Paul Bickley examines the trends in the global political landscape following a year of general elections and President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Are we ready to recognise the shift? 21/01/2025

In 2022, a YouGov/Economist poll of Americans found that 43% said a civil war was at least somewhat likely in the coming decade.  

The figure came to mind as I watched Alex Garland’s film Civil War. The premise of the film is that Texas and California, aka the ‘Western Forces’, have seceded and are at war with the rest of the Union. A somehow third term president is ruthlessly attempting to crush the insurgency including, it seems, by aerial bombardment of American citizens. In the course of the story, tracked through the experiences of four journalists, it becomes clear both that he is losing and that the war really has become ‘civil’, in the sense that violence is ubiquitous. The future of this alternative United States was being fought for not with words at the ballot box but with guns and bombs in towns, cities and fields.   

The politics of Civil War are left deliberately vague, with an improbable coalition of symbolically liberal and conservative states muddying ideological waters. The British writer/director Garland has said that the film is a warning, and not just to America. He thinks he observes the same trends the world over. Nevertheless, the film still carries a certain plausibility. By recent estimates, there might be north of 44 million high powered assault rifles in circulation in the US. What prevents Garland’s vision on the future? Only a social consensus that that everyone’s interests overall are best served by the democratic process prevents mass political violence (to put aside the nearly 50,000 annual gun deaths of largely non–political violence).  

So far, so bleak. Yet 2024, the largest global election year in history with nearly half the world voting in national elections, contradicted Yeats—things, for the most part, did not fall apart. Indeed, the US conducted its Presidential election without any of the mass violence or disruption that many feared. South Korea could have flipped from a young, stable democracy, into autocracy under martial law, but South Koreans said no. Mexico is another fascinating case. Over the course of last year’s election campaign, there were 828 non–lethal and thirty–seven lethal attacks on people standing for public office, with drug cartels and organised crime being the main driver. Yet its election produced a stable government.  

If you absolutely had to draw one conclusion from the votes of 4 billion, it would not be that democracy had failed. Governments were elected, and difficult transitions were managed. The widely accepted frame was that it was a difficult year for incumbents. Indonesia, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, and the US all went the other way, and in France, India, Germany, South Africa, and Canada incumbents weren’t ejected but were weakened. Why? Maybe, just because the old rules still apply. Voters prioritise the economy and public services, and governments that don’t do anything for citizens suffer at the ballot box. According to this thinking, Trump’s re–election was not at all a nation turning its back on centrist politics but pronouncing judgement on the lacklustre performance of the Democratic candidate(s). Isn’t this just business as usual? 

While democracy has proven resilient, business as usual would be a complacent take. Across the western world, business as usual is delivering something unusual. In the UK, six months after a landslide victory for Labour, Reform are now polling on par the government. France has no government, brought down by the parties of the right and left. Austria’s Freedom Party have been offered a chance to form a government after negotiations amongst moderate parties collapsed (and they did win their elections). The AfD will likely come second in Germany’s elections later this year. There are other examples. So far, constitutions, electoral systems, and the use of the so–called cordon sanitaire have limited the progress of insurgent political movements (Trump is only President today because he first won the Republican Party – outsider though he is, he has to get into the system).  

By these measures the centrists have defended their positions and defended liberal democracy. How long can these tactics of limitation last, not least because they look, to the naked eye, undemocratic? Consider Romania’s Presidential Elections, cancelled in November by the country’s Constitutional Court because of alleged Russian promotion of the nationalist candidate Călin Georgescu. Reportedly, he believes that Covid–19 does not exist – one of his more sensible positions. In spite of all that, recent polling suggests he could secure 50% in the next round of voting. 

All of which to say, you don’t need a civil war to completely shift a society. America has permanently changed. The rest of the west is changing in the same way, though it might take an election cycle or two to feed through. Watching the inauguration felt like watching a funeral – a funeral of a set of political orthodoxies around progressive internationalism, globalisation, the rules–based order. Just look at who was there – a who’s who of political disrupters, and those usually considered to be outside of the cordon sanitaire in their own countries. Trump’s election is an earthquake in a particular place, but under the surface there are tectonic plates shifting. The question is not whether this has happened, but why, whether we are prepared to recognise it, and what should be done?  

As we consider those questions, it is worth recognising that – for good or ill – part of the passing orthodoxy is the idea that public life is secular. America was already a paradoxical case – the strict constitutional separation of church and state, combined with a deeply religious culture. Even so, the 47th President of the United States’ claim that “I was saved by God to make America great again” represents a new turn, the complete rhetorical fusion of God’s providence and America’s manifest destiny, now absorbed into Trump’s own person. Is it too much to say that Trump now sees himself as America’s messiah? 

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