One great paradox of our era is that the robustness of American democracy has come to be measured in coffee spoons in terms of the country’s archaic system of electoral college votes. The result is, foreign observers lacking a sense of the forces of history miss the woods for the trees. The ancient Greeks who invented democracy never thought of an electoral college system. The word democracy came from two Greek words that mean people (demos) and rule (kratos).
Don’t miss the bigger truth that Donald Trump’s landslide victory is highly consequential. Trump was on a comeback trail, something that happened only for the second time in American history. He was fighting against very heavy odds including real threats of assassination by unknown forces whose identity still remains a mystery, and in circumstances enveloped in darkness that is impossible to penetrate. He estimates that he is entirely beholden to God’s will.
And he went on to secure a mandate that is so comprehensive that no caveats can be attached to it — securing a majority of votes (first time this is happening in 20 years) as well as winning a grand slam in the key swing states and counties too, plus walking away with an impressive Republican Party majority in the Senate that can only be seen as a reflection of the “Trumpmania” sweeping America from coast to coast. If that isn’t a wave, what is it?
Kamala Harris lost no time to understand its meaning and graciously accepted the nation’s will. The Guardian, no friend of Trump, reported today, “The results show that America has firmly swung back to the Republicans. The Democrats won 2020 by expanding their share of votes across the country, but 90% of counties swung back to the Republicans in 2024.”
The Russian President Vladimir Putin felt compelled, finally, to change his mind and “offer my congratulations on [Trump’s] election as president of the United States.” All that rancid talk in Moscow about “apocalypse now” for American democracy is petering out. And the dull roar of a retreat is vaguely audible in Putin’s turnaround to a conciliatory tone during a major speech at Sochi yesterday.
Putin, who maintained that he wouldn’t be congratulating Trump probably took the cue from Beijing. The night before Putin spoke on Thursday evening, Chinese President Xi Jinping had sent a formal congratulatory message to Trump on his election victory underscoring that “history tells us that both countries stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation.
Xi wrote, “A China-U.S. relationship with stable, healthy and sustainable development serves the common interests of the two countries and meets the expectations of the international community. It is hoped that the two sides will, in the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, enhance dialogue and communication, properly manage differences, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, and find the right way for China and the United States to get along with each other in the new era to the benefit of the two countries and the world.”
These incipient signs of a new dawn breaking in big-power politics could well turn out to be the salience of the new Trump Administration’s foreign policies. Who knows? Beijing senses that the US is reemerging credibly as a flag carrier and a decent burial of the American dollar is nowhere in sight — BRICS or no BRICS.
In comparison, alas, Moscow’s hyperbolic rhetoric was that the US election tolls the death knell of Democracy in America and that the country may even disintegrate:
“For the [USA] republic itself, dark forebodings abound. Some warn that unchecked discord could rend the union asunder, casting the states as enemies sworn to conquer one another, much as kingdoms of old clashed on blood-soaked fields. Political battles, once confined to speeches and votes, may soon take the form of steel and fire, with regions seeking dominance or defense of their way of life. In such a landscape, the banners of free states could be raised high, each upholding its own “God-given” reign, even as they march against one another.”
This was absurdity carried to the extreme, and it appeared in a Kremlin-funded publication on November 3! Again, the Foreign Ministry’s statement in Moscow in the afternoon of November 6 even as the news was appearing on Trump’s victory was simply appalling — defensive like a porcupine’s behaviour in times of stress raising its quills with body shivering, clattering its teeth and producing an unpleasant odour to warn predators not to approach.
But here, again, Putin, fortunately, had other thoughts on his mind and made amends just in time.
On the other hand, China is pinning hopes that a strong president in the White House may be a good thing to happen, as the neocon shibboleths get discarded, and with a mind steeped in intuitive cognition and realism, Trump is in a position to take difficult decisions.
If that happens, of course — veering toward a non-confrontational trajectory in the Sino-American relationship that has seamless potential to create synergy for Trump’s MAGA movement as well as China’s peaceful rise — it becomes a “win-win” for all sides and humanity as a whole.
Four decades ago, in fact, Trump had espoused to newly-elected Ronald Reagan precisely such a detente with the Soviet Union in a full-page paid write-up in New York Times and even offered to be a presidential envoy to make it possible.
The heart of the matter is Trump 2.0 remains an enigma. Importantly, he is being presidential after a four-year internship in DC from 2016 to 2020. But there is no question that Trump will assert his presidential authority. He has no more heights to conquer in a tumultuous career, which makes him, like Shelly’s skylark, “an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.”
Robert Kennedy Jr, is on record that “I spent two days with [Trump] recently and he was saying things that were kind of shocking to me…The level of change that he wants to make in our government, I think is going to be unprecedented… He wants a revolution and I think he’s going to get one.”
The 11 words that shook the world in Trump’s victory speech were undoubtedly, “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars.”
Indeed, China is taking Trump’s victory very seriously — rationally, positively and with cautious optimism. Conceivably, Beijing draws comfort that aides like Tesla CEO Elon Musk may provide a sense of proportion to Trump’s policy making. Certainly, Trump cannot hope to turn back the tide of historical forces and restore US hegemony. Being a civilisation state, China has its own concepts of time and space.
The Chinese economy is nowhere near collapse. And it is unrealistic to wage a technology war and impose global standards vis-a-vis a vast economy like China’s, which has reached high levels of research and innovation backed up by industrial production on a scale surpassing the entire western world’s put together. The 1970s analogy of the US breaking Japan’s will and compelling it to be a subaltern forever doesn’t hold good today.
Then, there is the spirit of the times that must be noted: the CEO of the official government think tank in New Delhi NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) — erstwhile Planning commission — has just spoken out that India should seek membership of the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) where China has a lead role, to tap into the potential of the free trade bloc comprising the 10-member ASEAN group plus their six FTA partners China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Ambassador M.K.Bhadrakumar retired from the Indian Foreign Service. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.