It started with a backlash against globalization that took two forms: economic and cultural. The economic backlash was straightforward. The poor and the unemployed in the developed world began to feel that they had no stake in the globalized system, and demanded to know why their governments’ policies benefited people in faraway lands such as China and India with what used to be their jobs. They wanted to reduce the growing inequality in every “developed” economy and go back to the security of older, more familiar economic ways, in which each generation assumed they would earn more and live better than their parents did. The cultural backlash derived from the same resentment but expressed itself in a different arena: the political denunciation of global trade led to hostility towards foreigners, as more and more people sought the comforts of traditional identity and ways of life. Animated often by bitter working-class and lower-middle class resentment of global elites, the “masses” rejected the entire brew of liberal politics, cosmopolitans and technocrats, trade agreements, immigration, multiculturalism and secularism in the name of cultural rootedness, religious or ethnic identity and nationalist authenticity. Some saw the world as divided, in David Goodhart’s formulation, between the “somewheres” and the “anywheres”: the “anywheres” being people who are comfortable anywhere on the planet, flit from business-class lounge to five-star hotel and join international gatherings, whereas the “somewheres” are rooted in one place, immersed in one religious culture, speak one language and share one ethnicity.
Political opportunity
Political leaders were quick to seize the opportunity to tap into both kinds of backlash against globalisation. Populist leaders such as Donald Trump, who rose to the presidency of the United States on slogans of “America First” and “Make America Great Again”, and a host of others — from Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey to Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Narendra Modi of India — successfully persuaded their voters that they were more authentic embodiments of their nations than the allegedly rootless secular cosmopolitans they sought to displace. Others have been rising, from the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Freedom Party of Austria to the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour in France, none of whom has won national elections but who came close enough to shift the national discourse. Together, such parties and leaders, combining nationalist fervour with popular prejudices, have made nationalism the default model of national self-definition. (And should we now, after Ukraine, anoint Russian President Vladimir Putin the Chairman of an oxymoronic “Nationalist International”?)
If these were trends that preceded the pandemic, they have, rather worryingly, accelerated over the course of the last two years. The COVID-19 pandemic confirmed, for many, that in times of crisis, people rely on their governments to shield them; that global supply chains are vulnerable to disruption; and that dependence on foreign countries for essential goods (such as pharmaceuticals, or even the ingredients that go into making them) could be fatal. Nations tried aggressively to acquire medicines, supplies and vaccines for their own people at the expense of each other. There was a rush to reset global supply chains and raise trade barriers: the demand arose for more protectionism and “self-reliance”. The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced all of our countries to grapple with the limitations on state sovereignty, the credibility of the UN Charter, new disruptions of supply chains and trade, energy inter-dependence and the future of warfare.
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