Nick Westcott / Nov 2024
Image: Shutterstock
It is important that we draw the right lessons from the outcome of the US election, besides the obvious fact that America is a far more conservative place than most Europeans realise, as anyone who has lived outside of the two coastal belts will know.
I propose three lessons, one comment and two predictions.
First lesson: lying is fine, as long as you tell people what they want to hear. Americans have long had a weakness for con men (read Huckleberry Finn), and Trump is a class act. To ‘go with the flow’ takes on new meaning in a Trump administration. But his meandering delivery and looseness with the truth always had an underlying purpose: to reinforce a narrative which he successfully sold to a majority of Americans: that they are worse off than before, that immigration is a threat, that the world – and institutions – are out to get them, pushing their own agendas, and that only Trump can save them. The Democrats never found a narrative that could compete with swing voters.
Second, might makes right. Power and wealth will decide policy in the future, not laws or institutions. Trump has already demonstrated his contempt for the law. As an international player, he will respect the rich and powerful, except China, which he fears as a rival, and the EU, which he despises. Institutions and the rule of law are a nuisance because they prevent the powerful doing whatever they want – which is indeed their purpose. Elon Musk, astute businessman that he is, took a big bet on Trump and won a jackpot. He now has direct input on any government policy that affects his business. Trump respects him because he is very very rich; but Musk needs to remember that the relationship will only last as long as he is wholly supportive. Loyalty will be the primary condition for Trump’s friendship, domestically and internationally.
Third, multilateralism is over. Its institutions will continue to exist and continue to function, but – as we are already seeing – without the power to influence outcomes. This is bad for conflict and a catastrophe for the climate. But an ‘America First’ foreign policy is incompatible with multilateralism. The irony is it reflects not confidence but weakness. The US no longer wants to get embroiled abroad, so other powers will feel at liberty to take their own action. Any alliance or organisation that puts obligations on America, that might limit its freedom of action, is to be avoided. Twenty years ago, the US would be confident that the multilateral system reflected its own interests and could be managed; this confidence no longer exists in a Trump White House. Fifty years ago, the US recognised it needed allies to confront the Soviet threat; but that thought does not yet seem to have occurred to Trump in relation to China. A multipolar world will be an increasingly unstable one, and the areas that will suffer most are those caught between the great powers: Europe, the Middle East and Africa – in each of which conflict is already raging.
A comment on these lessons.
Listening to ordinary American citizens who voted Republican, there are uncanny echoes of ordinary working Germans in the 1930s who voted for the National Socialists. The US voters chose Trump because ‘he makes us proud to be American’, because ‘We can hardly get by and he will look after us working people’; because he ‘thinks like us’, he ‘knows what he wants and how to get it,’ and of course ‘he’s going to Make America Great Again…’ This gives Trump a free hand to weaken America’s democratic institutions and the rule of law.
I predict two consequences.
Firstly, in five years’ time, the majority of Americans will come to regret electing Trump. But by then it will be too late. Just as the UK’s own populist revolt against the Establishment delivered Brexit, now regretted by a majority of the population, so Americans will find that the fantasies pedalled by Trump are hollow. They will not be richer, they will not be safer and they will not be happier. He may try to ride the anger for another term – old men are very hard to get out of power – but whoever follows will have to pick up a lot of pieces and try to glue them back together, as Keir Starmer is finding.
Secondly, people should prepare for conflict, particularly Europeans. The halcyon days of European peace and prosperity of the past fifty years are fading fast. The only way European nations – all of them – can protect themselves from a Trumpian USA and a multipolar world is by sustaining their unity and preparing for war. Democracies that cannot defend themselves do not long remain democracies.
The great powers – the US, China, even Russia – will try to divide and rule in Europe. In a way, this was what the EU was created to avoid: to preserve Europe’s autonomy, freedom and peace. It has been gravely weakened by the departure of the UK, which has itself emerged from its drunken reverie of independent glory with a hangover and commitment to sobriety. Populists are hammering at the doors of power in other countries and learning from the Trumpian playbook. Europe needs British experience, leadership, global connections and military force more than ever. In a rational world both parties would arrange for the UK to rejoin the EU just as fast as it could.
But our world is no longer rational. Nor is it safe. ‘Realists’ have replaced idealists, and the world is in for turbulent years until defenders of the common interest can once more constrain the growing lust for power.
