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Recently, as TomDispatch regular John Feffer reminds us today, Vladimir Putin met with Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, North Korea. And though no one mentioned it, there was, in fact, a missing participant in that meeting. I'm sure you know just whom I'm thinking of -- the American president who pursued Kim back in 2019 and, while he never visited Pyongyang, at one point took 20 steps into North Korea. While president, he also praised that country's leader for "having a great and beautiful vision for his country." Only recently, in his address at the Republican convention, he said of Kim, "I get along with him. He'd like to see me back, too. I think he misses me, if you wanna to know the truth."
As for Putin, Trump had any number of complimentary things to say about him while in office and, in 2022, praised his invasion of Ukraine as "genius" and "savvy." Only this year, he insisted that he had told "one of the presidents of a big [NATO] country," not (in his opinion) putting enough money into its defense budget that, when it came to Putin's Russia, "I would encourage [the Russians] to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills."
Now, imagine that the same man is once again in a race for the presidency, that he's already made mincemeat out of Joe Biden, who only recently bowed out, and, if the polls are to be believed, still stands a reasonable chance of returning to power in Washington (or if not, of causing untold crises verging on a possible civil war). He is, in short, the ultimate all-American nationalist (but only, of course, if that nation is run by a leader by the name of Donald Trump). Either way, he could be the ultimate destroyer of nations, including this one.
And with that in mind, consider Feffer's look at a planet on the brink of what could indeed be a new nationalism of an unnervingly Trumpian sort. Tom
Revenge of the Sovereignistas
Reports of the Death of Nationalism Are Greatly Exaggerated
By John Feffer
They were all buddy-buddy for the cameras, going for a joy ride in a deluxe limo and toasting each other at a gala dinner. In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was determined to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin in grand style on his first visit to Pyongyang in 24 years. A red carpet, flowers, and champagne: it was a veritable romance of rogues.
In reality, the two autocrats make a very odd couple. Kim is still a youngish man with a few extra pounds on his frame, while Putin is in his seventies and loves to appear shirtless on horses, the better to showcase his judo-trained body. Kim is the dynastic ruler of a small, isolated, homogeneous country that remains formally communist. By contrast, Putin presides over a multiethnic empire that stretches across 11 time zones and has formally turned its back on its communist past. Kim disparages religion but maintains a suffocating cult of personality, while Putin, who embraced religion to boost his own popularity, has yet to force Russian officials to wear pins with his face on them.
Sure, Putin and Kim have some friends in common (China's Xi Jinping and America's Donald Trump), some shared enemies (the West, most democracies), and a fondness for making threats (bombastic, sometimes nuclear). But what really binds them together is a seemingly antiquated belief system whose origins stretch back two centuries.
Kim and Putin are both ardent nationalists.
The two of them believe fervently in the supremacy of the nation-state, specifically their own. They also assert the superiority of their particular ethnic groups, with Putin increasingly using russky (ethnic Russians) instead of rosissky (citizens of Russia) in his speeches and Kim following the official North Korean tradition of purging the language and culture of all outside influences.
Above all, those two leaders are united in their opposition to outsiders -- other countries, international organizations, non-governmental do-goodniks -- having any say over what takes place within their borders. Putin and Kim are, in other words, spokesmen for what I call the sovereignistas, a class of world leaders who insist on their sovereign right to be exceptions to the rules that govern the rest of the planet.
In reality, ultra-nationalists like Putin and Kim hold sway over much of our world and come in all too many shapes and sizes. China's Xi, for instance, resurrected nationalism to revive the fortunes of a communist system whose ideology no longer seemed to motivate the Chinese masses. In Germany, Sahra Wagenknecht has started a new party that officially identifies as left-wing but has right-wing nationalist takes on border controls, globalization, and green politics. Meanwhile, at the other end of the political spectrum, India's Narendra Modi has adapted nationalism to the needs of his right-wing party's religious chauvinism devoted to making Hindu India great again.
Far from just patrolling the edges of their societies, such nationalists are increasingly prospering at their political centers. Just ask Joe Biden, who tried to counter Trump's populism by beefing up his own nationalist credentials through new restrictions at his country's southern border and onerous new tariffs on China. Indeed, such nationalism has been part of the mainstream since revolutionaries took over the kingdom of France in the late eighteenth century and German romantics began championing das Volk (the people) around the same time. Some political scientists have even argued that nationalism was the essential ingredient in the establishment of modern democracies -- that, without its ideological glue, a state couldn't have mustered enough of a consensus to govern.
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