George Friedman on Nationalism and the New Economic Orthodoxy

The wealthy lost a great deal after 2008. But what they lost was investment capital, not rent money. The blow for most was not existential. It did not change their lives. For those who used their money for consumption, the impact was substantial. As the trade crisis spread, people lost their jobs, and those who found new jobs were being paid a fraction of their previous salary. 2008 had a different impact on average citizens. But political control remained in the hands of the investor class, which had organized its thinking around the ideology of interdependence. It remained focused on the stability of the financial system rather than the surge in unemployment, underemployment, and the public’s loss of buying power. This played out differently in different countries, but it played out almost everywhere.

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The issue that 2008 has raised is the importance of nations and the primacy of a national leadership to protect the interests of the nation as a whole, and not the global system or the interests of the financial community. The re-emergence of nationalism is the logical outcome of the failure of interdependence. Part of the assumption of the pre-2008 ideology was that aggregate economic growth benefits everyone. Post-2008 ideology believes that stagnation is paid for by the middle and lower classes. This leads to a political showdown.

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A new ideology has emerged. It is not yet in power, but it is growing. It argues that the nation-state controlling and limiting its dependence is superior to interdependence. It also argues that the nation-state provides benefits that globalism cannot: a sense of community, the preservation of culture, a sense of self. This argument says that humans without a nation are humans without a community. They are alone, lonely, and helpless. And at the root is the argument that there are more important things than money.

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