By Nirvikar Singh Professor of Economics, University of California, Santa Cruz
Very few people alive now will have experienced and evaluated the full horrors of World War 2. US President Donald Trump was born the year after the war’s end and grew up in a world where US leadership was clear to everyone, in the West at least.
The horrors of the war led to the formation of a set of international institutions where US leadership was also front and centre. The US helped to rebuild Western Europe and Japan, and, while pursuing its own strategic interests and ideological leanings, laid the groundwork for a period of remarkable growth in Western Europe and many parts of East Asia.
Strategic and ideological competition with the Soviet Union and China, and some imperialistic tendencies of its own, led the US into transgressing its own ideals on multiple occasions, but those ideals remained strong, leading to significant improvements in civil rights and openness to immigrants of many types.
Erosion of Democracy
It is truly remarkable how quickly Trump and his collaborators and followers have upended 80 years of progress and global order. Neither progress nor order were perfect, but in a larger historical perspective, they were unusual.
The barbarism of the US Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement actions, which are leading to the killing and brutalisation of US citizens as well as immigrants would have been almost unthinkable a few years ago.
The fact that these actions are regularly violating cherished constitutional rights, and are accompanied by a disregard for, even hostility to, the truth, is unprecedented in recent decades in the US. Voting rights, fair electoral representation, and the integrity of electoral processes are all being undermined, often with the complicity of the US Supreme Court.
In 2020, the fact that states had their own officials, whose integrity stood as a bulwark against Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election, has led to targeting of individual states, to remove such checks and balances of decentralisation.
The mainstream media, too, have been bullied or bought, while social media titans have been happy to accelerate the production of a 1984-type Orwellian nightmare.
The above picture may seem alarmist, but recall what happened in Germany in the 1930s. A politics of grievance, scapegoating, and propaganda quickly led to the horrors of World War 2. It is surprising how Trump and those around him have embraced this model so wholeheartedly.
Their grievances seem minor compared to the problems of inter-war Germany, but perhaps one has to remember that the kind of phenomena that the US is experiencing are driven by the creation of alternate “realities” with little or no connection to the facts on the ground.
Trump’s advisor, Kellyanne Conway, coined the term “alternative facts” two days after his first inauguration to justify blatant falsehoods.
According to such a perspective, the US-led global order and its many institutions of cooperation were not instruments of progress that benefitted a large fraction of the world’s population, but simply the rest of the world taking advantage of the US.
Immigration, trade, and international cooperation are all viewed through this lens by Trump and his collaborators and followers.
India’s Strategic Opportunity
While India is still a relatively poor country, the current situation in the US gives it an opportunity to provide global leadership in ways that it has aspired to ever since independence. While many countries have been treading the same path of authoritarianism that the US is racing down, India, despite its own failings, has seemed to hesitate in rushing in that direction.
The country’s size, heterogeneity, and some degree of pluralistic traditions have helped check authoritarianism. Embracing diversity and openness at this particular juncture in history would be welcomed by many, not just in India. India suffered invaders and conquerors, but also created universities and curious travellers.
It is not in a position to finance the development of other countries, be a leader in enforcing global rules, or welcome large numbers of immigrants, but it can be a role model in many other ways, for a world that is at risk of falling into chaos and conflict.
World War 2 was the last stage of European imperialism, and, while the Cold War era featured a different type of great power competition, the US became more or less a hegemon for the post-war global order. Donald Trump and his collaborators have been dismantling that order, and it is uncertain what will replace it.
Will it be a 1984-type world, as they seem to be pursuing, or one where truth and decency matter? Russia and China made their own choices at various points in the 20th century, ones which were very different from India’s choices in 1947. They will not change easily.
But India, including its global diaspora, has an opportunity to back up its ideals in ways that it lacked the capacity for in the decades after independence. In India, backing up ideals is still a choice that its people can make, directly and through the leaders they choose. The choices made can make a difference for the whole world.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.