Every citizen in the “Global Village” feels he or she has the right to a vote in the US presidential elections. The elections bear on the lives of the 8 billion people who live on this earth, their state’s decisions and their governments’ policies. So it is not surprising that the entire world is drawn to this election and concerned with its outcome.
This keen interest is not merely a result of a peculiar president, Donald Trump, being involved. The man who launched a historic revolt against the leadership approach that defined American presidents and their ties to both allies and rivals is up against Joe Biden, who returns to the fold carrying Obama’s legacy. The US military, political and financial influence compels this obsession with its elections. The victor will become the US military’s commander in chief and have his finger on that nuclear button that can change the world’s fate.
Everyone in the “Global Village” covets the vote that American constituents can put in the ballot box or send by mail. It can generate such massive change, the impact of which goes beyond the US borders to reach the four corners of the globe, which most Americans are unfamiliar with and wouldn’t dream of ever stepping foot in.
No constituents anywhere in the world have as weighty a vote as those in the US. Because of its momentous consequences, we hear about foreign powers’ campaigns to influence US constituents in one way or another. We also hear about attempts to interfere with the electoral process by such forces with interests tied to the results. We heard about this kind of activity four years ago, with what was said about Russia’s interference in Donald Trump’s favor, which preoccupied members of Congress and American prosecutors for a long time but ended without these claims becoming anything more than that, claims.
We are hearing about it today as well, as the New York Times reports about Russian and Iranian attempts to infiltrate constituents’ accounts and send them bogus e-mails to heighten skepticism about the electoral process and its outcome’s legitimacy. Although these activities do not influence the results, Christofer Ray, the director of the FBI, and CIA Director Jon Ratcliff have mentioned, the mere revelations about these attempts indicate the importance that Iran and Russia, like many other counties around the world, believe these elections have.
A change in leadership in Washington differs from that of any other capital. Going over the impact of the four years of Donald Trump’s term on international relations is enough to form an assessment of this change’s magnitude. It strikes us whether we look at US-Russian relations, Washington’s relations with Beijing and Pyongyang or the US role in the Middle East. There, we can see a strategic shift manifested in President Trump choosing to respond to Iran’s violations by unilaterally pulling out of nuclear agreement with Tehran, raising the relationship with Israel to historical highs and mediating Arab countries’ talks to establish diplomatic relations with it.
Barack Obama did not exaggerate when he described the upcoming US elections as “the most important election of our entire lifetime.” Because of the scale of the transformations that have taken place under the Trump administration, the potential for change becomes simultaneously enticing and worrying, as does the White House’s current occupant staying put for another four years. The specter of the latter possibility transpiring worries many of those who feel that they had been negatively affected by Trump’s policies. This apprehension is not only felt by the country from which the “Chinese virus” emerged or that which has established armed militias to sow instability in the Middle East. Indeed, even Washington’s traditional allies in the European Union and NATO are not resting on their laurels. Many observers are nervous about the prospect of Trump pulling out of the latter if elected for a second term after having launched several campaigns on allies, whom he accused of not fulfilling the financial obligations needed to meet their defense needs.
Concerning ties with European allies, Trump launched a slogan seen as contradictory to the transatlantic alliance’s framework since the Second World War ended. “America first” struck a chord with average Americans, who did not feel that maintaining internal security requires spending their money on foreign interventions and alliances. But it worried traditional allies in capitals like Paris and Berlin. In London, the special relationship between Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson quelled such fears. Britain’s exit from the European Union fortifies this reassurance, as it allows for a stronger unilateral US-British relationship.
“I’m a Berliner,” the phrase John F. Kennedy uttered 60 years ago at the square that bears his name in the German capital, has become nothing more than a memory. Kennedy was promoting reunification in repudiation of the wall that divided Berlin at the time. Today, Norbert Rottgen, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the German Bundestag and the favorite to succeed Angela Merkel next year, looks back on Kennedy’s words with some sorrow. He does not find that Germany has received the support it expects from its traditional ally. Rottgen says that over Trump’s four-year tenure, Washington has radically reexamined everything, NATO’s survival, US foreign policy stability... These transformations are unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War.
The Germans and the other Europeans, like the rest of the world’s inhabitants, await the announcement of US election results on next month’s fourth morning. They are all dreaming of the arrival of a president who will fulfill their dreams and advance their interests; nothing more clearly demonstrates that the president who wins at the ballot box will not merely become the president of the US and the American citizens who elected him. He will be the president of those who have no vote and play no role in his election. He will be the president of the “Global Village.”
