Aaron Kliegman | Gingrich 360 - The Establishment Strikes Back

By Aaron Kliegman After four years in the political wilderness, the Democratic establishment is poised to return to power. The men and women who Joe Biden has named to his prospective Cabinet and senior White House staff aren’t exactly fresh faces. Many are alumni of the Obama administration, and most are members of Washington’s political elite — especially those responsible for foreign policy. They’re veterans of Washington’s political games and machinations. Plus, several have intimate, longstanding corporate ties. It seems Biden is trying to pump back into the nation’s capital what President Trump wanted to drain. If the swamp is in part a revolving door of corporatists flowing in and out of government to the same think tanks, consulting firms, corporations, and defense contractors, then the swamp is back with a vengeance. That’s not even meant as a criticism — it’s just a fact. For years, the consensus among the establishment — both Democrats and Republicans — was that globalization was an inherent good and a solution to many, if not most, of the world’s ills. Indeed, this view was the core assumption underpinning much of American foreign and domestic policy for decades: The more globalization the better for everyone. They had more than a point: Globalization has undoubtedly been a great thing for humanity. Without it, the modern world and all the benefits, luxuries, and unprecedented prosperity that billions of people — including Americans — now enjoy would only be a dream. But globalization is no panacea, and the establishment took it too far. Consider a question that the late Henry Rowen, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, posed in 1996. “When will China become a democracy,” he asked. “The answer is around the year 2015. This prediction is based on China’s impressive economic growth, which in turn fits the way freedom has grown elsewhere in Asia.” Rowen was hardly alone. His view — that economic freedoms would lead to greater political freedoms, which in turn would eventually lead to democracy — was the view of the bipartisan establishment for years. Such a view is only possible through an overly idealistic belief in what globalization can do. This belief led our elites and political leadership, broadly speaking, to pursue policies based on the assumption that globalization should constantly grow and expand without fear of the potential side effects. But some of those side effects developed into serious diseases. China joined the World Trade Organization and became a global power capable of challenging American supremacy across a range of fields. Too many American workers suffered as a result. And rather than liberalize, many of our adversaries only hardened their hatred of us. The coronavirus really showed the folly of putting too much faith in globalization — and of ignoring that the world is ultimately a jungle of bestial states trying to survive and thrive. The American people were able to see the danger of being too reliant on China, which can hold us hostage because of its central role in our supply chains of critical goods, including medicine. Robert D. Kaplan, the best-selling author and expert on foreign affairs, describes the world today as a high-velocity place on a taut string. Pull the string in one place, and everywhere else will feel the reverberations from that string. This is the interconnected world we’ve created, and it truly has benefited everyone. But what happens when things go wrong in such a world? Observing the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, we’re clearly unprepared for when things go wrong. Globalization fends off certain evils but opens up doorways to new ones, which we need to think about more seriously. All that brings me to what is arguably President Trump’s greatest achievement -- pointing out and making many of us realize that unchecked globalization had to stop. In other words, no one — at least no one reasonable — is saying that globalization is bad and must stop altogether. That’s just crazy. The real issue is that our elites — the establishment — seemed to believe that globalization should constantly expand without limit. Trump made many Americans — elites and average citizens alike — see that globalization cannot go completely unchecked. There must be limits and a recognition of reality. Nation-states still matter. The world can’t be one big, happy family. So, here's the question: Has the establishment learned anything in the past four years? Considering who Biden is appointing, probably not. Order Newt's Latest Book: https://www.gingrich360.com/trump-and-the-american-future

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