We are witnessing a change that may be as dramatic as the end of the Cold War

In late August 1989 I travelled to Czechoslovakia by train via East Germany to witness the 21st anniversary of the 1968 Prague Spring. People spoke about the beauty of Prague but few Irish people had travelled there throughout the whole of the 1980s.

Czechoslovakia was one of the most repressive and closed of all the Soviet satellites. Following the Prague Spring, when Czechoslovak students had nearly toppled the Soviets with a non-violent uprising, a new Soviet “Brezhnev Doctrine” came into force, stipulating that the Soviet Union would intervene in any country where socialism was threatened.

The Russian tanks rolled in, Moscow installed hardliners and thousands were rounded up, including future Czech president and poet, Vaclav Havel. Thus began two decades of Czechoslovak stagnation.

By August 1989, the people of communist central Europe were becoming excited by the changes coming from the Kremlin. After Brezhnev’s dead hand, Gorbachev was opening up the possibility of a freer press, opposition parties, reform and a modicum of freedom.

In practical terms the shift was evidenced by Hungary opening the Iron Curtain at the border to Austria. This allowed East Germans to drive their Trabants into Hungary and then on to West Germany where they could get automatic citizenship. Emboldened, some Czechoslovaks took to the streets to mark the 21st anniversary of the Prague Spring.

That night, right in front of me on Wenceslas Square, I witnessed a couple of hundred brave protesters being battered by busloads of heavily armed police with snarling dogs, backed up by water cannon. It was terrifying. If change was coming, the politburo in Prague hadn’t got the message.

In a bar later on that evening, the vast majority of ordinary punters shrugged their shoulders at news of beaten protesters just up the street. They’d seen it before and were resigned to decades of communist control. After a couple of bottles of Moravian red wine, they insisted there was no point protesting.

These normal people seemed to have retreated into their own private worlds and yet, within only eight weeks, the hard-line Prague politburo was swept away by a mass popular uprising, led by the very normal people who had a few weeks earlier been racked by cynical submission.

In 1989, the aggressive Brezhnev Doctrine was replaced by the Gorbachev Doctrine of non-intervention, the Cold War ended and the world changed. Globalisation, underpinned by a rules-based order and by Washington, led to what has been termed Pax Americana.

Oddly enough, the one country that benefited most from the American hegemony was not a former communist country of central Europe, but Ireland. We had a spectacular three decades, operating as a sort of offshore America within the European umbrella, protected by the US and the EU moving in lockstep.

Those days are over. We are witnessing a geopolitical change that may well be as dramatic as the end of the Cold War. Donald Trump is rupturing the world order and replacing it with something else. What that something is we are not quite sure of yet.

Some claim it is the old American 19th century Monroe Doctrine, an 1823 response to the de-colonial wars in Latin America, which specified that the US would support Latin American independence movements against European colonists. This was based on the understanding that, as the dominant country in the Americas, the western hemisphere was the US’s area of dominance.

Today we understand that, in Trump’s eyes, Greenland is also part of the Americas, a fact that puts him on a collision course with Denmark and the EU, which means Ireland.

I am not too sure if the 19th Monroe Doctrine really describes what is going on. If we want a model to frame the new US policy, it may be more instructive to go back to the early 17th century, when European corporations and European states forged an imperial alliance to plunder the resources of the world, deploying arms to achieve their mutually beneficial aims. Trump has told us deposing Maduro is all about oil.

The US wants Venezuelan oil to:

1. become independent from the Middle East and

2. keep the oil price below $50 a barrel into perpetuity.

Trump is using the US military to pave the way for the exploitation of Venezuelan reserves by private American corporations, financed by private US capital. But it doesn’t end there. Trump will ultimately take an equity stake in these, now “strategically essential”, companies in the same way as he took a state stake in the chip manufacturer Intel.

In this way, corporate America and the American state will be soldered together in a great commercial venture, where everything in the US sphere of influence is for sale at the barrel of a gun.

Where have we seen this before? In the 16th century, when it became evident that newly discovered Asia was full of riches (spices, textiles, teaks, jewels) that could be bought cheaply, transported and sold expensively in Europe, mastery of the sea and its trading routes became essential.

It was also crucial for Europeans to dislodge the established Indian, Javanese, Arab and African traders who had dominated Asian trade for centuries. Europeans needed a new global economic and political model to embrace the opportunity that owning the maritime trade routes offered.

In 1600 and 1602, the English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company were founded. These joint stock companies were established to exploit the newly found resources and wealth of southeast Asia for the benefit of England and the Netherlands. The quid pro quo was simple: the companies would trade and ultimately seize the resources of Asia.

Their trading prowess would be backed up by the navies of England and the Netherlands. The job of the navy was to subjugate other potential trading rivals. The dividends of these amazingly profitable companies paid to build the ships. In return for cash, the State gave the companies the legal monopoly to orchestrate trade with the East Indies.

Thus colonialism was structured – an alliance of mercantile capital and state power. The merchant and the state hitched their wagons to each other, deploying the army and navy in the venture, doing deals with local strongmen in Asia, so that those at the top benefited.

This is what we are seeing now from Washington. The model isn’t the 20th century, nor the nineteenth, but the early 17th century. It was called War Capitalism then, and it is War Capitalism now.

Welcome to the future – Elizabethan-style.