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by Francis Fukuyama*

The advent of a new era of "populist nationalism" that will reshape the world order is predicted by Fr. Fukuyama, who had proclaimed the "end of history". What the left failed in the US and Europe. The dangers of Trump's victory.
Hillary Clinton's deafening electoral defeat by Donald Trump is a milestone, not only for the American political scene, but for the entire world order.
We seem to be entering a new era of populist nationalism, in which the dominant liberal class that was formed from the 1950s onwards is under attack by angry and energized democratic majorities.
The risk of sliding into a world of competitive and heightened nationalisms is enormous, and if it happens, it will be a crossroads as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The way Trump won reveals the social base he has mobilized. A look at the electoral map shows that support for Clinton was geographically limited to coastal cities in the US, with rural areas and small towns voting en masse for Trump.
The most surprising shifts came with his victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three northern industrial states that had been solidly Democratic in the last election. Clinton didn’t even bother to campaign in the latter. The Republican won because he managed to win over union workers who had been hurt by deindustrialization, promising to “make America great again” by restoring lost jobs.
We have seen this happen before. This is the story of Brexit, where Leave supporters were similarly concentrated in the countryside and small towns outside London. It is also true in France, where working-class voters whose parents and grandparents voted for communist or socialist parties are voting for Marine Le Pen’s National Front.
But populist nationalism is a much broader phenomenon than that. Vladimir Putin remains unpopular among educated voters in big cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow, but has huge support in the rest of the country. The same goes for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has an enthusiastic base of support among the conservative lower middle class, or Hungarian Prime Minister Vitor Orban, who is popular everywhere except Budapest.
Social class, now defined by educational attainment, seems to have become the most important dividing line in countless developed and developing countries. It is something that is directly driven by globalization and the advance of technology, which was facilitated by the liberal world order created largely by the United States after 1945.
When we talk about a liberal world order, we are talking about a rules-based system of international trade and investment that has fueled global growth in recent years. This is the system that allows iPhones to be assembled in China and delivered to customers in Europe or the US the week before Christmas. It has also made it easier for people to move from poorer areas to richer ones, where they can find greater opportunities for themselves and their children.
This system worked flawlessly: from 1970 until the US crisis in 2008, global production of goods and services quadrupled, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, not only in China and India but also in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
But as everyone now knows, the benefits of this system did not trickle down to all segments of the population. Working classes in the developed world saw jobs disappear as companies moved parts of production overseas in an effort to adapt to a relentlessly competitive global market.
This long-term trend was amplified by the US subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 and the euro crisis that hit Europe a few years later. In both cases, systems designed by elites – liberalised financial markets in the US case and European policies such as the euro and Schengen – collapsed when confronted with external shocks. The costs of these failures hit ordinary workers far harder than the elites themselves.
Since then, the real question should not be why populism emerged in 2016, but why it took so long to manifest itself.
In the US, there was a political failure since the system did not adequately represent the traditional working class. The Republican Party was dominated by corporate America and its allies who had benefited from globalization, while the Democratic Party transformed into the party of identity politics: a coalition of women, African Americans, Hispanics, environmentalists and the LGBT community, no longer focused on economic issues.
The failure of the American left to represent the working class is mirrored in similar failures across Europe. European social democracy came to terms with globalization decades ago, in the form of Blair’s centrist policies or the neoliberal reformism promoted by Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrats in 2000.
But the left's broader failure is the same as before World War I, when, as the British-Czech philosopher Ernest Gellner put it, a letter sent to a mailbox marked "class" was mistakenly delivered to one marked "nation."
The nation almost always trumps class because it can access a powerful source of identity, the desire to connect with an organic cultural community. This yearning for identity is expressed through the American alt-right, a previously marginalized conglomeration of groups that in one way or another embrace white nationalism. But regardless of these extremists, many American citizens began to wonder why their communities were being flooded with immigrants and who had imposed a system of political correctness that did not even allow anyone to protest the problem.
This is why Donald Trump received a huge number of votes from highly educated, higher-income voters who are not victims of globalization but feel like their country has been taken from them. Needless to say, this dynamic was also behind Brexit.
So what will be the tangible consequences of Trump's victory on the international system? Contrary to what his critics say, Trump has a coherent and elaborated position: he is a nationalist when it comes to economic policy and when it comes to the global political system.
He has made it clear that he will try to renegotiate existing trade agreements such as NAFTA and possibly World Trade Organization rules, and that if he doesn’t get what he wants he will consider leaving. He has also expressed admiration for “strong” leaders like Russia’s Putin, who gets results through decisive action. He is much less friendly to traditional US allies like those in NATO or Japan and South Korea, whom he has accused of behaving like “free riders.” This suggests that support for them too will depend on renegotiating the cost-sharing arrangements now in place.
The dangers of these positions for the global economy and the global security system cannot be underestimated. The world today is awash with economic nationalism. Traditionally, a free trade and investment regime has relied on the hegemonic power of the United States. If the United States were to act unilaterally to change the terms of the contract, there are many powerful players around the world who would be only too happy to retaliate and trigger a downward economic spiral reminiscent of the 1930s.
The risk to the international security system is equally great. Russia and China have emerged in recent decades as authoritarian great powers, with ambitions for territorial expansion. Trump’s position on Russia is extremely problematic: he has never said anything critical of Putin and has suggested that the seizure of Crimea may have been justified. Given his ignorance of many aspects of foreign policy, his consistent clarity on Russia suggests that Putin has some hidden influence over him, possibly in the form of some debts to Russian sources that keep his businesses afloat.
The first victims of any Trump effort to “make things better” with Russia will be Ukraine and Georgia, two countries that have relied on American support to maintain their independence as democracies.
More broadly, a Trump presidency would mark the end of an era in which America symbolized democracy itself to people living in countries with authoritarian governments around the world. American influence has always relied more on “soft power” than on misguided displays of force, such as the invasion of Iraq. America’s choice last Tuesday marks a shift from the camp of liberal internationalism to that of populist nationalism.
It is no coincidence that Trump was warmly supported by Ukip’s Nigel Farage and that one of the first people to congratulate him was Marine Le Pen of the National Front. In recent years, a new populist nationalist international has emerged, through which various like-minded people share information and support. Putin’s Russia is one of the most ardent supporters of this cause, not because it cares about the national identity of other peoples, but simply because it wants to cause unrest.
The information warfare unleashed by Russia through the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's emails is already having a hugely corrosive impact on American institutions and we should expect it to continue.
There are still a number of big uncertainties about this new America. While Trump is a staunch nationalist at heart, he is also quite a dealmaker. What will he do when he discovers that other countries will not renegotiate existing trade agreements or alliances on his terms?
Will he settle for the best deal he can get, or will he simply walk away? There has been much talk about the danger of putting his finger on the nuclear trigger, but my sense is that at heart he is much more of an isolationist than someone who is prepared to use military force. When faced with reality on the Syrian civil war front, he may follow Mr. Obama's tactics and simply continue on the same path.
This is where character comes into play. Like many Americans, I find it hard to imagine a personality less suited to be the leader of the free world. That assessment stems in part from his political leanings, but also from his immense vanity. When he was among the Medal of Honor recipients last week, he was quick to point out that he too is brave, “economically brave.” He has admitted that he wants revenge on all his enemies and critics. When confronted by other leaders, will he react like an offended mob boss or a transactional businessman?
Today, the greatest challenge to liberal democracy comes not so much from authoritarian powers like China, but from within. In the US, Britain, Europe and many other countries, the democratic part of the political system is turning against the liberal one and threatening to use its legitimacy to dismantle the rules that have so far set limits, establishing an open and tolerant world.
The liberal elites who created the system need to listen to the angry voices outside the gates and think about social equality and identity as the primary issues they must address. One way or another, the coming years will be full of turmoil.
*The author is a professor at Stanford. His latest book is "Political Order and Political Decline."