Never has so much been written in so little time about the inauguration of a country's president and his first week in office. This frenzy had been announced for a long time. The media performance of President Donald Trump's inauguration is matched only by that of the inauguration of the Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. On the one hand, the dramatic celebration of the unilateral imposition of rules on humanity; on the other, the dramatic celebration of rules consensually accepted by all of humanity. This contrast sums up the time of transition in which the world finds itself. What does Trump mean in this transition? The metaphor of the “paper tiger” to characterize the US comes from Mao Zedong. It's a complex metaphor because it designates both weakness and strength (strength to disguise its weakness). What are the strengths and weaknesses of the US under Trump?

As Immanuel Wallerstein taught us, the modern world-economy and inter-state system of the last five centuries show multiple signs of exhaustion. It is not necessary to agree completely with the details of his analysis to give him credit for pointing out that something profoundly disturbing is fatally affecting the functioning of this systemic whole (economic, social, political, cultural, epistemic) that we call Eurocentric modernity. No one can predict what will happen next.

This system has been characterized by the continuous expansion of capitalism and colonialism, driven by the following fundamental beliefs: infinite economic growth, unilinear progress, science and technology as privileged rationalities, civilizational-racial-sexual superiority of those who have the power to unilaterally impose their will (what I have called the abyssal line: the necessary coexistence of humanity with sub-humanity), unequal exchange between central and peripheral countries, political democracy and social fascism as guarantors of unjust order with less violence, and the growing strengthening of the state as guarantor of national cohesion. The tension between an increasingly globalized economy and a system of states based on ideas that are as inclusive as they are exclusionary (sovereignty and citizenship) was permanent. Peace and war became twin sisters.

Imperial rivalries followed one another until, from 1870 onwards, the imperial dominance of the USA began to take shape, a dominance that would culminate in 1945 after the most recent and longest “thirty-year war” (1914-1918, 1939-1945). The US was the only central country whose infrastructure emerged unscathed (and even strengthened) from the war. Between 1945 and 1970, the US was not only the dominant country but also the hegemon. Of course, there was the Soviet bloc, which pointed to bipolarity. But there was a reciprocal contention between the socialist bloc and the capitalist bloc on the political level (well illustrated by the Cuban missile crisis in 1962), while on the world-economy level the US dominated without rivals. When in 1955-1961 the Third World countries (newly independent from historical colonialism or still colonies) tried to transform bipolarity into tripolarity, they were promptly neutralized.

In that period, being dominant had two components: unilateralism and hegemony. Unilateralism means the ability to dictate the rules of the game in international relations that best suit the dominant country. Hegemony means the ability to do so without having to resort to force, by mere political pressure. The use of war (whether cold or hot, regular or hybrid) was always available, and superior military power was a powerful deterrent. In fact, the metaphor of global war was always on the agenda, but as a way of reaffirming hegemony, and it evolved over time: war against communism, war against illegal drugs, war against terrorism, war against corruption.

From 1970 onwards, everything began to change, and US hegemony began to stop supporting its unilateralism. The economic rivalry between Western Europe (with its rapprochement with the Soviet Union) and Japan emerged, even though they remained political allies of the US, the first oil crisis in 1973, the defeat in Vietnam in the same year, and the humiliation at Khomeini's Iran in 1980. It is true that Japan stagnated from the 1990s onwards, but in the meantime, the “yellow peril” was renewed in an unprecedented way with the rise of China.

Since then, US unilateralism has ceased to be underpinned by hegemony, and, without it, the use of military force has become the first political recourse. Military involvement in the Middle East and Ukraine are examples of this. Military support for Ukraine was never intended to make Ukraine's victory possible, but rather to weaken Europe (to be a political ally, it had to stop being an economic rival) and Russia, as China's most important ally.

High communication and information technology and the entertainment industry were the last two resources to regain hegemony, but the yellow peril had already appropriated them as well. The most recent and dramatic example is the earthquake caused by China's DeepSeek, a new dimension of artificial intelligence with open source code and immensely cheaper in terms of infrastructure (hardware). Without exclusivity, there is no hegemony, and unilateralism without hegemony has only one recourse at its disposal: war. But in this case, for the first time, the war will take place on US territory.

Paper tiger?

What is Trump's role in this? His inaugural speech was intended to convey the message that unilateralism is no longer based on hegemony but on exceptionalism. It contains all the components of the American myth: manifest destiny, frontier spirit (far west, wilderness), territorial conquest, terra nullius (no man's land, i.e., “ours”). To this myth he adds a new element: domination has come at a cost; the development of the last hundred years has been the American “white man's burden,” and the world therefore owes the USA reparations.

It is the dramatic affirmation of a defensive unilateralism, the confirmation of decline disguised as a return to the Golden Age. Those who oppose it should prepare for the apocalypse. The speech is a treatise on symbolic politics, but the political hubris was so hyperbolic that it had to be translated into an immediate avalanche of executive measures. The frenzy of words demanded shock and awe at the executive level. If there is a paper tiger, the strength of the disguise of weakness dominated in the first moment. What will it mean domestically and internationally?

Domestically

Domestically, the principle of institutional terra nullius is being applied radically. The US state is now a potential institutional Gaza. Institutional cleansing mirrors ethnic cleansing. But this is where the similarity ends, since US institutionalism is less weak in relation to Trump than the Palestinians are in relation to Israel. It's going to be a long, destructive, and destabilizing period of measuring forces before a possible ceasefire is reached. The state as a factor of social cohesion, typical of the modern world system, will become the main factor of national fracture. The danger of this institutional struggle is that it will always be on the brink of chaos, on the brink of extra-institutional struggle.

The strategy of fracture is complex because it is carried out in the name of true cohesion, ethnic-racial cohesion. Hence the anti-immigrant rage. In other words, the founding principle of national cohesion, citizenship, is replaced by the principle of community. The modern movement from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft is reversed. But the end of citizenship and its replacement by community neo-tribalism had long been part of the plans, such as the end of secularism and the emergence of identity essentialism. From the ruins of citizenship, religious belonging and exclusionary identitarianism will emerge.

Therefore, Trumpist terra nullius does not imply a total break with the recent past. Trumpism began before Trump and will continue after him. The seeds of what was to come, both in terms of the end of secularism and the emergence of identity essentialism, had long been flourishing in the media, on social networks, in schools, and in universities. You could go back much further. It has been said that with the Trump administration, capital, which has always dominated US politics, no longer trusts politicians and has decided to take power directly.

Thirteen billionaires on the government team. But after all, hasn't Congress long been dominated by capital? Don't most senators and representatives belong to the 1%? On the other hand, the reformist liberalism that translated into social policies, the creation of the middle classes, and a general improvement in living standards (the welfare state) had long since come to an end, and the Democratic Party had been the instrument of this destruction, especially since the 1990s.

Even if it doesn't constitute a rupture, the dramatic accentuation of certain trends promoted by Trump will be destabilizing, and we mustn't forget the recent polls that seemed to indicate that civil war was a real possibility for a significant percentage of Americans. Alternatively, it could be thought that, after all, the supporters of civil war have just won it electorally. They will now demand that the President turn the counter-revolution into common sense, as he himself said in his inaugural speech. Whether or not he can do this is an open question. It cannot be ruled out that he will soon be made a scapegoat. The decline of the US is structural and cannot be halted by the triumphalist rhetoric of demagoguery.

Internationally

The dramatic deportations were intended to send out a signal of total upheaval in the interstate system. However, the real policies that will be implemented without drama should not be underestimated. It should be noted, first of all, that the policies of protectionism, nationalism, imposition of tariffs, and promotion of (re)industrialization now advocated by Trump are the same policies that the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of the world sought to follow in the 1970s and 1980s and for that were severely punished by US-dominated multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

These punishments caused much social suffering, increased poverty and hunger, deindustrialization, urban violence, and the emergence of organized crime and dictatorship. Isn't it now time to propose reparations, for example, wiping out the foreign debt of these countries, some of which are still asphyxiated by it? And can all other countries from now on follow the same kind of policies proposed by Trump for the US? Or is this yet another manifestation of unilateralism based on US exceptionalism? It is already clear that the economic freedom and freedom of expression that Trump's tycoons propagate in every far-right-sounding board in the world is freedom for their ideas and repression and censorship for the ideas of those who oppose them.

Trump's defensive-aggressive unilateralism aims to cause the same institutional destruction on the international stage that it is causing on the domestic stage. The target is not only the institutions linked to the UN but also all the alliances between countries, regional or otherwise. The preference for bilateral relations and the fact that import tariffs are determined not by the type of product, as has been the case until now, but by the type of relations the producing country has with the US, aims to destroy any interstate alliance that rivals the US in the long term, be it the European Union or the BRICS.

In international politics too, ruptures often disguise continuities. After all, since the tariff criterion is the one I mentioned above, what is the real difference between tariffs and economic sanctions? Didn't the destruction of the European Union already begin with Brexit and then the war in Ukraine? In this area of ruptures/continuities, perhaps the cruelest example is what could happen to the martyred people of Palestine. The ethnic cleansing that began in 1948 with the creation of the State of Israel is about to become official US policy on Palestine.

The ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be followed by that of the West Bank. Without the drama of the deportations of immigrants, the brutal ethnic cleansing is announced as a benevolent humanitarian action, as Donald Trump seemed to say, referring to the desolation of the rubble produced by the incessant Israeli bombardment.

So what now?

When weakness masquerades as strength, it can lead to even more catastrophic results. The paper tiger has the strength to destroy, but not to build. There is no place today for unilateralism, least of all that of the US. The global challenges facing humanity demand multilateralism, civility, and mutual respect. The two great victims of the paper tiger are democracy and ecology. The billionaires around Trump know that the policies they want to impose cannot be imposed democratically.

For now, they have decided to occupy democracy and turn it into a fascism with a human face. Since fascism with a human face is an oxymoron, if they are forced to choose, we know in advance what their choice will be. If we take into account that the imminent ecological collapse can only be avoided by a new global hegemony: a great convergence of efforts built democratically between human beings so that it can be carried out democratically between human beings and non-human beings, it is easy to see that Trump's unilateralism devoid of hegemony is the shortcut taken by the elites of global capitalism to legitimize fascism 3.0 1.

The novelty of this fascism is that it is global and imposes on all humans what humans have imposed on nature since the 16th century. Faced with this, it's hard to imagine anyone thinking it's not necessary or urgent to fight, resist, and dare to win.

Notes

1 I refer to fascism 3.0 because I characterized as fascism 2.0 the type of governance that Donald Trump proclaimed in November 2020 on the eve of losing the election. Fascism 2.0 was based on the following premises: not recognizing unfavourable electoral results; turning majorities into minorities; double standards; never speaking or governing for the country and always and only for the social base; reality doesn't exist; resentment is the most precious political resource; traditional politics can be the best ally without knowing it; polarize, always polarize. Fascism 3.0 extends the premises of fascism 2.0 to a global scale.