Today’s elections are not just about the United States. The world’s people are almost as splintered as the American people. They are watching to see what happens to US foreign policies because of election results.
The Trump vs. Biden contest is fragmenting the US from within regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. A divided US is likely to usher greater disorder around the world because US foreign policies will be in flux and rival powers will explore every crack to extract advantage from uncertainties.
The broadly right-left divides plaguing America’s electorate are also splintering the world in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century. Liberal policies are required to protect people’s health and personal wellbeing while capitalist right wing policies are needed to give them the jobs and earnings essential for economic stability.
The growing divide around the world is not between democracy and authoritarianism. It is between the social peace that prosperity brings and the violent unrest that economic inertia breeds. For many of the world’s people, these are tied to what happens in the US and the decisions its voters make in elections.
Many US analysts believe that a Donald Trump victory would allow him unbridled opportunities to give rein to his innate dictatorial tendencies. That would greatly undermine democracy by eroding the checks and balances that have long prevented US Presidents from becoming potentates.
But foreign observers think that is unlikely because Democrats and liberals will not simply bend the knee after four years of domestic battles to unseat Trump. Trump’s first term was marked by unrelenting daily fights against political opponents and mainstream media, culminating in impeachment that he evaded by a hair’s breadth.
He continues to face a rising tide of litigation about his taxes, business practices and obstruction of justice, which is held back only by his parliamentary immunity. Trump may remain at the Resolute desk but the embers under his chair will make it an uncomfortably hot seat.
The constant harassment by his enemies could push him to seek triumphs abroad to distract the American people from his domestic clashes. The main US rivals in China and Russia will see this as a beleaguered presidency and an opportunity-rich environment.
The more Trump is harassed at home and the more reckless he becomes abroad, the greater the possibilities for them to undermine American power in Europe, Asia and elsewhere for the longer term. Biden may slide into similar mistakes if he wins because Americans will continue to be deeply restless .
The US economy did well under Trump until Covid-19 arrived. Neither he nor Biden may be able to stop China from surpassing the US in the digital and artificial intelligence domains if the pandemic continues to undermine America’s economic performance for another year or two.
Trump’s maximum pressure on Iran and recent peace agreements between Israel and some small Arab states are fragile constructs because they are like band aids on deep fissures that are no nearer to closing.
So far, they are superficial gains that a Trump or Biden administration battered by divisions and rage within America will find hard to maintain against manipulation by Russia, China, Egypt and Turkey.
A Biden victory is not reassuring in its foreign policy implications. He stands upon the thin ice of truce with left wing and liberal Democrats loyal not to him but to Bernie Sanders and Young Turks like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others.
Their positions on green investments, climate change, social justice, energy, labor and other issues have profound implications for foreign policy. They are already plotting to use Biden as their spearhead for a leftward political tilt at the White House.
That would further provoke the one-third of America’s voters who are diehard Trump supporters and could seek to avenge his unceremonious ouster after just one term.
The consequent turmoil in US domestic politics will be a gold standard of opportunities not just for major rival foreign powers like China and Russia, but for every middle level power anywhere that has resented coercive American foreign policies since the Soviet Union’s fall 30 years ago.
Biden seems to think that he can turn the clock back to the time before Trump’s first term by building bridges with Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron and others. But that is unlikely. The coronavirus has damaged Western economies too much and world politics has changed too much since then, including the economic and political stagnation of Europe and the geopolitical rise of China and India.
Britain’s Boris Johnson who likes Trump and other countries as Poland and Hungary will be too wary of a return to a pre-Trump European order, for which Biden and his Obama administration advisors may be nostalgic. Russia will also redouble its efforts to prevent that.
North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile systems have also advanced too much in recent years to be written off as bluster by an impoverished regime to gain financial favors from America.
The situation will worsen if Kamala Harris becomes President in tragic circumstances. She may not have enough maturity as a leader to face down Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, India’s Narendra Modi, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman or Iran’s Hassan Rouhani.