The old age of the new

The oldness of the new is reiterated over time with its illusion of withered freshness.” Although Trumpologists exalt novelty more than repetition, the above phrase, dropped by Juan Goytisolo at the 2014 Cervantes Prize reception, fits like a glove with the rhetoric about war and peace of Donald Trump's imperial republic. When waves crash forcefully against the rocks, it's easy to forget the ocean currents. But comparing the unexpectedly parallel presidencies of Trump and George W. Bush, who also arrived with a reputation as an isolationist, allows us to monitor significant continuities.

The scene takes place at the Norfolk Naval Base (Virginia) on February 13, 2001, at the start of Bush's term. The new president stated, in a speech to NATO representatives, that "the best way to keep the peace is to redefine war on our terms." The 9/11 attacks were still almost seven months away. But the redefinition of war and the defense strategy being discussed, concocted in the Pentagon by Donald Rumsfeld and neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, are already part of the narrative against the "war on terror," which will inform the responses to the attack on the Twin Towers. To confront it, the US armed forces must be transformed, taking full advantage of new technologies. But this change is not enough. The new strategy (described as a revolution in military affairs) requires coordination with allies. The U.S. and its allies, says the 43rd president, cannot go "on separate paths, pursuing separate plans with separate technologies." The corollary, not explicit in the harangue but in the concurrent literature, was that, given the new threats and the growing technological gap between the U.S. and Europe, to ensure this coordination, European allies must urgently and exponentially increase imports of American weapons and technology, increasing their dependence on the superpower partner.

The conception of war as a bellicose armed peace is not an invention of Trumpism.

The conception of war as a bellicose armed peace against conventional and unconventional enemies, as an acceleration of the technological race, and as a continuation of foreign trade by other means is not a Trumpist invention. The Nobel Peace Prize hopeful's insistence on redefining war so that other nations, and especially allies who have become forced clients of the American security and arms business, think of it according to a self-serving understanding of US interests is part of a well-established and bipartisan tradition cultivated for decades. Certainly, the inconstant, disruptive, and more obscenely imperial tactics of the post-liberal Trump inaugurate a new phase of the Pax Americana as a figure of war. But to understand the new, it is important to look at how it articulates with the old.