Donald Trump may lead the US away from its imperial, unipolar pretensions. Hillary Clinton will assuredly not, and that may well spell disaster. From Adam Gurrie at lewrockwell.com:
Nigel Farage and Donald Trump embody the desire of their societies for a dignified and managed retreat from empire. By contrast, Hillary Clinton represents the last frenetic attempt within the US to sustain its imperial role. Regardless of the outcome of the Presidential election, it is Donald Trump in the US, like Nigel Farage in Britain, who is closer to the deeper and longer-term aspirations and feelings of the American people.
In 1969 Julian Amery, Member of the UK Parliament published the final of a six-volume study on Joseph Chamberlain and his tariff reform campaign. The campaign which began in the late 19th century and was carried on through the first half of the 20th century by Julian’s father Leopold Amery was derived from a fear of the loss of global British power. Chamberlain and his supporters sensed the coming end of the halcyon days of Pax Britannia even as Britain’s theoretical control of the world reached its zenith, at least according to the lines on the map.
In spite of feeble attempts to enact Empire-wide tariffs in the early 1930s, making the British Empire a kind of united, self-sufficient single market, the plan ultimately failed. By the 1960s, many were beginning to see Britain’s future as part of the European Economic Community rather than the Commonwealth.
In closing his study of Chamberlain, Julian Amery suggested that the proper way to take tariff reform into the latter half of the 20th century was for Britain to create a single market comprised of both the Commonwealth and the EEC. Yet this proved untenable as history proved that Europe would ultimately take precedent for Britain over the Commonwealth.
When in 1975, the Labour government of Harold Wilson held a referendum on Britain’s membership to the then EEC (which would become the EU after 1992), the debate remained highly philosophical. Those wanting out said ‘out of Europe and into the world’.
They spoke of reconnecting with the Commonwealth whilst still retaining good economic ties to Europe as a member of the European Free Trade Association. On the other side, Europeanists said ‘you’ve got to get in to get on’, implying that by remaining in a wider European family, Britain would have a kind of post-Imperial renaissance.
In 1975, Britain voted to remain in Europe, but this year Britain voted for Brexit. Yet the Brexit of 2016 was quite different than the proposed Brexit of 1975. In 2016, big ideas never really entered the debate.
There was nothing but vague lip service about Britain’s wider role in the world or her relationship to other supposedly brotherly nations. It really came down to a debate on whether managed decline was better from within or without and the people chose without.
The British Empire on which the sun never set has been long reduced to one and a half islands on which the sun has permanently set. America’s sun is setting and doing so at a rapid rate which is why the theme of the forthcoming US election ought to be one of managed decline versus a protracted and painful death.
To continue reading: Nigel Farage and Donald Trump: Heralds of Dignified Post-Imperialism
