The slogan of MAGA (Make America Great Again) has played a very important role in the political discourse of the USA during the last decade or so. Although it has been closely associated with the election and other campaigns of Donald Trump, a very similar slogan was earlier used also by Ronald Reagan.
While leaders of many countries have spoken in the past regarding making their country great again, they often fail to clarify whether achieving greatness ‘again’ is in the specific context of some historical period when the country was supposed to be very great and the greatness of that period is to be captured again. Often this is done deliberately, as leaders using such slogans in populist ways do not want to get involved in inconvenient debates regarding how truly great any specific earlier period was in reality.
In the USA also such specific identification of an earlier ‘great’ period has been avoided by MAGA enthusiasts, perhaps for similar reasons. If one goes back to the very early days of the country, there would be not just inconvenient but also very disturbing truths about the large-scale and unjust destruction of indigenous people, their settlements and their cultures. Then would come the period of the very unjust exploitation based on slavery. What is more, even in terms of the identity of greatness mainly in terms of wielding excessive power, which may actually be closer to the worldview of MAGA enthusiasts, the USA was far from being the greatest power in those times.
This moment arrived only after Word War 2 when several historical circumstances combined with the preceding years of the enlightened leadership of FDR to make USA the biggest power of the world.
However Truman used the newly acquired status to cause great destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the larger scale use of atomic weapons against WW2 ally Soviet Union soon after this, promoted by early hawks, could be barely avoided thanks to better counsel prevailing.
The 1950s brought the avoidable but highly destructive Korean war, to be followed by the even more avoidable and even more destructive Vietnam war, starting the trend of wars that claimed the life of several million innocent people.
Then during the 1960s there were also the assassinations of three of the most important national leaders (including a highly popular president who had only recently made a hugely important decision to remain very firmly committed to peace)—John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy Sr. These killings have been widely blamed on insider forces and their real-life conspiracies.
A long history of enormous destruction caused without reason to Cambodia, Laos, Guatemala, Chile, Haiti, Nicaragua, Indonesia and other countries continued. In the middle of all this, at domestic level, problems like the inability of significant sections of people to meet their basic needs, inequalities, crime and violence, substance abuse, mental stress and chronic diseases were also growing, making it even more difficult to identify any period as being particularly great.
However the collapse of the Soviet Union presented another opportunity in early 1990s, as in mid 1940s, when victory could be declared loudly. A uniquely unipolar moment appeared to have emerged, again helped much by historical circumstances, and the talk of the American century could be heard louder than ever before.
But this period too cannot be a reference time for any supposed greatness, as instead of using this historical opportunity in any enlightened way, the USA launched a new phase of extreme aggression against many other countries. Many countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya were ruined by wars and interventions, while several others suffered extreme distress due to adverse policy impacts. Meanwhile environmental ruin, infrastructure decay, homelessness, denial of basic needs to increasing number of people, inequalities, mental health crisis, substance abuse and several problems of children continued to increase, sometimes in alarming ways.
Hence it is very difficult to find any period of true greatness to which the MAGA slogan may try to relate and return. Instead of sticking to MAGA, it makes much more sense to speak of MAPA as the most suitable guiding post for the USA—Make America Protective Always.
Yes, protective policies and ideas are what the USA needs the most to increase the welfare of people at home and abroad, to ensure peace and safety for people, and to protect environment and biodiversity (all forms of life). While such thinking and policies are needed by all countries, the USA as the most powerful and influential country needs this the most.
The USA must entirely give up its forever wars and excessive external aggression. It should strive to achieve and maintain world leadership based on enlightened protective policies, not wars and coercion. Its defense policy should be based on protecting the safety of its own people, not on threatening the safety of other people. Thereby it can save several hundred billion dollars every year for meeting the needs of its own people in much better ways, needs such as housing, nutrition and health. Some of the saved money should also be used for providing humanitarian assistance in many parts of world where it is urgently needed.
By reducing inequalities and by following progressive fiscal policy the USA can find additional several hundred billion dollars per year more for helping its economically weaker sections, for protecting environment and biodiversity. Thus what the USA needs more than anything else is to achieve integration of protective policies at home and abroad, for this generation and for future generations. This new priority can be captured in the slogan of MAPA (Make America Protective Always).
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Saving Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071, and Man over Machine—A Path to Peace
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