20 January 2025 is not just any inauguration day for just any new US President. All initial signs are that Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th US President will go down in history as a moment of major change, a point of departure and discontinuity, a quantum leap, perhaps a reason to reset the calendar and start from zero again. Thus far, barring the last bold suggestion, most observers of human affairs would agree that something momentous has happened. They might not agree, though, on whether the proverbial leap is taking us upwards and for the better, or into the abyss and marks the start of many misfortunes.
The jury is still out, as we are barely a month away from the date in question. What happened, though, during the past 31 days, is no small deal. The flurry of executive orders the new President signed upended policies of the previous US Administration from climate action and support for diversity to foreign development assistance and support (or not) for Ukraine, not to mention the tariffs imposed, planned or postponed, the forced deportation of undocumented immigrants, the pardoning of the 6 January 2021 US Capitol invaders. If one also counts the statements made by President Trump and his close associates, from renaming the Gulf of Mexico to claiming Canada, Greenland and Gaza, then neither the world nor the narrative post-20-January-2025 has much to do with what was there till 19 January 2025.
Focusing more on international affairs, developments are depressing for those like the author of this op-ed who care about global cooperation and solidarity, ethical and consistent conduct, peace and sustainability, and working collectively with the United Nations at the centre to resolve global problems. Mr. Trump decided to take the US out of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Paris Agreement on climate change and the UN Human Rights Council, and has started a review to see whether the US should also leave other organisations of the UN system, possibly the central United Nations itself. The realization that the US would have no veto if it left the central UN and its Security Council, and would also cede the moral high ground to China, Russia and the Europeans, may for now deter Mr. Trump from taking such a super-radical move, but one never knows till when that will remain the case.
One can see, if one wants to, many rational plots behind Mr. Trump’s seemingly erratic behaviour and extreme statements: Getting close to the Russians to move them away from the Chinese and thus avoiding the other two major world powers ganging up on the US. If that means pulling the rug under the feet of the Ukrainians, so be it, although the deal may improve if the latter sell to the US their rare earth deposits at a discount. Let the Europeans pay for the Ukrainian mess, literally and politically, with a mess of their own in view of disagreements and cracks that show more and more, plus their inability to envisage a way out of a(nother) major confrontation with Russia. Suggesting ethnic cleansing for the Palestinians of Gaza may be a maximalist position that pleases major US ally and Middle East lieutenant, Israel, especially Prime Minister Netanyahu and his even more extreme government allies, while it will inevitably get rejected by the Arab countries and the broader international community. Mr. Trump could live without Gaza being renamed to Trump Middle East Riviera, as long as others paid for its reconstruction and there was no real move towards Palestinian empowerment and the two state solution in the foreseeable future. As for the “drill baby drill” reversal of climate and environment policies, it can be seen as part of keeping domestic supporters happy with low gas prices and less regulation on environmental and climate grounds, while “natural” disasters keep striking anyway.
Mr. Trump and his people do not pretend to be diplomatic, nice or sensitive. In a strangely refreshing way, they seem to be saying things that one has always suspected happen behind closed doors in international politics but stay unstated and are glossed over with nice wrapping when they are presented to the public. No wrapping for Trump & Team’s presents to the world, and let those who dare return them to the sender do so. Might that be the Europeans, who rush to prove their patriotic credentials by standing up to Mr. Trump’s Ukraine and Gaza policies in special meetings interestingly coordinated by old imperial powers rather than the EU and associated institutions, while they simultaneously insist that Europe needs the backstopping of the US and want to be the main bridge with the transatlantic superpower? Or is it the majority of humanity that inhabits the Global South, who see that the Empire is naked but still dangerous, as it lashes out to cut the little but so important money it provides for the survival of millions, while buying and selling weapons of mass destruction, as do its adversaries – or are they buddies – that try to divide up the world among themselves? Then one sees the oligarchs that have come out of the woodwork in the US and elsewhere, and one wonders who is really governing and to what end…
The above may explain the increasing apathy of the average citizen around the world in the face of unprecedented developments in recent weeks, months and years, significantly enhanced by obedient media and mesmerizing social media, and a generalized sense of insecurity and powerlessness, even among the well-fed. This may be the most radical and worrisome development of our times: the swift disappearance of citizen influence and agency even in nominally still democratic societies. Whether it is Trump, Musk, Putin, Xi and/or other Great Leader, or AI generative and conscious that takes over, humanity may soon be lost, if not as presence in the landscape at least as actor; unless it shakes itself out of the coma and stands up for human values and humane behaviours, so that even the powerful of the day pay attention.
Dr Georgios Kostakos is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Brussels-based Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS). He has been a UN staff member, including with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and field missions for political affairs and human rights. He has also worked with think tanks, academic institutions and as a consultant on global governance and sustainability, peace and resilience.
4 comments
5 March, 2025 @ 16:15 Andrew Williams
I tend to share the rather more optimistic view of the last contributor, though we have all been sunk in depression (even in Labour Britain) at various points since 20 January. But I am a afraid that some of the Trumpian tsunami has been inevitable for some time now. Thé ‘forever wars’ so beloved of the Bush administration, the off-shoring of industry, laying waste to swathes of the working class across the USA and the West, the seeming indifference to the flyover states (which have taken the brunt of the fentanyl crisis) by liberals (like us) who still believe in globalisation, all of these things crop up in any conversation with Americans. Indeed they inspired Brexit in a different but analogous way. If multilateralism is under attack, and I completely agree it is, we need to be self critical as well as blaming the European and US right. And in the developing world there is a marked cynicism about the UN and many of its agencies that reflect years of being forced to accept conditionality and the like. That is why the BRICS are doing so well, the embrace of China and Russia looks a better bet to many in the South. I was just in Vietnam and Russia is extremely popular! I was the only Ukrainian in the room. FOGGS is a good place to start a fight back but only if we fess up to our own failings.
1 March, 2025 @ 17:27 Stephen Downes
This: “the most radical and worrisome development of our times: the swift disappearance of citizen influence and agency even in nominally still democratic societies.”
But it will take the courage of those who still have agency to act on it on behalf of those who don’t.
28 February, 2025 @ 15:01 Michael Heyn and Suvira Chaturvedi
Georgios’s concluding remark precisely summarizes the greatest challenge and hope of our century. It is not governments, nor even political leaders, who will lead us out of our darkest days since WWII, it is the people, and only the people, of every country, including (especially?) America, who can will do so. It will require their collective action, but most critically, it will require their individual courage to stand tall and unrelenting in saving and restoring our long fought-for core and shared human values.
22 February, 2025 @ 08:49 Stephen Browne
Interesting, well written but premature! Trump’s haste may be largely waste. He is breathtakingly ignorant about the way the world is today and about the repercussions of his actions, actual and threatened. Geopolitics is multilayered and the global economy is unforgiving so one man (two with Musk) cannot enforce unilateral change without blowback. Think tariffs and domestic inflation. His selfish narcissism means that he is driven initially by headlines. But polls also matter to him and he is already the most unpopular US president at the beginning of his term.
In several months time, almost none of his intended actions will have borne fruit. War may still be raging in Europe and the mideast. The US public may be reacting violently against eviscerated public services and inflation. Legislation may be stalled, the courts blocking unconstitutional change.And being still a democracy, a viable political opposition will emerge.
Even the wrecking ball swings back.