Geopolitics by Klaus Dodds

Author:Klaus Dodds
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192566508
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2019-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

Populist architectures?

As neo-liberalism intensifies, despite the protests following the global financial crisis and its impact on citizens around the world, so pressure continues to be exerted on governments and states to reduce their public spending and make themselves ever more attractive and accessible to global investment and business. In the United Kingdom and the United States, for example, this has led to pressure on governments to reduce spending and to encourage citizens to develop more resilient strategies, placing the onus on them to better prepare themselves for further crises and disruption. Within continental Europe there has been an angry reaction from civil society regarding such public sector retrenchment and appeals for citizen resilience. Countries such as Greece, caught up in complex financial restrictions involving European Union institutions, have witnessed widespread protesting and deepening poverty such that the charitable sector has had to step in to fill the gaps left by the retreating state. Compounding such retraction and austerity, regional geopolitical transformation in North Africa and the Middle East has renewed anxieties about uncontrolled flows of migrants that have generated crises in recent years.

What makes all of this more troubling for liberal democracies in Europe and North America is an apparent decline in commitment to the liberal international order. From Donald Trump in the United States to Viktor Orbán in Hungary, political leaders are capitalizing on anger, resentment, and fear about the ability of governments to keep their citizens secure and provide stable employment. Domestic and international geopolitics do intersect with one another, and we have seen plenty of examples of citizens endorsing and resisting populism and even nativism. The liberal international order may be under pressure but there is also a willingness to fight to defend its core values and practices, even if it remains a moot point whether it is equipped to handle a warming world with a population of ten billion. We need to be clear on one thing: the very liberal order that some are worried about in terms of its future health is the same one that many feel has been better at protecting the interests and wishes of the richer and more privileged segments of humanity, often at the expense of other peoples, species, and environments.

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