International relations implications of US presidential elections

By Samuel Baligidde

In September 2008 Former US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke in an article sub-titled ‘mastering a daunting agenda' succinctly analysed the challenges the next President after George W Bush would inherit.

He said that a coherent vision for the United State's role in the world had to be based on its enduring national interests, its values, realistic assessment of its capabilities and priorities, stressed the fact that not even the most powerful nation could shape every event and issue according to its own preferences.

He explained that the days when ‘containment' defined US foreign policy would not return in a world of many players and many issues. What a prophesy; because of their veracity his concerns have, 17 years later, returned to haunt not only the US but the entire world.

Where Donald Trump's bid for the US presidency appears to be the tramp card to return the US to the isolationism of the pre-World War II era, interest should not primarily focus on what he has unscrupulously vowed to do if he becomes President of a superpower in a world system in which North and South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran, among others, are spoiling for a fight; a political environment in which President Putin, described by Soviet-era dissident Sergei Kovalev as implementing ‘a web of political concepts generated in the bowels of the Soviet-era KGB', is leader of the other superpower but on the implications for international relations of a Trump Presidency.

America cannot isolate itself from a world in whose international system it is a key player while at the same time maintain the masquerade of being the champion and defender of democracy.

 
Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service Professor Celeste Wallander described Russian policy as representing a new global reality, when US-Russian Relations are precariously veering towards confrontation probably because of what he calls ‘Russian Transimperialism' under which Putin has resorted to an old trick taught at Foreign Service School: displacement strategies to distract the population from home-grown weaknesses by raising the spectre of internal and external enemies, while creating a cordon sanitaire around the State.

In a Washington Quarterly Reader Global Powers in the 21st Century, Director of Human Rights and Security Initiatives at the Center for Strategic International Studies Sarah Mendelson, and University of Wisconsin Sociology Professor Gerber allude to Putin restoring a hypersovereign Russia that remains outside the Euro-Atlantic alliance and resists or rejects international legal norms; developments that have lately renewed heightened superpower tension.

 
Only a combination of strategic vision, tactics and diplomatic acumen which Hilary Clinton, a former Secretary of State who understands the intricacies of a troubled world, can manage the complex challenges of the present and future. America's voice, actions and diplomacy ought to target pragmatic goals not create the kind of venomous rhetoric Trump, who does not seem to appreciate that Quiet Diplomacy is much more effective than public posturing, espouses. Should the world choose the United States' next President?

The answer is in the affirmative; America's poorly-camouflaged ambition to lead and dominate the world makes everyone a stakeholder in US politics! Russia, North and South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran are not so unimportant to be stereotyped; nor Africa and the Middle-East ignored or neglected. Moreover, new realities albeit evolving interests will force Putin to revisit his dangerous trajectory.

The world would fare invariably better if a ‘diplomat', who can deal with Russia on its own terms but works towards a mutually-acceptable international balance of reciprocity not US normative principles, wins.

The writer is a former diplomat