By Lt Col (Retd)
Khalid Taimur Akram
THE cycle of the 2020 US presidential election came to an end at the start of this month. Both the international community and the local citizens of the US are concerned over who will win the presidential race set between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and become the 46th president of the United States of America.
The US grand strategy is a complex mixture of both domestic and foreign policy. The demographic division in the US based on economic, social, and racial lines is greater than ever with citizens being more enlightened about values such as justice, equality, and human rights. Furthermore, negating institutional and structural racism in the country particularly in the wake of the killings of black men is evidence of the growing racial divide in the US that has been further fanned during Trump in office. The US foreign policy decision making under the Trump administration has witnessed a clear shift from the traditional trajectory of his recent predecessors and has taken a narrow path where the re-emergence of nationalism is leading the US into more isolation. For instance, developments in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and relations with the European Union, Russia, and North Korea, etc. However, despite all these odds, the situation is still ripe for Trump to get re-elected in the 2020 presidential elections.
The choices made by the next US president will have a crucial impact on the issues such as climate change, technological development, and international trade, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, terrorism, and global cooperation on health. The US has to play a pivotal role in ensuring global peace and stability. There will be a lot of pressure on the US administration to tackle the deep-rooted racial and economic inequalities that seem to aggravate in the near future.
During the election process in the US, the presidential candidate has to win the electoral colleges. According to the constitutions of the US, each state is assigned a number of electoral colleges that are equal to the combined number of representatives from the Senate and House of Representatives. There are possibilities that Trump may again become the president due to the wide gap between the popular vote and electoral colleges in the US that enabled Trump to become the President in 2016, where Hillary Clinton despite having more popular votes still could not win the presidential race.
In 2020 elections, Red states currently make up 41.7% of the popular vote, Blue states represent 39.9% of the popular vote, and swing states make up 18.4 % popular vote. Although, Biden’s lead comes from the blue states that are more dominated by the supporters of the Democratic Party. If Trump wins this election it will be the third time in the history of the US presidential election cycle where the popular vote failed to elect the President of the United States, as happened in the cases of Al Gore vs. George W. Bush in 2000, Hillary Clinton vs. Trump in 2016, and potentially Joe Biden vs. Trump in 2020.
Analysis of the past four years has made it clear that the choices made by the US citizens in electing their president are likely to have consequences not only for the domestic issue but for international politics as well. Despite the limited foreign policy options left for the US due to its increased geopolitical and geostrategic competition with China, the next president of the US will determine the course of America’s diplomatic, economic and military investment in the future.
The future economic and strategic alliances of the US and its involvement in the multilateral institutions and coalitions are also likely to change depending on the office barrier. Biden or Trump whosoever will reside in the White House is likely to shape the trajectory of the future US-China relations along with and the US influence on both economic and political milieu. The outcome of America’s presidential election will reverberate throughout the world. It will have a direct impact on US allies and partners, as well as structural implications for the global system.
Trump’s Second Term Presidency
Trump’s second-term presidency would be highly unpredictable, given that President Trump’s personal views on America’s role in the world have been inconsistent and often in conflict with those of his own senior officials, many of whom have sought to pursue a more traditional US foreign policy. If Trump got victory this it will fill him with an unprecedented sense of confidence, thus leading him to make more dramatic decisions pertaining to the US engagement in the world that will alter the global order. Trump’s national security strategy would be marked by a narrow conception of national security interests, with an emphasis on great-power competition, unilateral action, sovereignty, and key favored relationships.
– The Author is an Executive Director at Center for Global & Strategic Studies (CGSS), Islamabad
