The presidential electoral primaries are almost over in the US and it is now certain that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will be facing each other in the race for the White House. The campaign platforms, personalities and anticipated policies of each of these candidates will now come under the scrutiny of observers and analysts of international affairs, US politics and US foreign policy in particular. Even without all the sensationalism that accompanies the US elections, the many chapters of which unfold like episodes in a tantalising TV serial, the world is truly interested in what happens in the US. This is not due so much to love or hatred of that country as to the fact that its impact on the state and the fate of the world is greater than that of any other country. A former Canadian ambassador to Cairo once told me that his country's situation was like sleeping next to an elephant. You can never sleep soundly for fear that the elephant might turn over in its sleep. Moreover, you constantly have to keep your eye on the elephant's mood and health and gird yourself against possible bouts of elephant depression or illness. Actually, the rest of the world is in pretty much the same situation as Canada. All countries have to keep their eye on the elephant because their economic and security interests are intertwined in one way or another with the US. From this perspective, the primaries that are currently winding up indicate some strange symptoms. In fact, they signal a departure from some of the basics of the concept of democratic politics that the US seeks to export to the world. One of the fundamental rules of that vision is that for a democratic system to work properly, there has to be a large critical mass of opinion that agrees on certain essential and universally acknowledged norms or principles. This is commonly referred to as the mainstream. Differences, if they arise, would not be over substance but over application or pacing or, in times of crisis, degrees of engagement versus disengagement or isolationism. In general, the major trends in US policy are relatively stable. Change, when it occurs, takes place over centuries, punctuated by such junctures as national independence, the civil war, the two world wars, the Civil Rights Bill and the Vietnam war. Moreover, this evolution was not closely related to which party — Republican or Democrat — was in power. Rather, it involved a process of consensus building over primary strategies so that the rotation of authority could take place without major upheavals in political life. That type of general consensus has been ripped apart during the recent primaries. In the past, the American political system always worked to exclude extremist trends in the far left, such as the communists, or the far right, such as neo-Nazis and white supremacists. In fact, the extremes were either eliminated from the party or roundly defeated in the general polls, as occurred with Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern, the Democratic candidates in 1968 and 1972, respectively. Thus the difference between the two candidates the Republicans and Democrats fielded in the race was never that vast or of a nature that would prevent voters from one party ever voting for the candidate from the other party. This time around, everything seems completely different. The Trump phenomenon is way beyond the norms and conventions of US politics. This is a guy who called for the deportation of 11 million Latinos to their countries of origin in South America, for a wall to be constructed along the US border with Mexico (to be paid for by Mexico), and for Muslims to be barred from entering the US. His outlook is not defined solely by affiliates to countries of the South; he has challenged numerous established cornerstones of US policy, from the relationship with NATO to Washington's relationships with Japan, the UK and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, during his campaign he threw all conventions of ethics and political correctness to the wind with his grossly sexist remarks and his slurs against African Americans, Latin American and people with Arab or Muslim backgrounds. Few batted an eye when he began to hurl insults against his fellow Republican nominees. Moreover, not only did he compel his fellow nominees to withdraw, he also, and more importantly, compelled the Republican Party “establishment”, which had initially opposed him, to gradually fall into line behind him. Essentially, the state of the Democratic Party is not that different. While Hillary Clinton, straight from the Democratic Party “establishment”, has remained the frontrunner, her main rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, has continued to nip at her heels right up to the recent California primaries. But the issue here is not the stiff competition (in 2008, Clinton and then Senator Barack Obama competed neck-to-neck until the finish line of the Democratic primaries) but the vast difference between her and Sanders who has been pushing toward the socialist left with a call to rebel against the US financial establishment, from the major banking institutions to Wall Street, and the corporate giants that form the backbone of the US economy. Specifically, Sanders has been championing issues that fall within the framework of ideas familiar to socialist thought in general, and Marxism in particular. The nominee's political message relates closely to class conflict and the notion of turning social classes against each other, which is virtually taboo in US political discourse. Clinton, therefore, is not in an enviable position. In order to beat Trump in November she will have to win over the people who supported Sanders, and they will push for a Democratic platform that is as left leaning as possible. If she chooses the other course, inclined toward the general American consensual middle, she will lose completely. The primaries on both the Republican and Democratic sides have been strongly “populist” in character. The campaigns played on emotive “isolationist” chords and the fears and attitudes of the conventional working classes, especially in such important, intensely industrial states as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Indiana where crucial industries have lost their economic standing. Oddly, despite the gulf between Trump to the right and Sanders to the left, both effectively converge on policies connected with security and US foreign trade, policies that have fundamentally conflicted with the prevailing trends in US policy until now. Both want to throw huge burdens on the shoulders of Washington's allies and both are inclined to a form of economic protectionism while narrowing the scope of domestic and foreign investment for the major US corporations. In all events, the world should probably be on the alert for new restless turnings of the American elephant.
The writer is chairman of the board, CEO, and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
