In a week, the US will hold its most consequential election since the Civil War-era.
It pits a centrist Democratic Party led by Vice President Kamala Harris, still committed to the Constitution and rule of law, against a personalised Republican Party that serves only its leader, former president Donald Trump, who has called for entire articles in the Constitution to be “terminated” to keep him in power.
The election will either reaffirm US political norms and traditions or usher in an experiment with American tyranny modelled after that in some other states: an openly self-serving president supported by and, in turn, favouring, politicised oligarchs, as I explained in these pages last week.
Tyranny is by no means guaranteed if Mr Trump wins. He will enter the White House with experience and preparation, ready to try to replace thousands of civil servants with handpicked ideological cronies, as he himself has said he would. But the opposition will be similarly prepared, and efforts to defend the rule of law will kick into action without hesitation, because Mr Trump’s intentions are so clearly telegraphed.
This matters for the rest of the world, including Gulf countries. Ms Harris stands for US traditions at home and abroad. She represents the continuation of the post-Second World War and post-Cold War US policies that centre on robust internationalism based on alliances and long-standing friendships around the world. Mr Trump, by contrast, has viewed these alliances, even Nato, with cynicism, often seeing them as little more than a protection racket, demanding payment directly to the US from any country that benefits from its protection.
Some Gulf countries have been seeking “ironclad” mutual defence agreements. This has yet to be achieved, but considerable progress has been made in this direction with the administration of President Joe Biden. Further progress under Ms Harris appears entirely plausible. But given his attitudes towards international relations, there seems little chance of any such agreements under Mr Trump.
If the Biden administration played any role in prompting the October 7, 2023 attack in Israel that produced a series of interwoven crises rocking the Middle East, it wasn’t through neglect, weakness or any egregious error. On the contrary, insofar as Hamas paid any attention to Washington regarding this attack, it was seeking to thwart the Biden administration’s progress in talks with Saudi Arabia for a triangular agreement involving normalisation with Israel.
Some Arab countries have adopted a policy of strategic diversification as a consequence of uncertainty about the nature of the US security commitments and Washington’s willingness to act in their defence. Yet they remain fundamentally committed to keeping the US as the centrepiece of their diplomatic architecture and primary partner of choice in key national security strategies.
The unpredictability and arbitrary nature of the personalised presidency promised by Mr Trump is not in the interest of America’s allies and partners. Unpredictability has been Washington’s biggest failing in recent decades, and Mr Trump is the last person to correct that fault.
Dark clouds are looming over Washington even before a possible Trump victory.
Two major newspapers – The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times – declined for the first time in decades to endorse a presidential candidate, allegedly to curry favour with Mr Trump. Owner Jeff Bezos denied there was any connection between the Post’s decision and his space company’s meeting with Mr Trump last week.
Like the Silicon Valley elites I described last week, some of these media-owning would-be oligarchs are breaking the first rule of resisting tyranny proposed by historian Timothy Snyder: “Do not obey in advance.”
Tellingly, all the distortions to American traditions coming from the wealthy and powerful find them adapting to Mr Trump, not Ms Harris. No one is self-censoring in fear of a crackdown by Democrats. And Republican voters are relatively blase about the outcome, knowing that everything will go on as usual even if they lose. Democrats are gripped with huge alarm, because they have every reason to believe that if they lose, the constitutional system may be upended.
As its closing argument, the racism of the Trump campaign has hit a deafening crescendo.
Today in Dearborn, Michigan, home of the largest Arab-American community in the country, I was immediately confronted by a huge billboard featuring a blue Star of David and slogans about how Ms Harris can be relied upon to “protect Israel” and “our Jewish communities”. It was widely reportedly to be the handiwork of a shadowy Republican-linked group.
At an intensely racist Trump rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, one speaker referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of garbage”. Another referred to Ms Harris as “the Antichrist”. Then one of Mr Trump’s closest aides, Stephen Miller, thundered that “America is for Americans and Americans only”.
It’s the perfect coda to the campaign that promises Mr Trump will be “a dictator” but only on “day one”. He has threatened to use the military and police against political opponents, to crush and deport pro-Palestinian campus protesters and “set that movement back 25 or 30 years”, to instigate “bloody” mass deportations of up to 15 million migrants, and to wage an all-out war against “the enemy from within”.
Mr Trump is overtly offering a wild experiment in authoritarianism. US allies should readily understand that American fascism would offer nothing useful.
There is a growing sense that, after the hate-filled Madison Square Garden rally, the tide may be turning decisively against Mr Trump. Arab countries, and all friends of the US, should be deeply relieved when Ms Harris wins.
