The origins of the “globalist” slur

Again and again, Trump gave notice that there was a new sheriff in town—and that it was neither a global policeman nor a guardian of global interests. Trump cited his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, his massive trade war with China, his new policies of restricting foreign aid to “friends,” and reassessing America’s role as the primary funder of the United Nations. He chalked them all up to his focus on advancing American interests, regardless of the fundamental challenges these moves pose to multilateral efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, the global trading system, or international institutions as a whole.

Just before Trump spoke, UN Secretary-General António Guterres had stood at the same podium and warned of the profound dangers of a buckling international system in which public confidence in institutions is plummeting, a rising China is confronting a ruling United States as the great powers feud, populism and isolationism are on the march, and existential challenges such as climate change are growing acute at the very moment international cooperation is collapsing.

“Trust in global governance is … fragile as 21st-century challenges outpace 20th-century institutions and mind-sets,” Guterres observed. “We have never had a true system of global governance, and much less a fully democratic one. But still across many decades we established solid foundations for international cooperation. We came together as united nations to build institutions, norms, and rules to advance our shared interests. We raised standards of living for millions. We forged peace in troubled lands, and indeed, we avoided a Third World War. But none of these can be taken for granted.”

Globalization doesn’t make as much sense as it used to.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy, speaking in the same hall during another UN General Assembly, proposed an answer to the existential question of his time—and our time, too. “The science of weapons and war has made us all, far more than 18 years ago in San Francisco, one world and one human race, with one common destiny,” Kennedy said, in reference to the nuclear age. “In such a world, absolute sovereignty no longer assures us of absolute security. The conventions of peace must pull abreast and then ahead of the inventions of war.”

This week, one of Kennedy’s successors delivered the opposite answer to addressing the challenges of the 21st century. Patriotism, not internationalism, brings security and prosperity, he argued. Absolute sovereignty is the ideal. “Sovereign and independent nations are the only vehicle where freedom has ever survived, democracy has ever endured, or peace has ever prospered,” Trump proclaimed, with Guterres sitting behind him. “We must protect our sovereignty and our cherished independence above all.”

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