The U.S. action in Venezuela over the weekend has led to a flurry of punditry asserting that the Trump administration is bringing into being a new world order based on the open assertion of raw, great-power state interest, and the emergence of spheres of influence and hegemony. I do think a world of that nature is emerging. But I don’t think Trump is the instigator of it. Rather, he is a product of its emergence.
That world brought with it a by-product of a transnational elite of people who relied on U.S. strength to underpin their world.
The world is replacing one that has pertained since 1990. It was a place where America enjoyed more or less unrivaled dominance, while its European allies complacently took that for granted. Powers outside of this sphere schemed and planned, but could do little to challenge U.S. primacy.
That world brought with it a by-product of a transnational elite of people who relied on U.S. strength to underpin their world. But they pursued a politics of unreality, based on the notion of the replacement of power and interest by a new world of “international law,” universal human rights, a universal commonality of interests (making feasible the notion of mass immigration from vastly different cultures) and a taboo on the use of military force.
This politics of unreality, which relied on U.S. hard power but in an infantile way denied this, brought into being a vast cultural penumbra that has dominated the public and political discussion in the West over the last two or three decades.
Yet in the last 15 years, the United States has shown it has no interest in continuing to endlessly underwrite the illusions of this elite. Rather, facing the emergence of peer and near-peer competitors—against whom it must organize to defend its own realm—it is producing a nationalist reaction, at once narrower in scope but often of necessity, and more assertive in action than the previous, hegemonic, imperial-style order.
The Ukraine war was a watershed moment in revealing this new reality. European nations now face the option of swift rearmament or the real possibility that they may have no choice but to accept the diktats of a threatening, superior military power to their east.
Western Europe, during the years in which the above-mentioned illusions held sway, imported large populations with no loyalty to their host countries.
Western Europe, during the years in which the above-mentioned illusions held sway, imported large populations with no loyalty to their host countries. In alliance with the children and remaining adherents of the politics of illusion, these populations will seek to make impossible the decisions needed to make Western Europe defendable in the period ahead. It’s not clear which side will win. From an analytical point of view, it is a fascinating process to watch, though not so pleasant to live.
From the Israeli and Jewish point of view, the emergence of this new world state of affairs is not so bad. The last time the world entered an age of iron (a very different moment to ours, by the way), in the 1930s and 1940s, brought catastrophe to the Jewish people. In those days, of course, the Jews were without the essential instrument required for traversing such times—namely, a militarily and economically powerful state. This is no longer the case.
Thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of generations, and with some caveats, a realistic conduct of its affairs, the Jewish state today stands as the military and economic superior of all its rivals, and therefore as a worthwhile and powerful ally in the eyes of those of its neighbors not hostile to it for religious or ideological reasons. In a world shorn of the existence of a paternalist hegemon that made possible the growth of illusions in the way a powerful father can enable his children to believe in fairies, the possession of statehood, a powerful military, a strong economy, a nuclear capacity, and a durable national and religious ethos behind them are the essential tools needed for successfully traversing the current moment. Israel has these.
Thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of generations, and with some caveats, a realistic conduct of its affairs, the Jewish state today stands as the military and economic superior of all its rivals.
Lastly, an interesting by-product of the politics of unreality—and, in particular, of its odd embrace and romanticization of the Muslim and Arab worlds—was an unbridled hostility to Israel and often to Jews on the part of its adherents. This was notably found among a class of people who staffed the transnational institutions that formed the organizational expression of the politics of illusion, such as the United Nations and the vast bureaucracy of non-governmental organizations. The eclipse of the hegemonic world that allowed these structures to grow will likely lead to a decline in that particular variant of anti-Jewish sentiment—an especially hypocritical and nauseous variant that grew with them.
The current evidence would suggest, however, that the Jewish place in human consciousness is apparently what it is: that current changes will not lead to the disappearance of irrational hostility to the Jews. Rather, this apparently eternal phenomenon can already be seen mutating into forms associated with the new world now coming into being.
From this point of view, once again, the possession by the Jews of territory, coupled with a nuclear-armed state with a powerful economic engine and a locally peerless military, will remain the most appropriate shield in the coming period, as in the previous one.
Published originally on January 5, 2025.
