With Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, the Democrats’ chance of winning the 2024 presidential election have improved, but former president Donald Trump still looks to hold the electoral advantage. Michael Cox takes a close look at what a second White House term for Trump might mean for the world, from US relations with its allies, China, the Middle East and the wider Global South.
The fallout from Joe Biden’s departure
The one thing that can be said of the United States and its politics over the past few years is that it never fails to surprise. From the near collapse of Wall Street in 2008, the Trump election in 2016, and through to Biden’s victory four years later, it has been quite a roller coaster. And the ride has gone on in 2024 with Trump becoming the first US President to be convicted of a felony in May. His successor then stammering his way through a career ending presidential debate in June, followed three weeks later by an attempted assassination of one of the two presidential candidates. Then, as if to cap it all, Biden stood down from the presidential race in July, though doing so it would seem not because he was convinced that he was not up to the job, but rather because all the polls that were landing on his desk pointed to the fact that if he were to stay on there may well have been a Republican landslide in November.
Credit: C-SPAN
What some have called a ‘shock move’ by Biden, and others him bending to the inevitable, has clearly changed the political landscape. Certainly, by taking ‘one for the team’ Biden has at least (and some would say at last) given the Democrats a better chance of winning a race they looked like losing in November. It has also made life more difficult for the Trump team now that their most obvious asset – Biden’s perceived frailty – has been removed from their crosshairs. But there’s one thing it has not done: transformed the United States, which remains as dangerously divided and potentially violent as ever. As Ian Bremmer, the Director of the Eurasia Group has pointed out, if Trump’s shooter had been successful, we may well have seen George Floyd style riots spread right across the country, but with a lot more guns in play.
Much focus will now of course shift to what happens inside the Democratic Party, and whether they can turn the political tide which has been running against them over the past few weeks and months. With money now flooding into Democratic coffers ($150 million according to one source) and the base now revitalized, the party now has every chance of taking the fight to the GOP and doing so on the big policy issues such as the economy, abortion rights and even climate change which appear to strike a chord with a very large number of Americans. The seasoned observer Richard Haass asked in a recent piece whether or not the Democrats could win, and concluded it has a chance of doing so now that Biden has withdrawn from the race.
“Donald Trump” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Gage Skidmore
Yet the Democrats should beware running ahead of themselves. Trump might be a divisive figure. But he is a ruthless campaigner backed by a powerful political machine that will exploit every weakness on the Democratic side. Meanwhile, even if the gap is narrowing, the GOP remain ahead in the polls, and would appear to have a lead in most of the key swing states. Trump in other words still has a very real chance of winning in what is likely to be a very close race. We therefore need to ask not just what this tells us about America and why it has become so polarized, but what impact would a Trump victory and his brand of ‘America First’ politics have on the world at large?
Ukraine, NATO and the EU
The answer, quite simply, is a very great deal, especially for those friends abroad who since 2020 have become accustomed to an administration which made building bridges to democratic allies a priority.
Ukraine clearly has most to be worried about; and for good reason, given that only in May, Trump’s chosen vice-presidential running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, was telling an audience at the Quincy Institute that it was no longer in the American interest ‘to fund an effectively never-ending war’ there. This is hardly something Ukrainians are likely to agree with. Nor will most members of the NATO Alliance who at their last summit in July pledged to continue support for Ukraine against Russia which in its own words launched a ‘brutal war of aggression’ in February 2022, directed both against Ukraine as a nation and the security of the ‘European continent’ more generally.
“71a.UkrainianMassRally.WDC.24February202” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Elvert Barnes
Vance of course does not speak for all Republicans. Nonetheless, the fact that he could become Vice President in November has raised serious concerns in Brussels. Nor will the European Union itself be especially reassured by the possibility of a Trump victory given what Trump himself said in in an interview with Bloomberg in July when he threatened to impose a 10 percent across the board levy on all imports from the EU. Few in Europe approved the way Biden got out of Afghanistan; and his industrial policies have not gone down well either. However, a Trump administration which in the past has treated the EU with a degree of animosity verging on the hostile – in 2018 he called it a ‘foe’ ahead of Russia and China – presents a very different kind of challenge.
Seeking to ‘win’ against China
But if America’s friends across the Atlantic in Europe are becoming concerned – almost to the point of panic in some cases – what about America’s main international rival on the other side of the Pacific? How is the possibility of a Trump victory being seen there? There is no straightforward answer. The Biden White House may have dialled down on its anti-China rhetoric over the past year to prevent the relationship going into freefall. But it has hardly proved to be a soft touch. Indeed, since his team took over in 2020, it has put the technological squeeze on China, taken it to task for backing Putin over the war in Ukraine, while strengthening its relations with allies across Indo-Pacific, much to the annoyance of Beijing.
That said, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and his comrades in Zhongnanhai can hardly be looking forward to a new administration most of whose key people think the Democrats have been too soft on China and that the best way of dealing with it is by imposing a 60 percent tariff on most Chinese imports. Nor can they have been too pleased to hear a senior Republican back in April saying that the United States shouldn’t just be managing the competition with China but seeking to ‘win it’.
“President Trump’s Trip to Germany and th” (Public Domain) by The Trump White House Archived
Of course, what is said during the campaign and what happens in practice may be quite different, especially if US corporations with an interest in China weigh in on the debate. But no matter. Playing tough on China (and even tougher than the toughest of Democrats) would seem to play well to an American audience, eight in ten of whom have an unfavourable view of China, and 42 percent of whom see it as an enemy.
Adding fuel to the fire in the Middle East?
All this however still begs a much larger question: how is all this going to impact an already unsettled international system in which the United States is facing serious challenges on several different fronts?
Take the Middle East where US backing for Israel over the war in Gaza has already lost it a huge amount of support across the region while allowing its two main rivals – China and Russia – to make major inroads. How might a Trump victory change the dynamics in a part of the world where the US used to have a near strategic monopoly?
The simple answer is probably very badly indeed. Biden might not be the most popular American on the Arab street right now. But given his views on Israel and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump is hardly likely to be seen as much of an improvement. It was Trump after all who insisted that the US embassy in Israel move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was Trump moreover who in tandem with Netanyahu scuppered the Iranian nuclear deal back in 2018. It was Trump too who during his first term, slashed funding to the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees and closed the Palestinian’s diplomatic mission in Washington.
It is of course true that Trump did bring about the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Yet as critics have pointed out, far from addressing the Palestinian problem, they effectively pushed it to one side, and may indeed have been a factor in bringing about the crisis that has engulfed the whole region ever since October 2023.
Moreover, nothing either Trump or Vance have said during the current presidential campaign suggests that they are likely to do anything that will bring order to what is already an explosive situation in a region in which America’s principal rival in the shape of the Islamic Republic of Iran – now backed by Russia – appears to be setting a good deal the agenda. And if relations are bad now, there is every chance they could get worse if the Republicans were to win in November. As Vance put it in an interview with Fox News: ‘A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran—but not these weak little bombing runs. If you’re going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard’, a statement of intent that hardly bodes well for the future.
Little comfort in Trump 2.0 for the Global South
If the future of the wider Middle East looks decidedly uncertain – in April the UN was even warning of the risk of a full scale conflict engulfing the whole region – what about the majority of humanity living in that part of the world now regularly referred to (somewhat imprecisely) as the ‘Global South’? Once regarded by many in the West as more actors in a play written by policy-makers in Washington, rather than authors of their own destiny, over the past few years many countries in the Global South have started to find a voice of their own, the most obvious organized expression of which has been the ever-expanding BRICS organization whose agenda has largely been set by China and Russia.
Even so, the world remains a deeply unequal place, and fairly or unfairly, many within the Global South blame their condition on the West whose ‘double standards’ on issues ranging from climate action to trade – not to mention the war in Ukraine – they have been criticizing with ever greater intensity over the past few years. Nor it seems is the Global South willing any longer to take much note of what the West has say. As the former Indonesian ambassador to Australia complained, why should we listen to what Western nations have to say, pontificating as they do from their ‘high pedestal’ on how the ‘rest of the world’ ought to behave? The Malaysian Premier Najib Razak agreed, adding that former colonial powers should stop lecturing nations they once exploited and start putting their own house in order.
Nothing so far indicates that the growing gap between the South and the North is going to be bridged if Trump and Vance were to win power. Both indeed seem to be either indifferent or ill-informed about the many challenges facing the countries in the Global South. Threats to impose tariffs on all imports is hardly going to improve relations either. Moreover, if Trump’s new team moves ahead and cuts foreign aid – as it is threatening to – then this would only confirm people across Latin America, Africa and Asia, that the United States is simply not on their side (and that possibly China is).
Nor can they take much comfort from the way in which Trump in the past has spoken about immigrants from the poorer parts of the world. No doubt a fair number of Americans feel sympathy for those still trying to enter the United States. However, as most polls have shown, the mood in American towards immigrants has turned decidedly sour, something that Trump himself has tried to exploit – with some success – to win American voters to his side. This may play well in the United States itself. But it does not play well in large parts of the world, most obviously in the Global South where opinion about a country built by immigrants is no longer as positive as it once was. Indeed, if Trump were to win, this would only confirm many in the Global South in their suspicion that the United States is no different, and indeed no better than any other great power that has sought to run the world in the past.
America: the ‘tipping point’ moment
We would thus seem to be at one of those great tipping points in American history where anything now seems possible. Of course, there is no knowing what lies ahead. The Democratic Party might still win the White House. The Trump campaign could implode. Still, what might have seemed inconceivable only a year ago – a Trump victory – does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility as Americans get ready to vote in what could easily be the most consequential race for the White House of recent times.
“P20231030AS-0514” by The White House is United States government work
But should the world be as worried as many seem to be about a possible Trump victory? Not according to some pundits who insist that once in power he will be compelled to move back to the centre as the ‘adults in the room’ begin edging him towards a more balanced approach to international affairs. Some have even sought comfort by insisting that in the end there is still something called the ‘national interest’, and because Trump’s policies clearly run counter to the established rules that have guided America since the end of World War Two, he will have to abandon his ‘America First’ strategy.
But interests as we know are not just a given; they are constructed by ambitious politicians who in an age of polarization and disinformation are perfectly happy to appeal to an American electorate that has grown sceptical about the standard foreign policy mantra that it is up to the United States – this ‘indispensable nation’ as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once called it – to lead the world and if necessary, pay a price for doing so. During the Cold War, and even for a few years after it ended, that call to action appeared to work. In 2024, it no longer seems to be doing so. Internationalism may not be dead just yet. But a Trump win in November might just finish the job off. Meanwhile, all those who do not have a vote in the American election – namely the rest of the world – can only sit back and see what happens. Trump may or may not win. But if he were to do so, all one can say with some certainty is that an already unsettled international order could very likely – and very quickly – become more unsettled still.
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