The Stakes, Not the Odds: #PO1135809 and the World
Last Friday I wrote my first “The Stakes, Not the Odds” essays, focused on the impact of a second term for #PO1135809. This week is my second essay in this series.
I’m repeating the first page or so of last week’s essay before I go into the foreign policy implications.
It’s December of 2023, and we are less than a year away from the 2024 presidential election. We should be worried, because President Biden’s popularity as reflected in the polls is lower than that of his likely opponent, #PO1135809. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why people think that it’s a good idea to give #PO1135809 another term in the White House, but that seems to be the case – at least for now.
We saw a couple of statements from #PO1135809 last week that warn us clearly about his plans. He confirmed in a public interview that he plans to be a dictator “on Day One” if he is reelected. We should take him both seriously and literally. He was never funny, and he is no longer even a bad joke.
Warning signs are flashing around the world. A second term for #PO1135809 would be a – well we don’t really have a term for BEYOND disaster, but that’s what it would be. You don’t have to trust me on this – Google “Trump” “second term” and “authoritarian” to see articles from around the world about this threat. The January/February issue of Atlantic (soon to be released) is totally devoted to this threat. We should all read it. Yes, sources like Atlantic are not free. It costs something under $100 per year, depending on what plan you select. Eight dollars a month, give or take. Quality journalism is worth paying for.
I have friends (acquaintances, tbh) who have decided to take the moral “high ground” and refuse to vote for either Biden or #PO1135809. They refuse to accept the notion that this is not the hillside to die on.
The media tend to focus on elections as horseraces – who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s lagging, who’s coming up on the inside, who is the “dark horse” that you didn’t see coming. This is not helpful in our current situation. Instead of the “odds” of Biden winning reelection, we should be talking about the “stakes” at play here. What would a second #PO1135809 administration look like?
The impact on United States foreign policy and diplomacy would be almost immediate and catastrophic. The warning signs are flashing. Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at the Atlantic, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and Pulitzer-price-winning historian, writes about this threat in the Atlantic issue I mentioned above.
Her first paragraph makes her point:
“I don’t give a shit about NATO.” Thus did former President Donald Trump once express his feelings about America’s oldest and strongest military alliance. Not that this statement, made in the presence of John Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, came as a surprise. Long before he was a political candidate, Trump questioned the value of American alliances. Of Europeans, he once wrote that “their conflicts are not worth American lives. Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” NATO, founded in 1949 and supported for three-quarters of a century by Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike, has long been a particular focus of Trump’s ire. As president, Trump threatened to withdraw from NATO many times—including, infamously, at the 2018 NATO summit.
She goes on to explain why #PO1135809 wasn’t able to carry out this threat during his first term (mainly because the people surrounding him deterred or blocked him) but that in his second term, he would surround himself with people who would carry out his bidding. Applebaum points out that, although there are some institutional impediments to such a move, even the threat will damage NATO. This is because the alliance’s most important source of influence is not legal or institutional, but psychological. It creates an expectation of collective defense that deters adversaries. If the certainty of that response is undermined, then so is NATO. When she asked a variety of people with deep links to NATO about what would happen to Europe, to Ukraine, to Taiwan, and South Korea if Trump declared his refusal to observe the collective defense obligation under Article 5 of the NATO charter, all of them agreed that faith in collective defense could evaporate quickly. This would threaten the credibility of all of America’s other security alliances. The world would conclude that the United States is no longer a reliable ally, and they would be right.
I’ll add to Applebaum’s analysis: one thing that has kept many nations of the world from developing their own advanced weapons systems, including nuclear weapons, is the guarantee that the United States would come to their defense if they were threatened. The demise of NATO would signal the beginning of a global arms race, with the resultant rise in instability and threats to peace.
A policy brief from the European Council on Foreign Relations reiterates this point. In Brace Yourself: How the 2024 US Presidential Election Could Affect Europe (May 2023), the brief makes several points:
A profound debate is taking place among US political parties about America’s future foreign policy orientation. Democrats and Republicans are aligned on some issues, such as the strategic rivalry with China, protecting domestic manufacturing, and access to strategic technologies.
But the parties also disagree on subjects of crucial importance to Europeans such as climate action, the war in Ukraine, and the United States’ relationship with its allies.
Within both the Democratic and Republican parties, three tribes exert influence over party foreign policy and will shape the stance of future administrations.
On America’s global posture and military presence abroad, the parties are split between those who believe in limited international US engagement, others who argue for prioritising the Indo-Pacific, and advocates of continued US global leadership or even primacy.
Europeans must not simply hope they can accommodate potentially dramatic shifts in US policy in the coming years, but should instead take steps now to enhance and protect their own position in the world.
The 23-page policy brief goes on to explain these concerns in great detail.
NikkeiAsia (a major Japan-based English-language news magazine focused on the Asian continent) published a piece this month called What US Allies Can Do to Prepare for a Possible Trump Comeback. The article is based on an interview with Professor Alan Abramowitz of Emory University in Atlanta, and its conclusions are troubling. The article first discusses how public opinion polling (Abramowitz’s area of expertise) fails when objective measures of reality (like measures of the strength of the economy) are rejected by broad swaths of voters because they no longer believe in quantitative analysis. The article goes on to discuss what this means for US allies around the world. The uncertainty surrounding this election will lead other nations of the world to focus on “subnational diplomacy” and otherwise promote municipal and other regional engagement among friendly nations.
As an example of this, the article talks about an Oct. 6 meeting of the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange in Atlanta, where experts discussed ways to bolster subnational diplomacy. Participants agreed to draw up detailed proposals by next autumn on how to shore up bilateral relations by promoting interactions among the two countries' local governments, personal exchange programs, and academic organizations. A model for this type of relationship has developed between Georgia and Japan, and could provide guidance for other such relationships.
After more discussion, the article concludes with the following words:
Whatever the outcome of the upcoming election, foreign allies need to find a way to build up relations with the U.S. while shielding themselves from the vagaries of its politics. Now is the time to begin preparations for a possible Trump revival.
Finally, the October 23, 2023 issue of The New Republic features an article called “Imagine Handing this F****ed-Up World Back to Donald Trump.” As the title suggests, this is a no-holds-barred analysis of the looming catastrophic effects of a return of #PO1135809 to the White House in 2025. After a sweeping analysis of instability around the world, the article makes the point that global leadership requires leaders to exhibit temperance, humility, and restraint. It concludes by noting the following:
Those qualities are, well, not exactly the former president’s calling card. If Trump had been president, it seems more likely than not that he would have put a thumb, or perhaps several of his vulgar, short fingers, on the scale for Milei and Poland’s far right. He might not have flipped these results. But that isn’t the point. The point is that he would have put the United States on the side of authoritarianism.
These articles are only a sample of the analytical pieces out there for your perusal. There is no evidence that anyone who actually knows anything about foreign policy, history, diplomacy, or military strategy/tactics thinks that a second #PO1135809 term would be a good thing. We should probably pay attention to the experts.
And once again – this is not the time to take the moral high ground and cast a protest vote or refrain from voting altogether. You’ll feel morally superior as the world burns around you.
I'm reading your after emancipation substack at the moment, but I didn't want another moment to go by without telling you how freaking good the stakes piece is. Very important reading for everyone. Thank you for making me more knowledgeable about almost everything.
I’ll watch for the Atlantic article.