Originally published 24 November 2020.

Three weeks after Americans went to the polls, the morass of conspiracy theories and disinformation surrounding the election and its results continues to grow. Although the US is half a world away, Australians don’t have the luxury of watching this maelstrom as uninterested observers.

The conspiracy information ecosystem is highly international, and here in Australia conspiracy groups are often dominated by narratives and content emerging from the US. As the conspiratorial tidal wave swamps America, ripples are already reaching Australia—and are likely to have implications for our own elections in 2022.

Since around mid-March, Australians have witnessed incredible growth in the spread of conspiracy theories. While this content has spread largely online, conspiracy-fuelled anti-lockdown protests and arrests around the country, particularly in Melbourne, have demonstrated its ability to translate into unrest and conflict in the offline world.

Many of these conspiracy theories originate in the US. Even the most cursory glance through the major Australian conspiracy groups turns up a plethora of content related to US politics. Both the QAnon and sovereign citizen conspiracy theories that have played a prominent role in Australian anti-lockdown protests started in the US and have since spread around the world.

Screenshot of pro-Trump content shared in Australian conspiracy Facebook group targeting Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.

Support for President Donald Trump in defiance of his election loss has even manifested itself in the form of skywriting over Sydney touting false claims of voter fraud. There was also a small pro-Trump protest in Sydney, which organisers reportedly claimed was not linked to Falun Gong, despite the simultaneous Falun Gong rally being held metres away and the copies of the Epoch Times being handed out to the pro-Trump protesters. According to the New York Times and others, Falun Gong and the Epoch Times have helped to promote a range of pro-Trump conspiracy theories.

Variants of the conspiracy theory that the US voting system was hacked by the CIA, which have been directly and repeatedly promoted by Trump himself, have also expanded to include Australia. US conspiracy theorists have claimed that the CIA used the same technique to manipulate elections in other countries around the world, including Australia.

Screenshot of YouTube video promoting the conspiracy theory that countries outside the US have also had elections hacked by the CIA.

All of this goes to show that while Australians may not be the intended targets of the conspiracy theories swirling about the US election, some of it amplified by the current president and his team, Australians are nonetheless being swept up and carried along on the tide of disinformation.

Australian policymakers and political leaders alike should be paying attention. In much the same way that the confluence of conspiracies between the US and Australia means that triggering events such as bushfires spark the same conspiracy theories, we should assume that the conspiratorial storm lashing the US’s electoral process will have implications for our own elections in 2022.

These conspiracy theories will undoubtedly manifest in different ways. Differences between Australian and American voting systems, such as Australia’s use of paper ballots and pencils, will make some conspiracy theories such as hacked voting machines or SharpieGate difficult to maintain, even for those with only a loose attachment to reality. The thing about conspiracy theories is that they are almost infinitely malleable, however. They will adapt to the Australian context.

We may, for example, see claims that computers into which vote counts have been entered have been hacked, or that mail-in votes have been ‘stolen’. We will almost certainly see conspiracy theories about George Soros, a favourite bogeyman of many fringe right-wing figures, as some sort of sinister hidden hand behind the Australian Greens, activist group GetUp! and potentially the Australian Labor Party.

We should probably anticipate that the growing nexus between the fringe right-wing and fringe anti–Chinese Communist Party actors—perhaps best exemplified by the alliance between Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui—will lead to particular individuals or groups being falsely accused of being agents of Chinese influence or somehow under the sway of the CCP, or that the election has been ‘hacked by China’. Such fabricated allegations and smear tactics may muddy the waters, making it more difficult for security agencies to investigate any real efforts at interference.

It’s unlikely that the tenor of the conversation in Australia’s elections will reach the fever pitch of the current US debate, in which one poll found 52% of Republican voters incorrectly believe that Trump is the rightful winner of the election. A major contributor to this widespread disinformation is the complete abdication of responsibility by the Trump administration and many Republican leaders to state clearly and unequivocally that Joe Biden has won the election.

You’d hope Australian politicians from all parties would not be so profoundly negligent, or prove to have such a weak commitment to democratic values and processes. However, there are some worrying signs. Some high-profile Australian public figures have appeared to give credence to Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud.

At least publicly, the government has been slow to respond or to stop even its own MPs from spreading conspiracy theories. On 21 November, for example, George Christensen posted a video to his Facebook page on the groundless, technologically incoherent conspiracy theory targeting the Dominion Voting system.

Screenshot of Facebook post on George Christensen’s official Facebook page.

Conspiracy theories are corrosive. They erode trust and confidence, in this case in some of the most crucial systems and institutions which uphold democratic societies. At this very moment, we are witnessing the damage which failing to address this problem when it was smaller and (somewhat) more manageable is doing to the US. The polarisation, mistrust and political gridlock which will arise as a direct result from conspiracy theories and disinformation spread during this election will harm the US both domestically and on the international stage, and it will take many years to rebuild the faith of millions of Americans in the basic democratic processes of their nation.

This is not a road Australia wants to go down. There are steps we can take now to help us avoid it. This includes building trust in the electoral system through awareness campaigns to educate the public on the voting process, how their votes are counted and what steps are being taken to ensure systems are secure.

Perhaps most importantly, however, it means speaking out swiftly, strongly and publicly against purveyors of conspiracy theories and disinformation about elections—regardless of who they are, or which party they belong to.

The US presidential transition has generated much uncertainty not only for the American public, but also for many of America’s allies and adversaries around the world. Affected most acutely are the countries whose futures hinge on the outcome of what President Donald Trump might or might not do during the remainder of his presidency. Afghanistan is one of those states.

Trump has been eager to end America’s two-decade-long military involvement in Afghanistan before his term of office expires. His administration signed a peace agreement with America’s erstwhile enemy, the Taliban, in February. The deal essentially provided for withdrawal of US and allied forces from Afghanistan within 14 months, in return for a Taliban pledge that they would not allow Afghan soil to be used for hostile actions against the US and its allies. The deal also provisioned for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners from Afghan jails in exchange for 1,000 Afghan soldiers held captive by the Taliban.

Washington hailed the agreement as a pathway to an ‘inter-Afghan dialogue’ involving the Taliban and an Afghan government-led delegation for a lasting political settlement of the long-running conflict.

The agreement, however, is badly flawed. It was primarily designed to enable Trump to rapidly reduce American troops from 14,000 to 4,500. Yet, it didn’t commit the Taliban to a ceasefire or to curtail their operations against Afghan forces. Nor did it oblige the militia to engage in a genuine inter-Afghan dialogue. Similarly, it failed to take note of the fact that the Taliban had limited territorial control, mostly outside the main urban centres, and that the militia was still embedded with al-Qaeda, as has since been confirmed by US intelligence sources and the United Nations. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and the Khorasan branch of Islamic State (which has claimed numerous deadly operations), not to mention many criminal gangs, have remained active across Afghanistan.

Although after months of delay the so-called inter-Afghan dialogue started in Doha on 2 September, no progress has been made so far. The two sides have become bogged down on procedural matters. The Taliban negotiators, who are intimately linked to Pakistan or, more specifically, its all-powerful military intelligence, have insisted on their peace agreement with the US as the basis for any discussion.

Their counterpart, led by the Afghan government, which was not a party to the US–Taliban peace deal, has deflected this with counterproposals. The emboldened Taliban have nonetheless maintained the mirage of a dialogue, while dramatically escalating their operations on the ground, inflicting an unacceptable and intolerable toll on Afghan forces and civilians, and expanding their territorial control.

The Afghan security situation has gone from bad to worse since the signing of the US–Taliban deal, and the Afghan government has, as usual, remained feeble and kleptocratic. Trump—despite warnings against further troop reduction by many high-ranking Republicans and military heavyweights, as well as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg—has just ordered the exit of a further 2,000 US troops from Afghanistan. He has contended that the presence of a very small American force and the US intelligence network will enable the US to maintain its anti-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, irrespective of who governs the country and how it is governed.

Afghanistan has never been as vulnerable to more violence, bloodshed, insecurity, ethno-political and cultural divisions, widespread corruption and therefore a potential Taliban victory since the start of the US and NATO allied intervention in the country in 2001. All the US and international community investment in the country, made in blood and money, is now at serious risk.

President-elect Joe Biden has not been in favour of the continuation of America’s longest and most costly war either. But he is in agreement with many American political and military figures and seasoned analysts that the withdrawal should be a responsible one. In other words, he has favoured a pull-out in a manner that minimises the chances of a victory by the Taliban and their supporters, requiring the US and its allies to go back into Afghanistan to deal with new challenges, as they did in the case of Iraq in the event of the emergence of IS.

The suffering and traumatised Afghan people have longed for peace for four decades—since the April 1978 pro-Soviet coup in Kabul, followed by the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979—1989), the turbulent rule of the Western-backed mujahideen or Islamic resistance groups (1992–1996), the draconian theocracy of the Taliban and al-Qaeda (1996–2001), and finally the US-led intervention.

Yet, as the situation stands, the prospects for a return of peace, stability and security remain elusive for the Afghans and their region. Trump did not start the Afghan war, but the way in which he is disentangling the US from it may well prove to be very counterproductive.

Plenty of commentary and analysis has said what’s at stake in the contest between US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Speculation about US policy approaches to vexed issues that Australia has deep interests in has sought to outline how the US under a second-term Trump or a first-term Biden would handle things.

All worthy stuff, but there’s a certainty whatever the outcome. Australian political leaders will need to keep making hard decisions in our national interest and, by doing so, help shape global debates and directions.

That’s a daunting but also encouraging prospect. Daunting because such decisions come with pushback, pressure and criticism, though they also bring support and like-minded decisions by others. Barley, beef, wine, coal and now lobsters may tell you what this pushback looks like, even as Chinese authorities look shocked that anyone might draw a link between statements from its officials about coercing and punishing Australia and the various trade embargoes, bans and investigations that serendipitously seem to follow those threats.

It’s an encouraging prospect because we’ve seen over the past five years that Australian analysis and decisions have shaped big global debates. Think about the global decision-making on 5G technologies and providers, and how it has shifted since—and because of—the decision the Australian government made back in August 2018. Or the new frameworks and policies being debated and constructed in various countries to reduce the problem of foreign interference in policy- and decision-making, set off again through Australian leadership with the 2018 foreign interference legislation.

Add the contribution that Australia is making to debates on how to approach economic rebuilding post-Covid-19 to reduce the exposure of key supply chains to the caprices and coercion of the Chinese state. This has occurred mainly through governments and businesses seeing exactly how Beijing uses its power aggressively, for reasons wholly divorced from economics and despite the vaunted ‘mutual benefit’ such trade provides.

The obvious global lesson the Australian experience provides is the need to make China matter less as an economic partner if you don’t want to be subject to trade mines planted and detonated by the government in Beijing. If political leaders aren’t understanding this lesson, their populations are—as shown by the collapse in favourable views of the Chinese government across the developed world.

Interestingly, none of this Australian shaping of global debates or pushback from populations against Beijing has depended on US leadership in the past four years. That’s probably a good thing, because the need for independent action is likely to remain after the US election, not just if there’s a confused transfer of power and not just if Trump wins and continues with his ‘America first’ mindset. A Biden win would reverse the tendency for the US to treat allies as adversaries—or free riders (except when they are)—but a Biden presidency would also be consumed by a focus on rebuilding and healing a divided America.

Superpowers can obviously walk and chew gum, but when there’s so much domestic gum to chew, ideas and policy directions will probably need to be developed by others and marketed to Washington. That’s good news for Australia, because it’s what Australian political leaders have already been doing, with this year’s AUSMIN meeting being a fine example. One area of policy action Australia can help Washington with is the Indo-Pacific—particularly connecting trade and economic policies to strategic and military directions.

Beyond the fact of a distracted and domestically focused US, there’s the larger reason that pining for a return to US leadership is probably a mistake. The two predominant political, strategic, technological and economic challenges of our times are China and climate change—probably not in that order. And they’re connected.

On climate change, Beijing talks a good game, with promises to be carbon neutral by 2060, but in the meantime it is supporting rapid and wide construction of coal- and gas-fired power stations, prioritising dirtier domestic coal over cleaner, more efficient Australian coal. Maybe more importantly, it’s building an economy whose energy use is likely to outstrip creation of alternative energy sources and so continue a deep reliance on fossil fuels. That’s bad because of the size of China’s economy and its resulting massive contribution to the globe’s carbon emissions. So, the defining contribution China is likely to make to climate change is to accelerate it. As my old school’s motto says, ‘Actions not words.’

As to the political, strategic, technological and economic challenges posed by the Chinese state to other nations and their people, these can’t be reduced to a case of US–China competition, where the key thing is to work out whether you take sides or try to hedge and balance. China is a challenge to every other economy and political system that engages with it, because Xi Jinping’s ‘China dream’ vision is of a Sino-centred world order and economy—and we know from the experience Australia and 26 other countries have had in recent years of Beijing’s economic coercion that such a vision is far from the ‘win–win’ and ‘reform and opening up’ bromides we often hear. Xi is after much more of a master–servant relationship, with Beijing dispensing reward and punishment in the same way it does for its 1.4 billion citizens.

The US has a vital role in working with others—notably the major European powers and the EU itself, as well as Japan, India, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, and its Five Eyes partners of the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada—but it need not be the sole orchestra leader. Telling ourselves that the China challenge is a problem for the US, and that we all must simply wait to see how we play into it, is a conceptual error that’s also fundamentally disempowering. It’s dismissive of our decision-making capacity and the impact that has globally, and it also discounts the effect that strong public understanding of the China challenge provides to national political and corporate leadership.

Whatever the outcome of the US election, we still need to advance our interests. That means we must understand that we can ensure our future is a prosperous, sovereign and secure one through the decisions we make and the partnerships we develop as a result. The incoming US administration will be fundamental to that future, as will our partners across the Indo-Pacific and in Europe.

In this episode, The Strategist’s Brendan Nicholson and Anastasia Kapetas discuss the the chances of US President Donald Trump being re-elected and the potential impact of social media on the outcome of the US election.

Next, ASPI’s Huong Le Thu is joined Petra Sigmund, the director-general for East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific at the German Foreign Office, to discuss Germany’s Indo-Pacific strategy, how it was developed and how it will shape the country’s future engagement in the region.

And last but not least, Elise Thomas and Albert Zhang discuss their report Snapshot of a shadow war, which looks at the social media elements of the escalating conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the battle on social media for control of the international narrative.

Leadership—the ability to help people frame and achieve their goals—is absolutely crucial during a crisis. Winston Churchill demonstrated that while leading Britain in 1940, as did Nelson Mandela during South Africa’s transition from apartheid.

By these historical standards, the leaders of the world’s two largest economies have failed abysmally. US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, both initially reacted to the novel coronavirus outbreak not by informing and educating their publics, but by denying the problem, thereby costing lives. They then both redirected their energies towards assigning blame rather than finding solutions. Owing to their failures, the world may have missed the window for responding to the crisis with a ‘Sputnik moment’ or a ‘Covid Marshall Plan.’

Leadership theorists make a distinction between ‘transformational’ and ‘transactional’ leaders. The latter try to steer through situations with a business-as-usual approach, whereas the former try to reshape the situations in which they find themselves.

Of course, transformational leaders don’t always succeed. Former US president George W. Bush tried to remake the Middle East by invading Iraq, with disastrous consequences. By contrast, his father, George H.W. Bush, had a more transactional style as president; but he also had the skills to manage the fluid situation that the world found itself in after the collapse of communism in Europe. The Cold War ended, Germany was reunited and anchored firmly to the West, and not a shot was fired.

Whatever their style, leaders can exert strong influence on group identity—the force that turns ‘me’ and ‘you’ into ‘us’. Lazy leaders tend to reinforce the status quo, by tapping into existing divisions to mobilise support for themselves, as Trump has done. But effective transformational leaders can have a far-reaching impact on a society’s moral character. Mandela, for example, easily could have defined his base as black South Africans, and then sought revenge for decades of injustice. Instead, he worked tirelessly to broaden the identity of his followers.

Similarly, after World War II—during which Germany invaded France for the third time in 70 years— French diplomat Jean Monnet concluded that revenge would only reproduce the tragedy. To transform the situation, he devised a plan for joint European coal and steel production, an arrangement that would eventually evolve into the European Union.

These achievements were not inevitable. When we look beyond our families and closest associates, we find that most human identities are what the political scientist Benedict Anderson called ‘imagined communities’. No one shares directly in the experience of the millions of others who belong to the same nationality. Yet for the past century or two, the nation has been the imagined community that people have been willing to die for.

Global threats such as Covid-19 and climate change, however, do not discriminate by nationality. In a globalised world, most people belong to a number of overlapping imagined communities—local, regional, national, ethnic, religious, professional—and leaders don’t have to appeal to the narrowest identities in order to mobilise support or solidarity.

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic represented an opportunity for transformational leadership. A transformational leader would have explained early on that, because the crisis is global in nature, it cannot be solved by any one country acting alone. Trump and Xi both squandered that opportunity. Both failed to realise that the exercise of power could have become a positive-sum game. Rather than thinking solely in terms of power over others, they could have thought in terms of power with others.

On many transnational issues, empowering others can help a country like the United States accomplish its own goals. If China can strengthen its public health system or reduce its carbon footprint, Americans and everyone else will benefit. In a globalised world, networks are a key source of power. And in an increasingly complex world, the most connected states—the ones most capable of attracting partners for cooperative efforts—are the most powerful.

Insofar as the key to America’s future security and prosperity lies in learning the importance of ‘power with’ as well as ‘power over’, the Trump administration’s performance during the pandemic has been discouraging. The problem is not the slogan ‘America First’ (every country puts its interests first). It is how Trump defines American interests. Focusing solely on the short-term gains to be realised through zero-sum transactions, he has paid scant attention to the longer term interests served by institutions, alliances and reciprocity.

As it stands, the US has abandoned its tradition of pursuing long-term enlightened self-interest. But the Trump administration could still heed the lessons that underpinned the successes of the post-1945 American presidents that I describe in my recent book, Do morals matter? Presidents and foreign policy from FDR to Trump. Indeed, the US could still launch a massive Covid-19 aid program modelled on the Marshall Plan.

As former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger recently argued, today’s leaders should choose a path of cooperation that will lead towards improved international resilience. Instead of resorting to competitive propaganda, Trump could call for an emergency G20 summit or a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to create bilateral and multilateral frameworks for enhanced cooperation.

Trump also could point out that new waves of Covid-19 will hit poorer countries particularly hard, and that new outbreaks in developing countries will hurt everyone when they spread. It’s worth remembering that the second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic killed more people than the first. A transformational leader would teach the American public that it is in their own interest to mobilise generous contributions to a new Covid-19 fund that is open to all developing countries.

If an American Churchill or Mandela were to educate the public in this way, the pandemic could open a path to better global politics. Sadly, though, we may have already missed the moment for transformational leadership and the virus may simply accelerate the world’s pre-existing conditions of populist nationalism and authoritarian abuses of technology. Leadership failures are always a pity, but all the more so in the face of a crisis.