Europe and Mr.Trump

Nico Colchester/Journalism Fellowship

Mr. Trump will neither make nor break Europe. The Trumpist agenda should be understood in the broader context of anti-globalism; many governments (e.g.

Russia, Turkey, Hungary) guided by the preferred cultural mentality of being an inland resident, reclaim economic control over their political territory.

The European project was built on a deep misunderstanding of the common denominator which is not the economy, but a specific set (Enlightenment, Reformation, Renaissance humanism) of cultural ideas. Consequently, the many wars to dominate the European continent have not been economic wars, but politically motivated plans to gain ideological control over territory.

In any case, Trumpism must be perceived as an ambiguous revolutionary event in continuation of the American spirit; of course, Europe is forced to redefine its political agenda profoundly or fail fully. Whatever interpretation of the current events we do apply, we should not ignore the interplay of human values and valuation.

A capital-based economy (capitalism) is a man-made system to overcome the empirical shortcomings of the natural economic conditions of land and labor; only the ongoing exponential tech-know-logical transformation (next 20 years) of the production function by knowledge automation can open an alternative road of societal labor and economic productivity.

Mr. Trump will either be an effective president, upgrade the US economy and public finance or exactly the opposite will happen (inefficient presidency, economic degradation, protecting the privatizers). Europe is forced to respond to both political probabilities and to find a new agenda; this will not be the hour of Eurocrats, centralized economic cohesion and monetary austerity.

It should be understood at the left and the right wings of the political salvation gospel that the global paradigm shift is a paradox: the human response to global integration is to regain economic control over the political territory. This

measure is easier to apply for authoritarian than for liberal social systems, thus many freedoms in liberal democracies will be tested.

The reduction of the human society to economism will also come to an end; economic choices are not so great in number as has been propagated, since the 1980s, and social realism tells us that human choices are indeed limited. The politicians in Europe must re-train their brains despite all economic muscle building; this will mainly depend on Franco-German macro-prudence, e.g. concerning a common defense strategy and the technical role of the Euro currency as a positive means of advancing integration.

Trumpism is not an isolated event in the world arena, but a radical American response to the negative feedbacks of globalism; Europe will surely give its own response by a more decentralized union of nation states that will co-operate for their own survival in the global arena of competitors. Mr. Trump will neither make nor break Europe, his political territory are the US; the destiny of Europe will be decided by the political prudence or stupidity of its well-paid governmental elite class.

Many political dogmas of the post WW2 cycle (1950-2000) will be abolished and new economic thinking will be tested which is not rooted in monetarism or in institutionalism. This is a vital necessity as the technological learning curve is speeding up; let the best chess players win the game of redefining the politics of the national economy.

Stephen I. Ternyik March7, 2017