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By VELIA GOVAERE -  Professor UNED

A few years ago, I turned my gaze to the past and in those reminiscences I interpreted the meaning of past events, which took place 10 years earlier. I referred, then, to Hegel, when he pondered the upheavals of his time, including the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the monarchical restoration. It was difficult for anyone to glimpse the future that these convulsions outlined. Despite this chaos, Hegel was optimistic.

Today it is our turn to peek over the horizon. The signs of the times are torn between technological lights, haphazard patriotism and a civilization impotent in the face of its own climatic cataclysm. "In a pit of shadows humanity is enclosed". Thus, Dario foresaw the imminence of a World War. And it happened as an unthinkable shipwreck of reason in the face of nationalist passion. Nevertheless, our globalized world eventually blossomed out of two hecatombs. Hegel was right. Harmony can emerge from chaos. Hard to see that when darkness dominates the light. So here we are, in a Darian well of darkness due to struggles between antagonistic forces on three major axes where scenarios of pessimistic uncertainty dominate.

In the world, democracy is receding and this retreat has reached the cradle of modern democracy. The decline of Biden's popularity and the possibilities of not only Republican ascendancy but of Trump himself is its most alarming sign. The midterm elections herald a Republican victory. It would be dry cut with the social revitalization of the United States. Biden was expected to bring efficiency and rationality, in contrast to his haphazard predecessor. The Democratic majority in both Houses augured substantial improvements in the quality of life. Both expectations are falling short. The pandemic renews its sting. Employment and wages are rising, but less than the cost of living, with inflation under Biden rising from 1.4% to 6.2%. This nullifies the positive perceptions of economic growth.

Added to this feeling of poor performance in office is the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. The immigration challenge is not to be ignored either. According to the "Harvard Harris Poll", 68% consider that illegal migration increased under Biden. Insecurity is more acutely perceived. This pessimistic feeling is aggravated by a fragmented Democratic Party facing the mid-term elections.

It is normal for an administration to lose seats, but this time the projections are catastrophic. Despite formidable legislative victories, such as the Covid relief package and the infrastructure bill, if the midterm elections were held today, the balance of power is 51-41 against Democrats who could lose as many as 40 seats. It would be the biggest Republican gain since 1981, according to ABC/Post. Bad sign with Republicans pushed strongly to the right, with Trump dominating, whose return is looming for 2024. If this trend is not reversed, we foresee widening gaps, the outbreak of street violence and the return of a confrontational international agenda. In this, the fight against climate change would lose the central element for success: a collaborative environment between the United States and China.

The frustration of Glasgow, with barely palliative gestures to the climate threat, shows the impotence of the world order in the face of the greatest damage that civilization is inflicting on itself. Its announced impacts, already described in every possible way, are suicidal results, when in the name of a pretended economic development the very bases of sanity are sabotaged with impunity.

Both scenarios weaken the environment of international cooperation that sustains globalization, a supreme human, political and technological conquest, which is beginning to be harassed by dominant currents of confrontation between the great powers on whose collaboration it depends. The Biden administration has not meant, hélas, a break with Trump's confrontational orientation against China. The first actions of the "return" of the United States to the arena of cooperation with its allies was an attempt to consolidate an alliance against China. This was done in Europe, putting NATO (nominally an Atlantic organization) with an azimuth towards the Pacific. There, the negotiation with Australia and England, oriented against China, was disloyal to France and showed a facet of Biden's policy that is not necessarily in line with the interests of the European Union, especially after Brexit.

The U.S.-China relationship is at an all-time low. Biden's three-hour virtual summit with Xi Jinping did not seek rapprochement but merely to establish provisions so that things do not spiral out of control. It did not even get that far. There seems to be no political will to address increasingly irresolvable differences, to the detriment of the enormous need for commercial, political, and environmental cooperation that the world needs. The future of globalization is at stake between China and the United States. We are in a bind. Although we are not experiencing an imminent trade crisis, since 2016, trade has been approached through the distorted lens of national security, turning trade into an instrument of pressure and extortion. This jeopardizes the historical prospects of international economic integration, of benefit to all countries.

These three points mark the time we are living in. The republican return will place greater obstacles to the reconstruction of the internal social fabric and will accentuate the confrontation of a climatically threatened world. They are the brown cats of today and only the future will show us the finished design of the world they outline. "In the night all cats are brown", said Hegel, pointing out that the meaning of events cannot be understood in the night of the instant in which they occur, but in the light of the subsequent memory, where their potentialities are revealed in full detail" (LN 5-11-2017).