So now that coalition talks to form a German government appear to have broken down and the way forward is not as clear as it once was, one should stop and take stock of where the West and where it is heading. Those who try to explain Donald Trump looking at strictly American causes seem to be missing the bigger picture. While the political earthquake that was Donald Trump’s election is still getting the most press attention (not least of which is his Twitter account), the fact is that the assumptions and governing structure of the post-war era in the West are being called into question in country after country as never before. Even in France where President Macron was dubbed the establishment candidate, this was only due to the fact that his opponent was from a party traditionally associated with right-wing extremists. People forget that Macron’s party didn’t exist 3 years ago. Imagine the next U.S. President in 2020 being from a political party that doesn’t exist right now, and you get the idea how big a deal that is.

When you have political dissatisfaction such as what we are witnessing today across the West, it usually isn’t a case of horrible (aka racist) people finally finding their voice and overwhelming a stable political system that is functioning reasonably well. The fact that folks in country after country with many different economic and political cultures are sending the same message should tell us something. Specifically it should tell us that something big is happening. The fact that the U.S. would elect a political novice, that France would elect someone from a new political party, and that Italy would have a political party led by a comedian leading in some polls in the run up to the 2018 elections is a sign that the political system has failed. While some roll their eyes at people who even after a year still can’t accept that Donald Trump won the election, this lack of acceptance indicates (I think) an intuitive understanding that something deep has shifted, likely irreversibly.

So, what is happening? I think that it can be summed up that the population has finally lost faith in a governing system (and I include the established political media in this) to which they must pay taxes, listen to people who don’t know what they are doing presume to talk down to them, and that has delivered very little tangible for them over the last quarter century. This is not an indictment of one political party; this inept governing is truly bi-partisan. The last large victory of the political system in the West was that of the Cold War. Since then, much of the visible improvement (cell phones, internet, expanded entertainment options) have been largely driven outside of government. To the extent that government was involved in any of these, its role was either minimal or not really visible.

However, what is visible is that many countries are seeing waves of immigrants being let in to either A.) consume social services paid for by citizen taxpayers or B.) to compete with citizens for scarce jobs. In some countries, citizens face regulatory burdens from supranational bodies that they have no control over or any clearly visible way to influence. Or, they simply see that their money is taxed and nothing improves. Schools deteriorate, roads have potholes, traffic gets bad, jails are overcrowded, etc. etc. They vote for one party, and then the other. But nothing changes.

Furthermore, some governments seem to not understand that protecting their citizens from outside threats to their well-being (including economic ones) includes securing the border. When citizens protest and demand that something be done to control immigration, they are derided as horrible people. The political system does what it wants. In Europe, the E.U. pushes forward with integration favored by the elites. When citizens push back, they are vilified and punished. Then they are “invited” to vote again until they get the “right” answer. Social media has made it obvious what many in the political class truly think of the average voter, and it isn’t pretty. In has become apparent that the political class sees itself as a permanent ruling class and voters as mere supplicants, registering their votes at the polls for the ruling class to grant or ignore at its pleasure.

What is worse, is that despite producing failure, nobody in the political class seems to be truly held to account. Sure, a political party might lose an election, but the individual members don'”t really suffer personally. If someone in the private sector screws up, they lose their job. In losing their job, often everything that they have is at risk (Home, marriage, retirement, etc). The failures in the political class, if they result in sanction at all, usually result in a politician being in the minority instead of the majority, a bureaucrat gets transferred to another department, a resignation into another profitable and lucrative niche, etc. In short, failure in the private-sector risks a ruined life. Failure in the public sector risks a demotion; painful perhaps, but not personally disastrous.

Even in the media, the talking heads never seem to lose their talking head position, no matter how stupid or wrong that they end up being. Many of these so-called “experts” talk and talk and talk and talk, and then end up being wrong, and yet they are still pronouncing like infallible sages. Virtually the entire political/economic media assured us that a Brexit vote was going to result in practically a Soviet-style economic collapse. Immediately after Trump won the election, Noble Prize winning economist and New York Time’s columnist Paul Krugman assured us that the stock market would never recover while Trump was President. Since those events/predictions, the stock market in the UK is up by about 17% and the stock market in the U.S. is up more than 20%.

The point is that people have lost faith in the governing class as a whole. And this isn’t due to people being stupid, blind, or misled. That might happen in one election in one country. But not in country after country and election after election. The faith of the governing class in a multicultural country in an open, globalized world that delivers, freedom, happiness and prosperity to all (or almost all) citizens and managed by that same governing class has broken down. It has failed. And like religious adherents across the ages whose religions have failed and/or been called into question by facts that can’t really be denied any longer, devotees of this faith are lashing out (sometimes literally and violently) at those who question and/or oppose their faith. The Western world is changing. It is far, far too early to say what will emerge. I wouldn’t even hazard a guess. The process will take years, perhaps decades. But the post-war era is ending. The failure of governance of the last 25 years is at the embryonic stages of being changed.

So the GOP is at the apex of its political power in almost a century. In the states, the GOP has the trifecta (control of the legislature and the governor’s mansion) in 25 states and partial control in at least 19 others (as opposed to 6 trifectas for the Democrats). They have control of Congress and the White House, AND they have 4 solid Supreme Court justices (along with a 5^th that sides with them more often than not). So apart from appointing some federal judges and keeping the Supreme Court in nominally Republican hands, why do they seem to struggle to move their agenda along and disappoint their supporters? I believe that there are several reasons.

• The first reason I believe is psychological. The Republican Party is the conservative party of the American political spectrum, which implies that often they are trying to ‘conserve’ and keep things as they are (or were) in a changing world. The result is a defensive mindset that tries to fend off challenges to the status quo or at least limit the changes to tinkering around the edges. Generations of Republican lawmakers have come to Washington to either hinder change or to roll some recent change back to the prior status. The reason that the charge “Republicans want to turn back the clock” sticks is because that has been the default Republican position on many issues for a long time. To actually legislate and produce solutions to problems means changing the status quo and requires an offensive rather than a defensive mindset. This is not something that comes naturally to Republicans.
• The second reason is geographical. Washington D.C. is a town which is more than 90% Democrat. This means that Republican lawmakers (and their staffs) are effectively under siege in their personal lives when they go to Washington. Going into any cocktail party, social event, or even grabbing a bite down the local diner, the Republican in D.C. is looked down upon, and likely has to apologize for being who he/she is and not be too much of a believer in Republicanism (whatever that is) in order to be accepted. So, instead of standing up for their constituents and the people who voted for them, too often they cave (and are likely given some acceptance for being “reasonable”). I’m not saying that this IS what happens, but the results are consistent with this. I suspect that if the capital was moved to Salt Lake City where Republicans aren’t an endangered species, they would be much less likely to cave repeatedly on their principles.
• The third reason is that there isn’t really a unified Republican Party. If this last election revealed anything, it’s that the Republican Establishment is divorced from the concerns of the average Republican voter. When one thinks about it, the Republican Party nationally has delivered very little to its voters over the last 25 years. At a practical level, the Presidency of Bush II brought a small amount of tax relief. The rest of what it delivered was a war in Iraq (Afghanistan can be forgiven because no government on earth could allow 9/11 to go unanswered), a real estate bubble, a financial collapse. The rest of the time (the Clinton and Obama Administrations) Republican voters were electing Republicans to prevent something worse; a hope that Republicans often betrayed by caving in the face of pressure. So what Republican voters feel that they have gotten over the last 25 years is either ‘disappointed expectations’, or in the case of Democrat control, ‘a catastrophe’. At the end of the day, people want something ‘good’ occasionally. Although ‘disappointed expectations’ may be less worse than ‘catastrophe’, people eventually get tired of being played time and again. Eventually, they rebel against an organization that promises ‘good’ and delivers disappointment. The fact that the Republican Party is now in a civil war of sorts, means that it will have difficulty governing.

Taken together, these reasons form (I think) a plausible hypothesis as to why, despite having nominal control of the federal government, the Republicans are producing such limited results. Their mindset and much of their experience mitigates against their being able to put forth a coherent set of legislative principles that can get majority support. Furthermore, Republicans need to adopt the mindset of using their power to reward their voters, just like Democrats do. In addition, they need to stop trying to ‘conserve’ a system that no longer exists by turning back the clock. And, they need to start using their power to shape the system to the benefit of their voters. This is not to argue for specific policies, but rather to argue that the GOP needs a change of mindset if it wants to be able to actually govern.

Right now, both parties have lost the trust (and deservedly so) of a large fraction of their voters. The party that figures out how to regain that trust by actually producing positive results (from the perspective of their respective voters) is the one that will be able to govern the future.

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been secession movements in Spain & Iraq that have arranged secession referendums the resulted in a “yes” vote for independence. In June of 2016, the U.K. voted to exit the E.U. In 2014, Scotland narrowly voted to stay within the U.K., and is now talking about another referendum. And there is even a movement in California that aims to break off California from the United States. Although the heart might swell with pride to think of one’s region becoming its own country, and even though there might be legitimate grievances that can only be resolved by breaking away and forming your own country, there are some practical challenges that need to be addressed before one can even begin to think of making a go of it as an independent country.

• Do you REALLY have popular support for such a move?

When talking about changing a fundamental political arrangement that really underpins everything else, you really need to make sure that you have overwhelming support. Most secessions don’t go as well and as peacefully as the break-up of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia did in 1993. The way to an independent country is likely to be difficult, with sacrifices from the population required. Winning an independence referendum with 50.1% of the vote isn’t going to be enough to sustain support for independence when the going gets tough. Catalonia had sort of a “half-referendum” with 42% turnout that voted 90% for independence. The result would have been excellent with 80% turnout. The Kurdish independence turnout was 72% with 92% voting for independence (which implies a 66% overall support). The Kurdish vote would be enough to change most constitutions and so this independence movement is likely to have sustained support through difficult times.

• Do you have a national identity?

In other words, does your population feel that it is part of an extended family. In the case of Catalonia and Kurdistan, this is clearly the case. Each of these peoples have a distinct language and culture that distinguishes them from the country of which they are ostensibly a part. Even in a country like Canada, the French-speaking people of Quebec have a distinct culture that threatens to split Canada. In the independence struggle that is to come, the sacrifices that the population will likely be called upon to endure requires that they have an “all for one, my family is being threatened” sort of unity. Without this, your independence movement is likely to falter. Consider the case of the current effort to get California to secede. There is no California national identity, and it would take decades to develop one. At this time, Californians still “fee” like Americans. No matter how divorced their politics might be from the rest of America, that and simply hating Donald Trump is not going to be enough to sustain an independence effort that might require real sacrifice.

• Do you have an economic base for your country?

After independence, your country is going to have to make its way in the world. How will it do that? Unless your population has been ghastly tortured and suffered near genocide (or was about to suffer genocide) at that hands of its former countrymen (meaning that just being away from those other folks is its own reward), you are going to have to have an economic base. In the case of Scotland, its economic base was going to be oil. In the case of Catalonia, its major city of Barcelona is an international business hub. Kurdistan has some oil, but also to some extent falls into the “just being on our own is its own reward” category. An independent country of California would have the tech industry. But there are folks in Northern California who want to secede from California and form the 51^st state of the U.S. It really isn’t clear what this state would have as an economic base. It isn’t going to do you any good to succeed in your independence bid, only to find out that everyone is impoverished because your country has no real economic base from which to generate wealth.

• What about the people who will lose out when your country secedes?

The fact is that your region is currently part of another country. That means that some people in your region are benefitting from the current arrangement. No matter what your vision of independence looks like, change for these people represents a potential threat. They are doing well under the current arrangements. They may or may not do as well under the new arrangements post-independence. If these folks represent in any way at least a significant minority of your population, you are likely going to have to get support for at least some of them. This means that secession is going to have to be an overwhelmingly obviously better deal. Otherwise, you will have a group of counter-revolutionaries that will look to undermine your project. While you might believe that you have the political muscle to deal with them, if these folks are the economic movers and shakers in your region, you might find yourself (post-independence) with a country that has few people who know how to operate a modern economy. Hence your economy and your people’s standard of living will suffer, and undermine general support for your project.

• Are you powerful enough to get political recognition from other countries (trade relations will be needed)?

One of the key things that you will need is recognition from other countries. Being integrated to some extent into the world economy will be key if your people are to prosper and support your new fledgling country. You will need to establish bi-lateral trade relations with other countries to facilitate this integration. Furthermore, you will need diplomatic support for your new country, possibly to prevent the old country from undermining it or trying reabsorb you through some combination soft and/or hard power. By having countries that recognize your new country, you can raise the cost to the old country of acting against you, thereby making such destabilizing actions less likely.

• What military capability will you have?

No matter how you became a new country, you are going to need at least some military capability. A country with no real military capability is likely to be taken over by its neighbors. Catalonia, with no independent military, has been effectively occupied by Spain. Kurdistan, on the other hand, has some existing military capability, which is why Iraqi forces have not yet tried to simply occupy the whole of Kurdistan. Whether or not they try in the future, the fact that Kurdish military units exist makes this undertaking a more difficult proposition for the Iraqi state than it otherwise would be. Even if you secede peacefully from your old country, military capability can make you a more valuable ally to have, which can open the door to mutually beneficial relations with other countries that will help to improve the economy and quality of life in your new country.

This is not a comprehensive list of issues that might arise. Your bid for independence will also be unique to the specific history, geographical location, and political history of your country. However, these are a few of the issues that you will likely need to confront if you hope to be successful in your bid to change the history of your country and your people.

Good luck!!