Tag Archive for: US election 2020

America will forget Trump

Donald Trump’s mulish refusal to accept defeat in the US presidential election is alarming observers of American politics. Their concerns are heightened by public demonstrations supporting Trump’s demagogic populism, his reactionary political attitudes, and his barefaced lies about electoral fraud and cheating.

It is clear that Trump and his henchmen are trying to frustrate President-elect Joe Biden’s accession to office despite his clear victory in the 3 November election. One troubled former Republican congressman recently told a TV interviewer that Trump had turned the Republican Party into a cult, a personal fiefdom, and that he would control it far into the future. Others view Trump as a dangerously narcissistic and charismatic force that is threatening American electoral democracy by moving to defy and deny the assumptions, understandings and conventions on which the nation’s political processes ultimately rest.

There are certainly grounds for some unease given Trump’s personality, history and his efforts, so far unsuccessful, to overturn the election result in the courts. His relentless Twitter storms, full of sound and fury, are also intended to increase public uncertainty, and the Covid-19 pandemic, which Trump has largely ignored, has doubtless helped to sharpen concerns as the numbers of infections and deaths across the United States have risen exponentially.

But it may be unduly pessimistic and premature to start mourning the passing of American democracy just yet. The US is a country with a long history of confronting and ultimately casting aside charismatic political and religious extremists and demagogues who momentarily capture the attention and seduce American citizens. There is no reason why Trump should avoid a similar fate despite his ability to exploit modern media for his own ends.

Perhaps the crucial feature of charismatic political authority is its essentially unstable nature. It is grounded entirely in the personality, the vision, the belief in the powers of the leader. It has neither traditional nor legal–rational support and, in Max Weber’s formulation, it ‘lasts only so long as the belief in its charismatic inspiration remains’.

Trump’s charismatic and demagogic appeal will always attract a diminishing cohort of worshippers, but his empty slogans have passed the peak of their ability to seduce. The election result showed that slogans like ‘Make America great again’ and ‘Drain the swamp’ are diminishing assets. Their magic appeal to popular resentment is losing its force.

Few American demagogues have been dispatched more effectively than the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, who held the US in thrall during the great anti-communist witch hunt in 1954. During congressional hearings on alleged communist influence in the US Army, McCarthy rashly named a young lawyer as a member of a communist organisation. Counsel for the army Joseph N. Welch immediately and famously replied: ‘Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?’ Those few words, viewed by millions on black-and-white television, shattered public confidence in McCarthy’s demagogic anti-communist mission and marked the collapse of his political prominence.

The case should serve as a warning to Trump: McCarthy’s lawyer was an odious young man named Roy Cohn. Cohn was Trump’s mentor in his early years in New York.

There are other notable cases of demagogues destroyed by their own hubris: the segregationist George Wallace, the Louisiana dictator Huey Long (killed by gunshot in the 1930s) and Ross Perot, the billionaire third-party candidate who ran for president in 1992 and 1996 and was quickly forgotten. This short list hardly scrapes the surface.

Even in religiously obsessed America, frauds, fakers and fools can’t withstand the scorn of people awakened to the emptiness of their message of salvation, provided in exchange for a few dollars to save your immortal soul. Who today remembers Billy Sunday, the former baseball player who became one of the most celebrated and influential evangelists during the first decades of the 20th century by preaching the literal reality of the devil and hell? Nobody. He’s merely a passing joke in the old Frank Sinatra song ‘Chicago’. And who remembers Aimee Semple McPherson, the glamorous Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity in the 1920 and 1930s, and founder of something called the Foursquare Gospel Church? She reportedly drowned at Venice Beach and exists now only as dated 1930s fashion shots.

Of course Trump might yet make trouble. But the fact is that Biden, not Trump, will command the attention of the masses once the transfer of power is in place. Biden, not Trump, will be the story and the Trumpians will fade into richly deserved obscurity, comforted only by the money they have amassed and probably abused.

Perhaps my view is unduly optimistic given that there seem to be no formidable old bulls left in the Republican Party to tap Trump on the shoulder and tell him it’s time to fold his tent. But I am comforted by the wise of words of the great Alexis de Tocqueville writing in 1838. ‘The Americans’, he said, ‘frequently allow themselves to be borne away, far beyond the bounds of reason, by a sudden passion or a hasty opinion and sometimes gravely commit strange absurdities.’ He concludes: ‘The habit of inattention must be considered as the greatest defect of the democratic character.’

We can only hope Americans heed de Tocqueville’s observation. We cannot afford another aberration like the vulgar, lying, foul-mouthed demagogue who has occupied the White House for the past four years.

America survives the Trump years

In the end, the result didn’t come as quickly or definitively as many wanted, and as the nation deserved. President Donald Trump and his remaining sycophants are still clinging to fading fantasies about fake ballots and systemic fraud. And the transition of power, if it happens, may be messy, brutish and short.

But make no mistake—America’s interminable, contentious election concluded with the best possible outcome; president-elect Joe Biden will take office in January, and Trump, the worst, most unqualified and inept president in America’s 244-year history, will be banished to the history books.

I’m relieved at the outcome. But not surprised.

First, some things about the 2020 election were surprising, even shocking. Like the fact that more than 72 million Americans saw Trump’s immorality, his racism, his lies and his unfitness for office play out over years and still decided they wanted to see him in office for another four years. And like the fact that Trump’s Republican Party enablers were not trounced at the polls for their willingness to slavishly stroke Trump’s ego and abide his worst instincts.

And I am pleasantly surprised that despite the warnings that turnout might be tamped down by the deadly coronavirus pandemic, a chaotic US mail system, and concerted efforts at voter suppression by Republican officials, a record number of Americans were undeterred, and the election proceeded relatively smoothly.

But the outcome was not surprising because I never lost faith in America and its remarkable capacity for self-correction. At some of its darkest, most dire periods—the points at which critics at home and competitors abroad start whining about the declining superpower and writing the obituary for the American dream—the country, and its citizens, have managed to confound the cynics time and again.

The 1960s were as turbulent and divisive for the US as the present era, with protests, civil rights marches, urban riots and political assassinations. But out of the turmoil, the country moved closer to its goal of a more perfect union, with laws guaranteeing equal rights for blacks, women and eventually the LGBTQI community.

After the dark days of the RIchard Nixon era, with ‘enemies lists’, illegal wiretaps and a criminal conspiracy run out of the White House, Americans rebounded and elected Jimmy Carter, an honest, decent man who is one of America’s most underappreciated presidents—and the model of an ex-president out of office.

In the early 1990s, there was talk about the supposed American decline and retreat from the world, as productivity, wage and global competitiveness were all in freefall. Then came the internet, the rise of powerful new global technology companies, and an American economic resurgence.

America’s global image took a battering during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, with the internationally unpopular invasion of Iraq, the revelations of torture at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib jail and the massive electronic eavesdropping campaign revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. There was the immorality of America’s ‘secret prisons’ around the world, and Guantanamo where terrorism suspects were denied basic rights, eroding the image of the US as a country committed to the rule of law.

America’s obituary was written during those dark years after the 2008 financial crisis rippled around the globe, revealing a flawed economy built on a mountain of outstanding debt. Many were bemoaning the loss of American leadership and heralding the end of the American century and the rise of China as the newest superpower at the centre of an altered global order.

But Americans responded by electing Barack Obama, the first black president, with an uplifting message of hope and change, who became a global icon. Obama’s election, and his organisational campaign strategy based on thousands of volunteers, inspired an entirely new generation of political emulators, notably France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

Under Obama, America’s global image was restored, and the election of a black man to the nation’s highest office once again underscored America’s promise as the land where anything is possible.

After four years of Trump’s erratic, disruptive, often dangerous presidency, the cynics and critics around the world (and some at home) have been crowing about America’s decline.

Trump’s ‘America first’ policy, his disdain for alliances and his hectoring of long-time US partners have many convinced that the country can no longer be counted on as the Western world’s global leader. Trump’s affinity for dictators and his own authoritarian instincts have raised concerns that America’s democratic institutions are, at best, fragile. America’s hapless response to the coronavirus pandemic has made the US the object of bewilderment, even pity.

And America’s enemies have used the chaos, the pandemic response and apparent political dysfunction to decry democracy and tout their own authoritarian systems as the superior model.

But Biden’s election—still to be officially certified, and denied by a few bitter-enders—once again shows that America is in for a course correction. When Biden is inaugurated on 20 January, it will show the world that the Trump years were an aberration, not an indication of decline.

Biden put it best in his upbeat victory speech the Saturday after the election. ‘It’s always a bad bet to bet against America’, he said.

It was a line that sounded familiar to me. I recalled I first heard it when Biden travelled in China in August 2011, as Obama’s vice-president, on a visit to get to know the incoming Chinese leader, vice-president Xi Jinping.

That was during another of those times when cynics were speaking of America’s decline. US politics looked dysfunctional with the Republican-led Congress and Obama unable to agree on a budget deal. World financial markets were in turmoil. Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, had just downgraded America’s credit rating. America’s debt was causing concern over the safety of US Treasury securities, with China owning US$1.17 trillion worth of American debt.

But Biden’s message was calm, soothing. ‘I have absolute, unequivocal confidence in the strength and vitality and the growth of the American economy’, Biden said during a roundtable meeting with Xi. ‘No one’s ever made money betting against America.’

It was a sentiment he echoed later in the southwestern city of Chengdu, when answering questions from a university audience at Sichuan University. Despite the apparent political dysfunction and market turmoil, Biden told the audience, the United States remained ‘the single best bet in the world in terms of where to invest’.

Biden’s words and message haven’t changed in all those years. And it’s one I wholeheartedly agree with—it’s a safe bet to bet on America.

It may sound hokey or old fashioned, one of those ‘Bidenisms’ like ‘malarkey’ and ‘here’s the deal’. But coming after four years of Trumpian chaos, it sure sounds reassuring. And lordy, lordy, we need that right now.

The rise of the Indian-American voter

Beyond the major headlines surrounding the US presidential election, a little-noticed development is attracting attention both in India and among American campaign strategists. The rising influence of the Indian-American community in the United States—though barely 1% of the electorate—has made it impossible for the world’s oldest democracy to ignore the world’s largest.

Indian-Americans are the second-largest immigrant group in the US, and among the fastest-growing—up by nearly 150% over the last decade. They also are more affluent and highly educated than any other ethnic group, with a median income nearly double the national average (estimated at US$100,000 in 2015). And they have been remarkably active politically, as voters, campaigners, donors and candidates. In the past two decades, two state governors, one US senator, five members of the House of Representatives and now a vice presidential candidate have been Americans of Indian descent.

No wonder both major parties are actively courting Indian-American voters, a significant number of whom reside in potential swing states like Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Both presidential candidates have released television commercials in Indian languages on the leading networks broadcasting Indian programming in the US, and Joe Biden used the Hindu festival of Ganesh Chaturthi to woo Indian-American voters.

On the Democratic side, Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, has openly embraced her roots, using a Tamil term to describe her Indian aunts in her nomination acceptance speech this August. She has spoken at length about her Indian ancestry, as well as visits to her grandfather and the conversations they had during seaside walks in Chennai. Moreover, Indian-American celebrities have campaigned enthusiastically for the Biden–Harris ticket, with one fundraiser in September reportedly pulling in a record-breaking US$3.3 million from the Indian-American community.

For his part, US President Donald Trump responded to the Harris nomination with a campaign ad featuring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom he has lavishly praised throughout his first term. As right-wing populists with a deep suspicion of minorities and a barely concealed bias against Muslims, Trump and Modi have developed something of a ‘bromance’. They have even held joint campaign-style rallies, sharing the stage at a ‘Howdy, Modi!’ event in Texas and a ‘Namaste Trump’ event in Modi’s home state of Gujarat.

The Republicans have created a campaign organisation called Indian Voices for Trump, as well as various sub-groups to target Hindu, Sikh and Muslim Indian-American voters separately. And Trump’s handlers recently arranged for their candidate to preside over a rare White House naturalisation ceremony featuring a sari-draped Indian-born software engineer.

All of this attention has led some observers to suggest that Indian-Americans, who traditionally lean Democratic, may shift their support to Trump this election. There has certainly been a modest realignment from eight years ago, when 84% of them voted to re-elect President Barack Obama. Still, a recent YouGov poll finds that 72% of Indian-American voters support Biden, and, as one recent study concluded, ‘Indian Americans continue to be strongly attached to the Democratic Party, with little indication of a shift toward the Republican Party’. When Trump described India’s air as ‘filthy’ at the second presidential debate, Biden was quick to reply that he wouldn’t insult a friend that way.

However, there are larger fault lines emerging within the Indian-American community. India’s diaspora, though collectively influential, is deeply divided by ideology, religion, age, immigration history and even caste.

Modi, for example, is a deeply polarising figure among Indian-Americans. Those who support him do so passionately, applauding his tough stance on issues such as Kashmir and Pakistan and his advocacy of an assertive majoritarian Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) ideology. They cheered for his government’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act and his participation in a ceremony breaking ground for the construction of a Ram temple on the site of a demolished mosque.

But Indian-Americans of a more liberal bent oppose Modi just as intensely. While their counterparts have cheered Modi’s every appearance in America, they have protested outside his rallies, decrying his human-rights record. Modi’s popularity among some Indian-American voters probably accounts for the slight shift towards Trump, but they are still far outnumbered by those expressing support for the Democratic ticket.

Both tickets have their drawbacks, though. Trump’s harsh immigration rhetoric and policies—including severe restrictions on H-1B visas, which have disproportionately hurt Indian tech professionals—certainly haven’t helped his standing in the Indian-American community. But it remains to be seen how much the Democrats will be helped or harmed by their own politicians’ unsparing criticism of Modi. Representatives Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Ro Khanna of California, echoed by Harris, have condemned the Modi government’s actions in Kashmir.

If Biden wins, Harris’s presence in the administration will ensure that India isn’t overlooked, let alone forgotten. But that attention will cut both ways. Harris is bound to be a strong voice for democracy and human rights generally, which could put her at odds with the Modi government. When politicians have special ties to another country, they are more likely to adopt passionate and principled positions towards it. But this is not always welcome within that country, as would surely be the case with Modi and his allies.

Modi’s Indian-American supporters may feel that Trump’s re-election would be ‘good for India’. But while Trump has uncritically embraced Modi and his Hindutva agenda—and there has been growing convergence on security co-operation, especially in view of Chinese assertiveness in the region—his administration has not always been helpful to India. From tariffs and immigration restrictions to environmental politics, US policies over the past four years have needled New Delhi.

Those Indian-Americans who dislike Trump can argue that a Democratic administration could hardly be worse. And Trump’s close identification with Modi will affect the votes of Modi’s Indian-American opponents.

When asked recently by a White House reporter whether he thinks Indian-Americans will be voting for him, Trump confidently replied: ‘I do.’ We’ll soon learn if he was right.

A second Trump term would be a gift to China

For China, at least, US President Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. His calamitous response to the Covid-19 pandemic has made China, whose government mishandled the initial outbreak in January, look like an exemplar of effective governance. Moreover, Trump’s ‘America first’ foreign policy has alienated traditional US allies, making it difficult to build a broad coalition to counter Beijing.

To be sure, Trump has delivered painful blows to Chinese President Xi Jinping. His trade and technology wars are demolishing US–China commercial relations, and his administration’s support for Taiwan has infuriated Chinese leaders. But as American voters prepare to head to the polls next week, Trump seemingly has one more gift to give to Xi: an election meltdown.

In the run-up to this referendum on his presidency, Trump has repeatedly refused to commit unequivocally to accepting its outcome. He has used his presidential bully pulpit to try to delegitimise voting by mail, and even hinted that the US Supreme Court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority following the Senate’s confirmation of Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett, would intervene and presumably deliver him a second term.

Opinion polls point to a clear victory for Trump’s Democratic challenger, former vice president Joe Biden. But the presidential race is likely to tighten, and—even if Trump trails Biden in the overall popular vote—the outcome in the battleground states that will determine the winner in the electoral college could be too close to call on election night. That would create an opening for Trump—and the Republican Party—to use their control of many levers of power to cling to the White House.

Although the nightmarish scenarios of a drawn-out post-election battle vary, any of them would irreparably damage America’s democracy—to the delight of the Chinese Communist Party.

At the ideological level, a US election meltdown featuring bitter political clashes and endless litigation would be a propaganda bonanza for the CCP. Chinese leaders would point to America’s political turmoil as a symptom of its terminal decline. Trump’s incompetent management of the pandemic has already made America an object of pity around the world. If he follows through on his threats to defy the will of US voters, the appeal of American democracy to people living under dictatorships, including in China, would be eviscerated. If heavily armed far-right militia groups engage in large-scale voter intimidation and deadly clashes occur around the US on 3 November, Chinese state-controlled media will gleefully beam such apocalyptic scenes into every Chinese household.

China could benefit even more if Trump emerges as the winner from a contested election—a likely prospect given the archaic and complex rules governing US presidential elections and the Supreme Court’s potentially decisive role.

Although a second-term Trump administration would further tighten the military and technological screws around China, the continuation of his presidency would nonetheless be a boon to Xi’s regime. For starters, a majority of Americans will regard Trump as an illegitimate president if he loses the popular vote—as now seems all but certain. Worse still, the country could be plunged into political civil war if he wins a second term through massive voter suppression, dubious political manoeuvres by Republican-controlled legislatures in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, partisan rulings by Trump-appointed judges and justices, and outright abuse of executive authority. In the latest example of the latter, Trump has been calling on the Justice Department to investigate both Biden and his son, Hunter, after a recent New York Post report prompted unsubstantiated allegations concerning Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

Although both Democrats and Republicans regard China as America’s most serious threat, one has to wonder how the US could effectively wage a new cold war against China while engulfed in a political civil war and led by a chief executive whom more than half the electorate regards as illegitimate. At the very least, further intensification of partisan polarisation would make it impossible for America to rebuild its strength at home through catch-up investments in healthcare, education, scientific research, clean energy and infrastructure—all of which are urgently needed to sustain the country’s competitive advantage over China.

Internationally, a second-term Trump administration ushered in by non-democratic means would widen the gulf between the US and its traditional liberal democratic allies. The continuation of Trump’s ‘America first’ foreign policy would make it harder for the US to forge a broad anti-China coalition. With the erosion of American democracy likely to accelerate in a second Trump term, US diplomats would find it challenging to persuade other Western leaders that they should join America’s autocratic strongman in an ideological crusade against China’s autocratic strongman.

Conventional wisdom holds that China’s leaders would prefer a Biden victory. Although China might then face a more unified West, a Biden administration would be more predictable and open to cooperation on issues like climate change and global public health. But the prospect of an America paralysed by a crisis of political illegitimacy at home and estranged from its allies abroad may be even more attractive to the CCP.

Whether Trump or Biden wins the election, America’s Indo-Pacific strategy is about to change

Washington’s approach to the Indo-Pacific will change over the next four years, regardless of the outcome of the November election. The only questions are how and how much.

The first term of President Donald Trump, while stylistically unsettling, produced many conventional national security and foreign policy outcomes in the Indo-Pacific. The US military is still forward-deployed. The Trump administration has maintained US alliances throughout the region and diplomatic commitments to Southeast Asia. It has undertaken new diplomatic initiatives as well, in places like the South China Sea and the Mekong.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s consistent focus on its Indo-Pacific strategy has helped catalyse similar conceptual frameworks as far afield as Berlin.

As for his opponent, former vice president Joe Biden is the definition of the bipartisan Washington establishment. He is proposing no big changes in America’s traditional Asia policy, beyond repairing the damage he estimates has been done to it by Trump. A Biden administration’s national security strategy would more resemble the Trump administration’s 2017 document than anything produced during Barack Obama’s administration.

All things being equal, bipartisan consensus on geostrategic competition with China will carry the day whoever wins the American presidency.

The problem is, all things are not equal. The US faces two deep crises at home: unprecedented levels of debt associated with managing the Covid-19 pandemic and escalating political divisions. The way it sorts though these challenges rests on the distribution of power in Washington for the next two to four years. And on that will turn the future of America’s Asia policy.

There are a number of likely configurations next year’s distribution of political power could take.

A Trump presidency, Republican Senate and Democratic House. This scenario will mean more of the same. Trump will continue a forceful line on China, and this competitive dynamic will guide American foreign policy generally throughout the region. There will continue to be bipartisanship in Congress around the need to confront China. The difficulty will come in reconciling inevitable overall budget cuts with a hawkish China policy. The choices will be to maintain defence spending at the considerable cost of domestic programs; to attempt the China competition on the cheap—most significantly, cutting into military readiness and shipbuilding plans; or to prioritise the Indo-Pacific theatre over other global interests. There will be a similar set of choices with State Department and development assistance funding.

A Biden presidency, Republican Senate and Democratic House. There are competing factions within the Biden camp, one reminiscent of Obama’s conciliatory China policy and another more focused on competition with China. A Biden presidency will provoke persistent charges of appeasement from Republicans in Congress. No approach he takes to China will be strong enough in their estimation. This will invigorate hardliners in the Biden administration and seed the ground for ever-firmer policies down the road. Trading off domestic spending to maintain defence spending will be off the table. The government will, therefore, be left with even starker versions of the other two options, cutting into military and diplomatic capacity or downsizing commitments elsewhere. It will seek to make up the difference with a renewed focus on leveraging alliances and partnerships, as well as plurilateral and multilateral organisations.

A Biden presidency, Democratic Senate and Democratic House. In this scenario, Republican minorities in Congress will be strident in their criticism of Biden’s China policy, but deprived of control of the Senate, they will be less of a factor in policy development. This outcome favours the conciliatory side of Biden’s China team. There is no returning to the comprehensive Obama-era emphasis on US–China cooperation, but prospects of cooperation in specific areas like climate change and pandemic management will take the edge off US–China competition. In some areas, like the Trump administration’s very active schedule of freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea or its increased support for Taiwan, cooperation with China will on occasion take precedence.

Then there is trade.

The good news is that there’s bipartisan consensus. Unfortunately, US trade policy in the Indo-Pacific in coming years will have far more to do with trade politics than grand strategy. And unlike in previous eras, particularly during the presidency of George W. Bush, where the balance of political forces favoured free trade, the balance now has turned heavily in the direction of protection and industrial policy. This will constrain the economic component of any US Asia policy.

This is particularly true for high-tech issues, where there’s a powerful confluence of legitimate security issues and special interests. But while there may be adjustments in the target set—expect less pressure on Canada and Japan in a Biden administration, for instance—neither administration will move off of America’s new found enthusiasm for punitive tariffs as an instrument of trade policy. Tariffs on China in particular will be exceedingly difficult to remove.

Meanwhile, trade remedies that the Trump administration has made ample use of—anti-dumping and safeguard provisions—will continue to receive a great deal of attention. Remedies that appear to most contradict US commitments to the World Trade Organization, like restrictive tariffs, will receive less attention in a Biden administration. New comprehensive trade liberalisation initiatives—including joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—will be nearly impossible in either administration.

Like in much of the world, 2020 has been a very difficult year for the United States. Washington remains, by and large, wedded to the commitments to Asia that have characterised its role for many decades. These commitments, however, are set to come under great stress. And while they won’t break, they will bend. How far and what shape they take will depend on who wins in November.

Trump’s dirty tricks

With November approaching, I’m becoming ever more nervous about the US presidential election. While my American friends focus on Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump in opinion polls, believing deeply in US democracy’s capacity for self-renewal, my own perspective as a British citizen and think-tank director has me worried.

As a Briton, I can remember watching a 20-point polling lead for ‘Remain’ become a victory for ‘Leave’ in the Brexit referendum four years ago. And as a think-tank director, I work closely with scholars who study how authoritarian leaders manipulate democratic systems to stay in power, as has happened in Turkey, Russia, Hungary and Poland. In fact, it often seems as though Trump has studied the tactics pioneered by other aspiring strongmen more closely than anyone. Based on recent conversations with experts on each of these countries, I have compiled the following catalogue of dirty tricks that Trump seems to borrowing.

The first is the weaponisation of history. Populist leaders promote their political platforms through polarisation and social division. They don’t mind alienating and insulting some voters if doing so will energise their own base. By posturing as the champions of national greatness, they want to determine who counts as authentic citizens and who doesn’t. This practice inevitably brings history to the fore.

Whether it is Russian President Vladimir Putin invoking the Soviet victory in World War II, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan harking back to the Ottoman empire, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban fixating on the Treaty of Trianon, or British Prime Minister Boris Johnson looking back to Pax Britannica, each leader has advanced a highly partisan historical narrative.

Another, related approach is what might be called post-truth politics. These leaders prefer direct communication with voters through professional propaganda videos and social media, because this allows them to dismiss inconvenient facts offered by experts. In this media ecosystem, fact-checking has little purchase, because the people who need to hear it are not listening, or refuse to believe anything the ‘liberal’ media says. In many democracies, fake news is now most common at the local level, where political operatives have filled the vacuum left by the decline of traditional city and regional outlets.

A third tactic is to run against one’s own government. The term ‘deep state’ is said to have originated in Turkey in the 1990s, but now features prominently in the lexicon for Trump, Orban, Erdogan, Johnson, and Poland’s de facto ruler, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. By blaming nameless, faceless characters behind the curtain and shadowy cabals, all these leaders have a ready excuse for all of their own failures.

A fourth element in the playbook is voter suppression. Like Erdogan’s constant attempts to disempower Kurdish voters, Trump and the Republican Party are desperate to disenfranchise African Americans. For an incumbent would-be strongman, the need to tip the electoral scales opens the door to all kinds of attacks on democratic processes.

Hence, before Poland’s general election in May, the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) tried to limit all voting to mail-in ballots, effectively transferring control of the election from the independent National Electoral Commission to the PiS-controlled postal service. Though this plan ultimately ran into resistance, it showed that there are countless ways for authoritarians to meddle in or subvert the process. Not surprisingly, mail-in voting and the politicisation of the US Postal Service have become major issues in the US election, too.

Another related device is ‘political technology’, a term for the dirty tricks commonly associated with post-Soviet politics. Such methods include Russia’s covert backing of third-party candidates like Jill Stein in the 2016 US presidential election; Kompromat, or compromising material (epitomised by the search for dirt on Biden in Ukraine); and simply declaring victory before the votes are counted. In the case of the United States, if Trump declares victory before all postal mail-in ballots have arrived, Republican-controlled legislatures in key states could end the counting early to lock in that outcome.

An incumbent authoritarian can also engage in various forms of ‘lawfare’, using law enforcement or compliant courts to facilitate gerrymandering, voter suppression, cover-ups and other violations of the democratic process. Here, one of the biggest advantages is the ability to control the timing of events or the release of politically damaging information.

Many people still believe that FBI director James Comey’s announcement of a new probe into Hillary Clinton just days before the 2016 election tipped the outcome in Trump’s favor. Now, the Department of Justice is run by Attorney General William Barr, a man who has shown no compunction about politicising independent law-enforcement agencies on Trump’s behalf.

Another common authoritarian tactic is to play the ‘law and order’ card. By tarring the Black Lives Matter protests as an outpouring of violent ‘urban’ hooliganism, Trump is reprising the racial politics used by former Republican presidents since Richard Nixon, but by Erdogan more recently, during the Gezi Park protests in 2013.

The problem for the Democrats in the US, and democrats everywhere, is that all these techniques tend to become more effective the more they are called out. Fact-checking fake news can inadvertently spread misinformation more widely. Warnings about voter suppression can become self-fulfilling prophecies if enough people conclude that the process is rigged and not worth participating in. Challenging violations through the courts creates the impression of an end run around democracy.

To avoid these effects, the project of corrupting democracy needs to be clearly identified, named and analysed through a new lens. There is a world of difference between the political subterfuge outlined above and the outright falsification of election results, as happened last month in Belarus. Nicu Popescu, a former Moldovan foreign minister who is now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, contends that autocracy is not the right term to describe the phenomenon. Rather, it is the ‘degradation, corrosion and deconsolidation of democracy’.

In any case, if Trump were Moldova’s president, one assumes that the European Union would be calling him out for his dirty tricks. Any such criticism from abroad would almost certainly be counterproductive. But it may help to put the current American experience in a wider context, so that democratic forces can see Trump more clearly. Ultimately, the only way to defeat Trump is through politics. The task for the Democrats is to remind Americans what democracy is for—and, one hopes, to counter Trump’s tactics effectively.

The global risk of the US election

Unlike in Jules Verne’s Around the world in 80 days, the modern world’s journey over the next 80 days will be more of a slog than an adventure. But it will culminate in an event of global and historic consequence.

In less than three months, the United States will hold its 59th quadrennial presidential election. Because America is more powerful economically and militarily than its two leading competitors (Russia and China) combined, its elections are always globally significant. But never before has one posed such an acute threat to the rest of the world.

There’s no question that the re-election of President Donald Trump would endanger both the US and the world. And there’s ample reason to fear that a close election could drive the US into a deep, prolonged constitutional crisis, and perhaps into civil violence.

If Trump secures only an electoral college victory while losing the popular vote—as he did in 2016—neither his challenger, Joe Biden, nor the majority of the country that opposes him is likely to accept the outcome as readily as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and as Al Gore did in 2000. And if the Supreme Court steps in again to choose the winner, as it did when it picked George W. Bush over Gore, massive nationwide protests seem almost certain. In response, Trump would almost certainly unleash US federal law enforcement troops, as he has already done in Portland and other cities.

Alternatively, because Biden consistently leads him in opinion polls, Trump could try to use the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext for postponing or otherwise corrupting the election. He has already spent the summer trying to denigrate the validity of mail-in ballots in an effort to delegitimise the 3 November vote in advance. Even though these actions have met with strong resistance, Trump is laying the groundwork to mobilise his supporters and cling to the White House regardless of the election’s outcome.

Riots and looting of the kind recently witnessed in Portland and Chicago inevitably will help Trump politically as he pursues this strategy. He has already been willing to deploy Department of Homeland Security forces in downtown Portland to intimidate comparatively small groups of (mostly peaceful) protesters. The predictable (and probably intended) result was an expansion of the protests and an escalation of violence. Trump’s message to middle-class white suburbanites is clear: here is a president who keeps law and order.

The use of federal resources to intimidate the population also feeds into Trump’s narrative that the elections cannot be held fairly and calmly without being manipulated through voter fraud by his opponents. Images of heavily armed right-wing militias showing up at peaceful protests are a harbinger of what awaits the country.

This version of the US, whose domestic divisions have increasingly spilled over into its foreign policy, is perhaps the greatest security threat facing the rest of the world today. At a time of growing global risks—from pandemics and climate change to nuclear proliferation and Chinese and Russian assertiveness—a US political implosion would be the ultimate threat multiplier. America is simply too important economically, politically and militarily to take a break or, worse, to become an unpredictable spoiler in global conflicts, owing to its government’s need to play to a narrow domestic constituency.

One can only hope that the election will produce a decisive winner both in the electoral college and among the electorate. Yet, even then, tallying the final result may take time, owing to the massive increase in mail-in voting that is expected. Every ballot that is postmarked on or before 2 or 3 November (depending on the state) will be considered valid, which means that the final result may not be known until after election day. During that window of uncertainty, either or both campaigns may try to claim victory based on the current vote count.

In any case, there’s no chance that Trump will wait graciously in the Oval Office for days or weeks to receive the final tally. In interviews, he has already issued vague statements suggesting that he will not leave the White House if he loses; indeed, he seems to be actively preparing for such a scenario. If he follows through, the world’s leading superpower will find itself facing a protracted—and perhaps intractable—constitutional crisis.

The old Western alliance of democratic, industrialised countries has made many mistakes in recent years that have undermined its international reputation. But no institution is more fundamental to the West’s wider appeal than free and fair elections. If the former de facto leader of the West can no longer manage to uphold even this principle, the rest of the world may well opt for other political systems.