The Times They are A-Changin’: “Brave New World” (1) 

 

 

“Life’s an illusion, love is a dream 

But I don’t know what it is” 

 

 

Editorial comment: 

 

This week we visit the Brave New World opportunity offered by Trump’s expansionist nativist populism.

Before that, we consider comments of billionaire Monaco resident Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who accused immigrants of having “colonised” Britain.

Firstly, he’s another Brexiter who jumped ship, hardly a ringing endorsement for the folly. Secondly, in doing so he saved himself some £4bn in taxes, hardly surprising we have no money.

Many readers will know that Sir Jim is a minority owner of Manchester United. One of his ambitions for the club is a super new stadium, however he doesn’t want to use his money, he wants someone else to pay. 

Two things, mate: if you don’t pay-in you don’t get freebies, and, in London, we pay for stadiums ourselves!  

In writing this piece, I realised that, other than the explicit written intent of America’s National Security Strategy, nothing has changed.

Post-WW2, America’s concern was the spread of communism via Soviet Russia. They funded Europe and stationed troops there ensuring that any ground-based WW3 would be fought thousands of miles away from them.

The CIA delivered these foreign policy aims in Europe, with Italy being a special focus, primarily because they had the best organised, most popular communist party in western Europe.

 

was America ever really our friend, or have we been just useful to them? 

 

Whilst not solely responsible for the “years of lead” that lasted from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, their “strategy of tension” policy added to the chaos.

The Moro kidnapping, whilst perpetrated by the Red Brigades, came at a time when Moro was trying to bring the communists into a coalition. Much has been written that the authorities knew where he was and could have rescued him, but didn’t

The Bologna bombing in 1980 killed 85 people.  Several members of the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR, Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) were sentenced for the bombing. In 2020s investigations, and following prosecutions from the Bologna Corte d’Assise, declared Licio Gelli, along with other members of the masonic lodge and secret society Propaganda Due (P2), as the mastermind behind the massacre.

It is generally acknowledged that right-wing terrorists, including P2 were financed by the CIA.

Today, their focus has shifted from communism to migrants, and a desire for white nationalism. If there is a specific target, it is Islam. The latter of course has been the focus of US foreign policy post-9/11.

My question is simple; was America ever really our friend, or have we been just useful to them?  

Lyrically, we start with “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” by Buzzcocks which references the novel’s forced, superficial happiness and the drug ‘soma’. We end with Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs”, which depicts a post-apocalyptic, dystopian nightmare.

 

@coldwarsteve

 

The title of this piece was chosen to reflect the dystopian nightmare that is unfolding globally as the actions of the incumbent US administration destabilises the old world order.  

The basis for this is the US National Security Strategy (NSS), released in December 2025.  

The strategy represents a major shift toward “America First” nativism, criticises Europe’s “current trajectory” and calls for increased European self-reliance in defence, while prioritising national sovereignty over EU integration. Within this, the US plans to focuses on fostering relations with nationalist parties, curbing migration, and reducing economic dependence. 

The strategy calls for an end to NATO as a “perpetually expanding alliance” and urges European nations to develop independent military capabilities, effectively signalling the end of reliance on U.S. security guarantees. Within this, the NSS prioritises establishing “strategic stability” with Russia. 

Europe is seen as facing “economic decline” and “civilizational erasure” due to migration policies, with the EU undermining political liberty. 

There is a stated intent to “Make Europe Great Again” by encouraging support for parties and politicians that promote a “restoration of traditional European ways of life“. This will be achieved by Support for Nationalist Movements; specifically, cultivating relationships with right-wing, patriotic parties in Europe as part of a broader reordering of transatlantic relations. This includes the stated intent to strengthen the growing influence of “patriotic” European parties such as Reform UK, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN), Fidesz in Hungary and Vox in Spain. 

In summary, Trump’s MAGA movement plans to transform Europe from the inside. 

 

‘Trump’s MAGA movement plans to transform Europe from the inside’

 

Complicit in this transformation, is the emergence of a “new right”, based on the premise that liberalism, along with the interdependent globalised order it promoted after the cold war, has failed. On a more macro level, people are told that both their national cultures and economies have succumbed by a sequence of shocks triggered by liberalisation: the GFC, the eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis of 2015, Covid, and the inflation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.  

These collective shock of so many black swan events in a short-time-frame would have overwhelmed most governments irrespective of their political creed, but the right, supported by a biased media, painted pictures of liberalism being overwhelmed, and of a deep state whose interests governments were really serving. For example, in the UK, the brunt of the cost of bailing-out failed banks was an austerity that impacted the majority to benefit the few. Overall, the majority, through lost jobs, zero-hour contracts, reduced services, and rising bills, paid the costs whilst rentiers received all the benefits. 

This is precisely what this column has been writing for several years.  

The difference with the US-sponsored vision is that their solution trades primarily on hate; hate of immigrants, hate of overseas imports, expansionist foreign policy and state reform, all bound together by a promise to restore a shared national identity. A countries borders becomes a tool that distinguishes the “real” members of the nation from outsiders. Tariffs are supposed to rebuild domestic production and elevate the dignity of work. Foreign policy was stripped down to a narrowly defined national interest.  

Any dissent, such as institutional or establishment resistance, is seen as being a part of the “deep state”, and those who seek to act as guardians of constitutions are part of a discredited liberal order. 

The supporters of what is essentially fascism, are a new electoral coalition founded on racism.  

 

The supporters of what is essentially fascism, are a new electoral coalition founded on racism’  

 

Reform’s Danny Kruger, believe this “new right” will create a new centre ground; one that unites traditional Toryism, middle England and a terminally disillusioned post-industrial working class. The coming pitch is for a de-globalised British capitalism, likely to include the taking of public stakes in key industries, accompanied by a cultural drumbeat of ethnocentrism. 

A survey by Ipsos in January, found that it was the most affluent 20% of voters in Britain who, more than any other group, named immigration as their most pressing concern.   

 

Established parties have been slow to respond to their real problems, with many led by politicians who know little other than neoliberalism and fiscal restraint, which are the policies that led to this mess in the first place. When they have responded it has been with me too policies, especially towards migrants, with the result that racism has become mainstream and increasingly accepted. 

When he was still a Tory, the former cabinet minister, Robert Jenrick, lamented not seeing “another white face” in a Birmingham neighbourhood. A comment that highlights how normalised and mainstream racism has become. 

We do, however have some way to go before we plumb America’s depths, with pondlife such as their white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes. Moving on from Holocaust denial, he has started picking-on women, whom, he believes, encourage sympathy for the poor and minorities, saying: “The number one political enemy in America is women,”. And so, “Every woman and girl is sent to the gulags. We will determine who the good ones are after the fact. They go to the breeding gulags.” 

And men wonder why many are becoming involuntarily celibate!? 

One woman (I was going to say, lady, but it isn’t appropriate) who Nick would approve of is Sarah B Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, who is assuming the mantle of leading the administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies. Since assuming office in October, she has met with far-right European politicians, criticized prosecutions under longstanding hate speech laws, and boasted online of sanctions against critics of hate speech and disinformation on US big tech platforms. 

 

“Every woman and girl is sent to the gulags. We will determine who the good ones are after the fact. They go to the breeding gulags.” 

 

Her recent posts on Twitter/X have included a characterization of migrants in Germany as “barbarian rapist hordes”, a comment on Sweden apparently linking sexual violence to immigration policy (“If your government cared about ‘women’s safety,’ it would have a different migration policy”), and the recitation of the view that “advocates of unlimited third world immigration have long controlled a disproportionate share of official knowledge production”. 

Léonie de Jonge, professor of research on far-right extremism at the University of Tübingen, said: “The Trump administration has a vested interest in strengthening anti-democratic movements abroad, as doing so helps advance its own agenda while lending legitimacy to these actors and their activities.” 

Last week saw world leaders and their representatives attend the annual Munich Security Conference. 

Representing the US was secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who, whilst describing America as “a child of Europe”, his speech which was based on a highly conditional offer of a new partnership, which was no longer based on a partnership of equals, but an alliance largely framed in Trump’s terms. 

Rubio said: “What we want is a reinvigorated alliance that recognises that what has ailed our societies is not just a set of bad policies, but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency.” 

In an attempt to bind the US and Europe together, he said both had made the same mistakes, including bowing down to “a climate cult”, expanding welfare states at the expense of national defence, embracing globalisation and creating “a world without borders in which everyone would be a citizen of the world.” 

 

‘a crisis which is transforming and destabilising societies all across the west’

 

Rubio blamed “a foolish but voluntary transformation” of western economies that “left us dependent on others for our needs and dangerously vulnerable to crisis. Mass migration is not, was not, some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilising societies all across the west.” 

Whilst Rubio’s words can be more viewed as more conciliatory than previous speeches by Trump and VP Vance, the underlying message and intent is unchanged.  

In Gaza, the Trump inspired ceasefire is very much in Israel’s favour, and the “board of peace” that supports it is just another example of Trump replacing  and monetising the post-1945 international architecture. Instead of the UN there is a Mar-a-Lago-style members’ club where a permanent seat costs $1bn and decision-making power lies in the hands of Trump himself, even after his presidential term expires. That Vladimir Putin has been invited, and Mark Carney shut out, tells you all you need to know. 

At the recent Davos forum, there appeared to be a realisation that countries can no longer be economically or militarily dependant on a US, that will seek to leverage their vulnerability.  

The Canadian PM, Mark Carney acknowledged this fact and, in what might come to be seen as era-defining speech said: “The old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.” 

Carney said the “middle powers”, the nations of the democratic west outside the US, should stop competing with each other to be the most accommodating and flattering to Trump, instead they should “combine to create a third path”. 

 

‘a Mar-a-Lago-style members’ club where a permanent seat costs $1bn and decision-making power lies in the hands of Trump himself’

 

In short, this envisages a new grouping of the EU plus the UK, and Canada; an economic bloc with heft and a security alliance with the necessary muscle to no longer be dependent on the US for their own defence.  

This will require vastly increased defence spending; an increase that will be a seismic change for economies that enjoyed a peace dividend in the post WW2-era, which allowed them to spend less on guns and more on schools and hospitals.  

Within this, is the inevitable debate as to our future relationship with a post-Brexit Europe. Compromise will be the order of the day as a revised Brexit sees the return of frictionless trade as the cost of our contribution to Europe’s defence. 

A revised Brexit deal such as the above, should present opportunities for Starmer’s struggling government. Manifesto-breaking tax rises and closer ties to Europe can be explained as protecting our national security. This could put Reform and Farage on the wrong side of public opinion, supporting a failed Brexit and in thrall to Trump, with Starmer assuming the mantle as the true defenders of Britain’s sovereignty and independence. 

Addressing the security conference, PM Starmer said there was an urgent need for a closer UK defence relationship with Europe, covering procurement and manufacturing, so that the UK would be at the centre of a stronger European defence setup, saying, “we are 10 years on from Brexit. We are not the Britain of the Brexit years”. He continued acknowledging that “the status quo is not fit for purpose, and to me there’s no question where the national interest lies”. 

 

‘Compromise will be the order of the day as a revised Brexit sees the return of frictionless trade as the cost of our contribution to Europe’s defence’

 

Starmer argued that the long-term threat posed by Russia and the need for Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defence required the UK to integrate more closely on defence procurement with European allies. This was endorsed by France, who are keen to reopen talks about the UK joining Security Action for Europe, an EU rearmament scheme, after discussions stalled last year over the cost of entry for the UK. 

Starmer is also examining the case for a European Defence Mechanism, which would be an intergovernmental instrument open to all European democracies, whether inside or outside the EU. Members of the proposed institution would finance joint procurement and joint assets across Europe. 

He summed-up his thoughts by saying: “There is no British security without Europe and no European security without Britain. That is the lesson of history and is today’s reality as well. So together, we must rise to this moment. We must spend more, deliver more and coordinate more.” 

Interestingly, there seems to be an acceptance that Russia is Europe’s enemy. Starmer pointed out that “Our economies dwarf Russia’s more than 10 times over”, in other words, collectively we can stand-up to Putin’s hordes. 

Starmer, and his European counterparts should go further. The new right and MAGA is essentially a con. They purport to support workers, those downtrodden by the cost-of-living crisis, by austerity, who are on the wrong end of inequality. 

They aren’t offering solution for these problems, only victims to blame. Everything is the fault of immigrants, cut immigration and all our problems our solved. Only they aren’t; Europe especially has aging demographics, child births are low and falling, meaning that fewer workers are supporting more dependents. To get more workers you need migrants. 

Economically, the new right is samo, samo, totally revisionist neoliberalism;  lower taxes and slashing regulation.  

The workers cut adrift by inequality will just be electoral cannon-fodder; today’s statement by Reform that they intend to reintroduce the two-child benefit cap, proves the only help they will get is self-help and food banks.  

Tariffs import higher-costs meaning inflation. Does it create domestic jobs? To date, no. 

Then there is the deep state, the establishment. The new right does will just replace one establishment with another. Theirs will have more in-common with the royal courts of pre-revolution France or Russia, with a gilded “leader” paid homage to by supplicants who are rewards with favour for doing his bidding. 

The court of Trump is a collective of billionaires, buying favours by helping him control the media, and enabling him to gather more wealth. In return, they get low taxes, and reduced regulation, which, in effect, enables them to become the law, which optically looks better than simply being above it. 

As this column as said many times, Trump’s intent to undermine Europe and the EU is just another delusion of grandeur. His fundamental mistake is not understanding that European don’t much care for his type of American’s which can be summed up as gun-toting, white nationalists. Rather than dividing and conquering, he is strengthening the collective, with the addition of others such as Canada and South Korea. 

An increasingly united Europe, with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to the fore, is looking to a new, assertive “Made in Europe” industrial strategy. This is already apparent with the Security Action for Europe (Safe), its new joint defence-procurement scheme, which mandates that the majority of purchases are made from EU members, or closely associated countries. 

‘The new right might make them feel better about themselves, but, deep down, they are no different to the predecessors of the 1930s’ 

 

Macron want this “European preference” extended across strategic sectors, a view shared by the European Commission. In a recent intervention signed by hundreds of business leaders, the commissioner for industrial strategy, Stéphane Séjourné, wrote: “Whenever European public money is spent in Europe, it must contribute to European production and quality jobs.” 

There is some reluctance based around the EU’s traditional commitment to global free trade, and hostility towards protectionism. German carmakers, whose manufacturing operations are worldwide, have voiced their concerns, whilst Baltic and Nordic members are concerned about retaliation by other countries.  

As a result, Germany and Italy are proposing an alternative growth agenda based on deregulation and restricting the scope of Brussels bureaucracy. 

Clearly, any “buy-European” approach needs to balance the benefits of job creation and strategic autonomy against geopolitical considerations. However, if this could be combined with additional investment in areas such as green technology and tech – as the former president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, has consistently advocated – it could give the EU the self-confidence, and the means, to properly leverage a single market of 450 million people. 

In conclusion it is clear that the threat of a US led MAGA-based Europe is still increasing. 

A year ago, it weas presented in less that subtle terms by V-P Vance, who insisted that Europe’s biggest threat was the woke “threat from within”, even as he endorsed far-right nationalists including Germany’s AfD.  

As the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said last week: “The culture war of the Maga movement is not ours.” 

This years speech from secretary of state Rubio, whilst more subtle and coherent, delivered the same underlying message; Europe and the US should be defined by ethno-political values of culture, tradition and religion. The fact that such history has also bred nationalism, racism, fascism and colonialism is apparently nothing to be ashamed highlights just how horrible Maga movements nationalism is.  

The new right might make them feel better about themselves, but, deep down, they are no different to the predecessors of the 1930s. 

 

Just another future song, lonely little kitsch 

(There’s gonna be sorrow) try and wake up tomorrow” 

 

Notes: 

1. “Brave New World” is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy. 

 

 

 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

 

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