The Balkanization of the American Mind

As I watched the 2020 US election campaign with amazement and stood horrified by the presidential debate between Biden and Trump I realized that this was only a final chapter of a must stunning evolution which began with the installation of an American president showing a blatant lack of respect for the rules of democracy. Not only that Trump broke the politeness of an electoral debate, but his disrespect was a violation of all common-sense rules of public dialogue. The episode of two American politicians shouting onscreen was more likely to be on Belorussian TV. More upsetting is when a head of state is clamoring that the elections will be stolen while he is still in charge, which seems to be more appropriate for the electoral process of an underdeveloped country that the most powerful democracy. In a middle of a global pandemic the most industrialized society of the world is lacking the basic care for its citizens and the leader of the United States is exposed for not paying his taxes, like a third-world crooked politician. An American leader who nonchalantly admits that he will not respect the principle of peaceful transfer of power, who lies to his fellow citizens, who urges them to violence, who, while being asked to renounce racism and white suprematism dodges the answers, who defies all the norms of democratic interactions, that seemed to be indestructible a couple of decades ago, was inconceivable.

How can we explain this loss of qualities within the most important liberal democracy of the world? Why the country that imposed a positive model of political organization and democratic standards over the entire planet after its victory in World War II has lost its compass? How can we explain this reversal, this apparent global disorder? It used to be that the US embassy was giving advice to other countries, including Romania, about the obligation of maintaining the separation of the powers in the state, of respecting the peaceful transfer of power following a democratic electoral process and in general imposing the respect for democratic norms. Why are they violated by the most powerful man on the planet?

What happened with the ideal of that "shining city on top of the mountain," why the dream of John Winthrop, one of the founders of New England, who wanted to create a new world based on the principles of a just and honest society, is dispelled? What happened to the American exceptionalism, why the intensity of the beacon of light represented by the United States is fading away, why in a couple of years "America" is no longer an admirable model for the planet?

As a former Fulbright Fellow during the 1990s, I was one of the hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries of American generosity. America was for me a second country, first an imaginary homeland (that my grandfather was waiting to intervene and save him from tyranny), then transformed into an adoptive, welcoming, and generous homeland, a true motherland animated by moral and noble qualities. While enjoying the American generosity, I was never asked for anything in return and this is why I was so shocked by the attitude of this businessman president, by the rapacious way in which he unfolded his tentacles on a planetary level, by the attitude of friendship towards the tyrants of the globe and his suspicious and undisguised contempt for social morality.

I believe that during the Trump era we are witnessing an accelerated Balkanization of the American soul. Maybe this could explain why his adulators all over the world are so excited. Such a hateful character represents the image of a reversed American ideal. As Antoine de Tarlé (Trump, le mensonge au pouvoir, 2020) points out in his recent study about the transformations of the American political discourse, the Trumpism represents a triumph of falsification, of deception replacing the truth. I agree with the French media analyst who warns that by this democracy itself is in danger. Democracy is drifting in the United States and all over the world when rational dialogue and reasonable behaviors, are replaced by attitudes and behaviors once considered unacceptable and prohibited by unwritten norms. Illiberal and abusive leaders have replaced reasonable and responsible politicians all over the world. But when the White House looks more like Putin's Kremlin, when the President fires the head of the FBI for not doing what he wants, when the US president talks about the pandemic like Lukashenko and behaves like a leader from the Balkans during the 1990s, something is wrong with American democracy. America has been Balkanized.

What do I mean by Balkanization? The political concept of Balkanisierung was originally used by the German industrialist and politician Walther Rathenau, who described the Balkan states in a condescending way. In a 1918 interview with The New York Times, Rathenau (quoted by Maria Todorova in Imagining the Balkans, 33) described this area as a tribal, primitive space, unable to follow the rules of the "civilized world". Balkanization meant the danger of transforming the West into an Eastern European ”uncivilized” place. Used as a pejorative term, "Balkanization" resumes a series of stereotypes about an area (where I also live). The Balkans, at that time labeled as "the powder keg of Europe," seemed to be an unruly geopolitical space. The fact that the First World War began here did not help to improve the image of the Balkans. The Balkans were always used as a negative example, and in Rathenau's case, his deprecation was justified by the fear that the German nation after WWI could be fragmented and pushed towards a barbarous state.

This basic political meaning of Balkanization returned to prominence during the 1990s, against the backdrop of the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, where ethnic tensions led to crimes and atrocities that seemed impossible to repeat in the modern world. Balkanization came to be used mostly as a synonym for political fragmentation, where ethnic and racial dissensions, violence, and the lack of state or governmental cohesion were negative manifestations. From here on it was borrowed in the political debates, including in the United States. The notion was reduced to a restrictive label. The Balkanization was equal to a possible malignant effect of immigration and multiculturalism, which could endanger the US and fragment the society.

My understanding of the notion is not limited to this narrow political definition. In order to distinguish the political Balkanization from its imagological and psycho-social dimension perhaps we should use another formula. As Teodorova indicates in the thorough study of the Balkan imaginary structures, the term has come to be a Schimpfwörter, a defamatory label in the arsenal of disparaging words that Europeans throw at each other and unavoidable confusions might appear. Other related concepts are Balkanism and Byzantinism, both invested locally with positive meanings.

An alternative formula was proposed by Romanian literature professor Mircea Muthu, who tried since the 80s and until 2002, when he published his work on Romanian Literary Balkanism, a larger terminological revision. Muthu even proposed the establishment of a new field of research, called Balkanology. With this initiative, he was actually following Nicolae Iorga, the Romanian historian who proposed earlier the idea of a "Byzantium after Byzantium". This unrealized project, like any Balkan project, sought to re-examine preconceived notions of the Balkans and Byzantinism, which unjustly equated South-Eastern Europe with a compromised cultural and political space. From this revisionist perspective, the Balkans as an imaginary space should be seen as a favorite place of diversity, endowed with a type of humor prone to parody, with a strong tragic dimension and a predisposition for a meditative attitude towards history. Muthu proposed the notion of a "frontier space" in which, due to political fluctuations, flexibility and fluidity were positive principles, justifiably developed into literary manifestations.

Regrettably, what seems to be a quality for these authors, that is the ability of the Balkans to enclose multiple and diverse identities, comes with a huge ethical deficiency. As former French President Raymond Poincaré noted about Romania, "here at the gates of the Levant, everything is taken lightly". In a society where everything is fluid and lax, Balkanism represents a rejection of the principles of Western morality, based on the law of bivalence, where the third is excluded (tertium non datur, the ancient Latins said). Balkanism follows an ambivalent logic, where neither-nor (neither so, nor so) is a guiding principle. As indicated by a famous Romanian expression, the man from the Balkans wants to be "neither in the chariot, nor in the cart", or, as Caragiale observed penetratingly about the local style of politics: "to revise, but to change nothing". The lessons of survival in the post-Byzantine world lead also to an indifference towards ideology that curls immorality.

In fact, this is one of the defects of the Balkan mentality, an ungraceful legacy of Ottoman Byzantinism, which is wide-spreading in American society today. It is disconcerting to witness how the public debates in the United States are vitiated by this Balkanic virus, the monstrous lightness towards rules and norms. Asked in an interview about the victims of the current epidemic, the US president said "It is what it is", almost in a direct translation of the uneasy Balkan expression: "what will be, will be". The arsenal of Trump's scandalous statements includes many other expressions that even the most odious dictators in Eastern Europe would not have dared to utter. His attitude towards women and his undisguised sexism (grab them by the p..y) would have shamed the most naughty politicians in the Balkans. A president who claims that the soldiers who died for the country were "losers" and "suckers", for whom brutal, vulgar, and aggressive language is normal, is a negative model for the entire planet.

I understand Balkanism as a deficiency of mentality, with Balkanization its visible manifestation. Everywhere where we can witness public corruption and systemic defects, where immoral actions and lack of integrity become an integral part of the behavior of the rulers, the traits of this disease of the social mind are symptomatic. Another illustration is provided by the "Ukraine affair", just one more pathological sign of Balzanization, With President Trump trying to compromise his opponent, the arsenal of attacking Joe Biden had no ethical limits. As Trump tried to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to use the prosecutor's office to his advantage and by sending Rudy Giuliani to investigate how Hunter Biden came to be named on the board of the largest gas company, Burisma, the entire situation turned into a Balkan-style show, a continuous soap opera of bad taste.

But, as Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die, 2018) observes, the negative effect of this president stems from his actions that are similar to those of other authoritarian leaders who undermine democratic institutions and norms. Here another effect of the Balkanization is hidden deeper in the undemocratic processes. The fact that Trump cultivates and stimulates racial hatred and the false American pride is a pathway towards Balkanization. The Americanocentrism (Make America Great Again) was one of the first symptoms of Balkanization.

Some authors, such as Sirvent and Haiphong (2019), place this mutation of the collective psyche of the American society at the turning point of our century, which transformed the evolution of American exceptionalism. In fact, the anguish induced by the September 11 attacks and the events that followed has pushed the American public towards a new form of ethnic autarchy. The resurgence of white supremacist discourses, the renewed racial dissensions, and the withdrawal from the global dialogue were signs of a behavioral disorder specific to Balkanization.

In fact, even the use of the term Balkanization is an indicator of Balkanization. Various American authors (Ira Tabankin, in The Second American Civil War The Balkanization of America, 2015) have constantly denounced the danger of Balkanization in terms of conservative alarmism. Thy claim that America was the victim of an ongoing civil war, with invisible enemies from outside. Others, such as Ralph Brandt, used the term to denounce various conspiracy theories (The Balkanization of America: Enslaving the American People, 2018), suggesting the existence of a systematic plan to "enslave" the American people. Balkanization is also a favorite theme for white supremacists, who commonly use the word to cultivate the fear towards a multiracial society, stating the this presents a clear danger, the imminent splitting of the United States will follow under the pressure induced by immigrants.

Yet the fear towards the "Other", of those who are not like us, of the neighbors who speak another language, is a feature of Balkanization. One of the toxic components of existence in the Balkans stemmed precisely from this negative imaginary construction of our fellow citizens.

The notion of Balkanization must be in close observation with the cautionary recommendations presented by Allan Bloom. In a remarkable study published in 1987 (The Closing of the American Mind), the American philosopher noted the fragility of democracy in the United States and warned about the dangers of illiberalism. Bloom's critique of the American spirit and the society must be understood as an observation about the shaky foundations of the model proposed by the United States to the whole world. The "American way" was not only about democracy and economic success, it was not driven by generous principles such as freedom, but on a philosophical-political promise. A good society is built by political leaders and public figures who are educated and raised in the spirit of modesty and reason. America no longer seems capable of producing such leaders.

Obviously, Balkanization as a disease of our collective mind is much more contagious and has spread all over the world. As Stjepan Meštrovic (The Balkanization of the West: The Confluence of Postmodernism and Postcommunism) points out, the phenomenon of "Balkanization of the West" can be observed everywhere where social narcissism and political irresponsibility have replaced public reason. It is becoming increasingly clear that the rational democratic societies of the West are seduced by irrationality and disrespect for rules. The unwritten mechanisms that worked for the past 75 years are now broken. Brexit is just one manifestation of this new world tribalism, and the terrible reality is that collective madness and the blindness of nationalism are now having dire consequences. Balkanism is mutating into a global political monstrosity.

In fact, the United States today are losing on a battlefield that completely different from the traditional military theaters of war. Today, global wars are no longer fought only by military force, they are not won with tanks and "super-duper" missiles. In the larger battle for occupying the imagination of the citizens of the planet, America seems seduced by the sinister virus of Balkanization. Abandoning a social paradigm developed in the last seven decades, the contempt for the "Other" and self-aggrandizing have substituted the high moral ground of global altruism. With the attraction of intolerance and dissemination of discourses that cultivate anger and fear, coupled with the fascination for selfish and narcissistic public figures, Balkanization has become a disease more dangerous than the current viral pandemic.

20 years ago I published an essay entitled "The Day Democracy Died". At that time I was living and studying in the United States and by witnessing the societal transformations produced by the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York I anticipated that under the pressure of religious terrorism America would transform, like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, whose little hands could no longer help him survive, into a monster. Today Donald Trump is the embodiment of this Tyrannosaurus, the creature that haunts democracy and leads the world towards the extinction of the values of an altruistic society. We can blame Trump as much as possible since clearly Washington today offers a model for corruption and nepotism, similar to those of the late Ottoman Empire, when the sultan used the government for his own benefit and that of his family, rather than for the benefit of the entire country, or for the sake of humanity. Surrounded by his high viziers of obedience, the current American president appoints his son-in-law in global decision-making roles and makes discretionary decisions that amaze his friend and even his pen pal Kim Jong Un. He could be a brutal role model for any politician in an undemocratic society, but not an exemplary figure for a reasonable world.

However, Trump is just a symptom, not the key transformative factor. He is living proof of the failure of an entire way of seeing the world. As Robert Kaplan once said, the ghosts of the Balkans have haunted the entire history of the twentieth century, and now we see them returning in a global invasion that covers the planet with a black veil of intolerance and illiberalism. What was possible only in the most corrupt political systems, we see happening in the United States - where convicted figures are pardoned, where the petty interests of the leader of the world's most powerful state undermine international institutions and agreements. If the twentieth century was the century of the "American peace" (pax Americana), there is the danger that the 21st century will belong to the global Balkanization.