A new world ideology?

Crucial to our economic and security interests are perceptions that US President Donald Trump is actively trying to refashion the neoliberal world order.

We don’t yet know if rogue Trump will succeed, considering he is unpredictable.

Still, we urge our government’s policymakers to take up this challenge, discuss it, and prepare responses for any eventuality.

In fact, we certainly want Filipino policymakers to inform and guide us as to what are the likely trajectories and consequences of these new American intentions.

Usually, says American political science professor Michael Beckley, US foreign policy has “largely been expected to follow one of two foreign policy paths: preserve the US as the leader of the neoliberal international order or withdraw and adjust to a post-American multipolar world.”

We can see examples of these paths in the way Trump responds to current geopolitical challenges.

In Ukraine, for example, Trump strongly suggests he wants other European countries to take up the cudgels in defending Ukraine. That suggests Trump is comfortable with a post-American multipolar world insofar as Europe is concerned. But in Asia where Trump wants to focus, he accelerated tariffs on Chinese products to unheard of levels to obviously assert that the US is still the acknowledged world leader on trade issues, not China.

Beckley, however, says there is a third probable US trajectory: “Become a rogue superpower, neither internationalist nor isolationist, but aggressive, powerful, and increasingly out of itself.”

Judging from the Trump administration’s current moves that also seems likely.

His tariff tornado on almost all countries, including demanding more tributes from longstanding American allies, suggests it.

Trump also slashed American aid, snubbed allies, and proposed to take over the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada.

Disconcerting to America’s allies are Trump’s imperial ambitions. Beckley, however, argues that what Trump is doing is merely giving a “sharp definition” to longstanding US frustrations with global leadership. And, more significantly, about American frustrations with neoliberalism, which once made the US rich and powerful but it is now impeding it.

In other words, the US is tired of being the leader of the global neoliberal order and wants to unilaterally replace the neoliberal ideology.

Still, Beckley cautions that “left unchecked, Washington’s unilateral move could destabilize the world and undermine its own long-term power.”

Which only means that Beckley still believes in the core tenet of the neoliberal ideology, which is “there is no alternative” to it.

Now, Trump hasn’t repudiated neoliberalism as capitalism’s champion, just yet.

On this, in referring to neoliberalism, historian Perry Anderson says: “Neoliberalism has not gone away. Its hallmarks are now familiar: deregulation of the financial and product markets; privatization of services and industries; reduction of corporate and wealth taxation; attrition or emasculation of trade unions.”

Neoliberalism nowadays is being replicated in so many nation states by what is now called globalization.

Nonetheless, despite the international capitalist order championing neoliberalism, the same also was “life threatening” to capitalism itself, particularly after the Wall Street crash of 2009.

In the face of that neoliberal crisis, the US and other western governments freely dispensed huge amounts of credit and cash to save bankrupt banks and finance companies. China, which benefited from neoliberalism, was even convinced to hold onto and buy more US bonds all with one intent — to save neoliberalism.

But now it seems Trump’s lunacy is somehow seen as a golden opportunity to either reformat or junk neoliberalism altogether.

Nevertheless, many believe that whatever replaces neoliberalism it will still be comparable to neoliberalism’s true intent: to save capitalism.

Our policymakers should try to divine that yet unformed ideology and make it work for us.