy to understand they associate redistribution and minorities, and therefore conclude that others are advancing at their expense. This is in my view and that of most opponents of the Trump regime a very incorrect conclusion to draw. But is it a better one to believe that a Hillary Clinton regime would serve them better?

Above all, Trump listened to them, or at least pretended to listen to them. Clinton scorned them. I am not discussing here what kind of social program the left should offer now, or should have offered during the last election. I am merely suggesting that the language about false consciousness is a way of hiding from ourselves the fact that everyone pursues their self-interest, including the “deplorables.” We have no right to condescend. We need to understand. Understanding the motives of others does not mean legitimating their motives or even negotiating with them. It means we should pursue social transformation realistically without blaming others for not supporting us by arguing that they are making errors of judgment.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 March 2017
Word Count: 791
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For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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