Today, I was in my office in the central business district of Melbourne. A colleague was sitting next to me, distracted from her work. She was surfing the Internet and researching the vote count of the American presidential election. Without breaking her attention from the screen, she tells me, 'They're saying there's a 95% likelihood of Trump winning'. I exclaimed, 'Good God, really?'. We hardly had a chance to discuss the ramifications his election would have for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan when a storm broke out over Melbourne. A sharp clap of thunder cracked right over head, with flashes of lightning out the window. My colleagues and I all stood up from our desks and looked out onto our city. The rain poured down the glass and I joked, 'The gods are angry'.
A couple of weeks earlier, I was chatting with a different colleague. I was venting my anxiety about what I considered a near certain victory for Trump. In particular, I was concerned about his isolationist politics, the withdrawal of American influence from the World, and the decline of the liberal international order. She was not at all worried about these things. In her eyes, the World would continue to struggle as it always had - but she, and those she cared about, would continue to be alright despite those struggles.
Her thinking is simple and can be reduced to a syllogism: human civilisation has been around forever; it has always overcome the many horrible things which have occurred throughout its history; whatever Trump might do, civilisation and our way of life will remain. In a nutshell, humanity has gained such strength in its long existence that it is now invincible.
It did not surprise me that she had this view. I have heard many people express it before, from about as many different sectors of society. It is an appealing outlook because of its simplicity. It offers a one-size-fits-all solution to all the World's problems. All wars will end in peace, there will always be food after famine, and towns will rebuild after bushfires. One who subscribes to this belief need not worry about anything. If one can believe it, it is an effective coping mechanism for the World's manifold problems.
However, it is impossible for a rational and well-informed human being to adopt this opinion. The trouble is (if nothing else) the premises of the syllogism cannot support the conclusion. They are both false.
Saying 'human civilisation has been around forever' is so imprecise as to be bereft of meaning. Modern Western civilisation has really only been around for about 500 years, since the Rennaissance. It has not stood the test of time that many other civilisations in history have. For instance, the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians were around for about 3,000 years - yet both their civilisations still fell. Those peoples lived in societies robust enough to build the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They did that effectively by hand without modern machinery. If great powers such as those can fall, so can the West which put a man on the moon.
My point is this: civilisations such as ours do fail and it happens because we are not invincible. Our civilisations are fragile and complex creatures with many moving parts and just as many points of failure. Economic collapse in China would precipitate global recession, a war between Israel and Iran would increase the price of petrol, Russia dominating new arctic trade routes would compromise the reliability of European supply chains. These are just some examples of the interconnectedness of the World and how the failure of that network can significantly affect the life of an individual - such as my colleague who does not worry about Trump.
Imagine multiple parts of the international system failing all at once and what that could cause. The World has already seen two world wars, both occurring within the last century. The World has only gotten more complex since the 1940s. There is much more opportunity for things to go wrong. In fact, things are very overtly going wrong. Just to cite a couple of obvious catastrophes, recent years have seen both Eastern Europe and the Middle East erupt into major conflicts. In terms of future catastrophes, everyone is waiting to see what China will do about Taiwan.
Managing the international system well requires a steady hand wielded by the stable leader of the free world - the President of the United States of America. For reasons which are too well known to spell out here, we have not got that in Trump. I am not suggesting his election poses certain doom for the World. Ancient Egypt survived the chaotic reign of Akhenaten for about 20 years and recovered. What I am saying is that Trump's chaotic rule will be bad for America and the World. He will cause many serious problems, as he did in his last term. Whether those serious problems manifest in total failure of the international system remains to be seen, but the risk is there and, because of Trump and other factors which have emerged since his last term, it is more real now than it has ever been in living memory.
Our civilisation and way of life is not invincible. If we are not careful, Trump and others may destroy it.
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