During the Cold War, the world’s great ideological contest was waged between communism and capitalism, with the latter ultimately triumphing after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Now, a new and equally consequential ideological battle is being fought in the world: between globalism and nationalism.
Like communism and capitalism, globalism and nationalism offer two distinct and contradictory worldviews vying for supremacy.
Globalism views the world as one integrated whole with individual nations superseded by and subsumed into a globally governed collective. Nationalism, by contrast, views nations as independent and sovereign with the right to define, advance, and prioritize their own interests and citizens above those of others.
Since the end of the Cold War, the march of globalism has seemed almost inexorable with turbo-charged globalization relentlessly sweeping the world.
But with Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the recent U.S. presidential election, nationalism has suddenly come roaring back.
Trump not only won again on an openly nationalist platform, and even more explicitly this time around, but did so in the very heart of globalism itself, as no place has advanced globalism’s cause more than America.
Indeed, it could be said that America is to globalism what the Soviet Union once was to communism.
Like those living under Soviet communism grew disillusioned when it failed to deliver on its promises, Americans have likewise grown weary of U.S.-led globalism for similar reasons. In fact, U.S. globalism and Soviet communism have come to share many parallels.
Globalism, like communism, promised Americans utopia, as free markets, free trade, free movement of people and interdependence between countries were to usher in a world of peace, abundance, and broad prosperity. The so-called “end of history.”
Much like communism, however, globalism served mostly to enrich elites at the expense of ordinary people. The globalist multimillionaires became multibillionaires, while U.S. workers saw their jobs outsourced to foreign countries, and their wages and living standards reduced.
Americans also watched places like China, where much of their lost manufacturing came to reside, rise spectacularly just as their own country declined. And even began to ironically resemble the former Soviet Union, plagued with decrepit public services and crumbling infrastructure.
Instead of the peace promised, Americans received forever wars, with their own military endlessly deployed to accomplish globalism’s crusade to ideologically convert the world.
Additionally, just as communists sought to eliminate class-based distinctions, globalists sought to remove all national distinctions.
To globalists, nations were little more than economic markets to be standardized and synchronized into their one-world economy. Or, worse still, as outdated concepts impeding humanity’s progress.
Global multilateral organizations and international laws were therefore developed to preempt national sovereignty and subvert the pesky will of the people by taking away their power and immunize globalism from democracy.
Globalists, like communists before them, even assaulted national history, culture, and identity to strip people from their homelands and provincial loyalties. Or, as Kamala Harris may have said, “to become unburdened by what has been.”
Under globalism, national borders were deemed unjustly exclusionary, denying labor and goods the ability to come and go freely. America, and other Western countries, were thus forced to perpetually import millions of foreigners, whether citizens desired to or not.
Moreover, the idea that America, or any nation, should prioritize and privilege its own citizens over foreigners, once the height of common sense, was denounced as a radical far-right notion. Even the concept of citizenship itself came under question, as an arbitrary legal distinction that had outlived its usefulness.
But like communism, globalism failed to fully account for human nature. Or American patriotism, for that matter.
Americans, like other people, are extremely proud of their heritage, and as the British Empire once discovered, profoundly dislike foreign control and fiercely desire a nation of their own, belonging to and governed by them alone.
Understanding this, Trump promised to reclaim America’s lost national sovereignty and return to an America that is of, by, and exclusively for the American people, just as the Founders intended.
A veritable declaration of independence from globalism.
But like the British Empire, globalists will fight hard to retain their greatest colony, especially as history has shown that where America goes, the world often follows.
Already, they are seeking to undermine Trump’s nationalist agenda, attempting to stop his promised tariffs to protect American workers and industries, and mass deportation of illegal aliens, both of which globalists claim will destroy the U.S. economy.
So why not simply allow that to happen and thereby prove globalism’s superiority? Perhaps because they fear that Trump will succeed and prove just the opposite.
The American return to nationalism also represents an existential threat to globalism. For like the Soviet Union’s fall once doomed communism throughout the world, nationalism’s rise in America may likewise hasten globalism’s demise elsewhere, inspiring others to take back control of their own homelands.
In sum, President Trump can break globalism, just as President Reagan once did communism.
Lee Steinhauer is a strategic policy and political consultant known for his book "The Art of The New Cold War: America vs. China. What America Must Do to Win." Lee is a frequent guest on Fox, Fox Business, Newsmax, and a published policy and opinion writer for numerous media publications. Read Lee Steinhauer's Reports — More Here.
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