Global change
While 2016 in Nigeria was the year of recession, on the global stage it was the year of seismic political change. While Western liberals in Europe and America were worried about the arcane issues around climate change (which they feared could destroy our world perhaps in tens or hundreds of years to come), and other matters like bathrooms, marijuana and homosexual marriage, voters were reacting to more immediate concerns around them!
British voters were worried about global Islamist jihadists who had formed a caliphate in a large territory in Iraq and Syria and were now threatening the West in their own homes. They were worried about large scale immigration which was changing their societies and potentially their lives in ways they could not recognize. They worried about the jobs market which was reeling under the impact of a globalization which took jobs away from their economies, and EU integration which brought in workers from Eastern Europe and elsewhere who would accept lesser pay for the fewer available jobs. And British voters clearly understood that the EU bureaucracy in Brussels could not be expected to help them deal with these concerns.
So while outgoing US President Barack Obama, the IMF and other European leaders begged or even threatened UK voters against voting to leave the EU, the voters in Britain did exactly that and gave us BREXIT! By the way, anyone who watched Obama travel to London to warn that a post-BREXIT United Kingdom would be at the end of the trade negotiation queue relative to the rest of Europe; and who saw Western and European media, politicians and bureaucrats do everything to scare the British away from BREXIT would be amused at the utter hypocrisy of emerging charges that Russia attempted to influence a US election! The same Obama who earlier devoted state resources and Democratic Party strategists to a failed effort to influence the Israeli election against Prime Minister Netanyahu and who visibly helped the APC take power in Nigeria in 2015!
In the November 8, 2016 US presidential elections, it was, as Donald Trump then Republican Party candidate and now president-elect promised, BREXIT-plus as a significant majority of US states voted in Donald Trump against the predictions of virtually all US newspapers, television networks, pundits and polling firms. I am frequently playing back in my mind the hundreds of times I heard so-called analysts say on (particularly) CNN that “Donald Trump has no plausible path to 270 electoral college votes!” whereas within hours of the vote ending I saw a stunned CNN cast unable to hide their shock and displeasure as they had to call the election for Donald Trump. The voting criteria in the US elections may of course have hinged on similar ones as BREXIT-immigration, jobs, security and values!
I am convinced that 2016 may be recorded in history as the year the world changed-the media, at least in the West may have lost their power as intermediary between politics and voters (to twitter in the case of Donald Trump!) to more direct social media and internet interfaces between candidates and voters. It may also be the year that Western voters got tired of liberal lecturing, hectoring, posturing and scaremongering and returned to their own common sense and traditional values. And events in London and Washington may be repeated in 2017 and beyond in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and other Western capitals except liberal politicians regain a little more pragmatism and listen less to the opinions of pundits, professional politicians and academics, and more to ordinary people.
The changes in 2016 of course pose new risks to the global community. A return to nationalism in one country usually breeds counter-nationalism in others, especially its historical competitors, adversaries and even peers. A round of protectionist trade actions in some countries may of course produce similar or worse responses in others. Trade wars and nationalist posturing often lead to real shooting wars, sometimes inadvertently as rhetorical brinkmanship produces physical conflict. And in any case, any type of change from a settled equilibrium, for good or for bad, may usually produce some period of instability before a new equilibrium emerges. So perhaps it may be safe to say that the world should expect a stormy ride! In spite of this possibility, the outcomes in both London and Trump Tower have so far been benign if not positive. The worst fears of a post-BREXIT meltdown have turned out to be clearly overblown and Theresa May has had her bargaining power with Brussels strengthened by Trump’s victory in America. In the US, stock markets have responded very positively to the prospect of less regulation, lower taxes, increased oil drilling and more pipeline approvals, and a more pro-business regime. Trump has assembled possibly the best cabinet in US history in terms of personal accomplishment and stature, and positively from the Republican point of view, they have been stable conservatives and not iconoclasts like the incoming President Trump.
This Friday in Washington, Barack Obama hands over power to the 45th US President Donald J. Trump. The contrast between the two men could not be more stark, but in a curious manner, Obama’s legacy is Trump! Obama took liberal politics and policies so far that he sparked a backlash that united conservatives, many independents and most of “middle America” in the conclusion that the liberal train must be stopped, at least for a while. It will be interesting to see how the Trump and post-BREXIT world will shape out. I expect increased US energy independence (therefore in the medium term, possibly lower oil prices!), a stronger and more vigorous response to global terrorism, higher global economic growth as deregulation resumes, but perhaps greater volatility in the Middle-East.
Opeyemi Agbaje