The health of democracy in the world, military aid to Ukraine or rapprochement with Brussels could suffer with a Republican victory
The legislative elections in USA will have an immediate effect in the remaining two years of the president’s mandate Joe Biden, but it is possible that his true importance will not be appreciated until the 2024 presidential elections. And it is that millions of Americans could have planted the seeds of destruction of their own democratic system, two years after the supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol to try to prevent the certification of the victory of Joe Biden. Far from having been a passing madness, that conspiratorial barrage that embraced the lie of electoral fraud carries more water today than then. The Republican bases have not punished the leaders of that frustrated coup, quite the opposite. Y the democratic world, in clear global decline, has reason to be concerned.
Experts insist that democracy is no longer destroyed from outside the institutions. The marches on Rome and the Africanist military uprisings are black pages from the past. Now the system is destroyed from within, seizing power at the polls, undermining the separation of powers, strangling the counterweights of civil society and clouding the credibility of the electoral process. It is happening in Hungary and Turkey, in India or the Philippines. And in these elections the Republicans have presented 370 candidates who question the legitimacy of Biden, who supported the assault on Capitol Hill or who signed lawsuits to reverse the electoral result.
Are the 62% of all Conservative candidates to the federal Congress and state officials, according to ‘The New York Times’. A full-fledged fifth column called to occupy positions of responsibility in the same institutions in which they have stopped believing. With the addition that some of them –from state secretaries of state to attorneys general– will have in their hands the certification of the next presidential elections, to which Trumpalmost certainly will come again. And although these days Brazil is demonstrating that institutions can be stronger than the leader who aspires to dismantle them, the anti-democratic drift of the US It comes at a particularly dark time for democracy around the world.
overall recoil
It has fallen back to 1989 levels, two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, according to a study by the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute. only the 13% of the world population currently lives under democratic regimes, which are still alive in 34 countries, eight fewer than existed a decade ago. The bulk of humanity, some 5.4 billion people, lives under autocracies or dictatorships. “The perception that democracy is failing in America creates a permissive environment for would-be autocrats,” Leslie Vinjamuri of the British think tank Chatham House recently warned. “It is essential that the US fix its democracy and show the rest of the world that democracy works.
That is possibly the greatest danger that these elections hide for the shrinking democratic world, which has bad memories of the Trump years, marked by trade wars with its allies, its skepticism about the NATO or his climate denialism. “There is concern,” the director of the German Marshall Fund, Ian Lesser, told ‘Politico’ this week, referring to the prevailing climate in Brussels. “There’s a very vivid awareness of what the Trump years were like and some concern that we might go back to something like that.”
Control over foreign financing
It will not be the same because, even if the Republicans regain control of Congress or, at least, one of its chambers, Biden will continue to set the guidelines for foreign policy until early 2025. Hence, no big changes are expected no matter what happens this Tuesday. Some things, however, could be altered because it is Congress that holds the “power of the purse” or the ability to disburse public funds. Funds such as those that are financing Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, now questioned by some Republican leaders. The party is divided on this. The trumpist cadres advocate cutting them or, at the very least, increasing their supervision, but they face the Reagan current, in favor of doing whatever is necessary to defeat Russia.
In Moscow a conservative victory would be good news, as their television figures have been proclaiming for some time. don’t forget the Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin, the hidden contacts with his entourage or the predicament that the Kremlin’s message has found in the universe of sycophants of the former US president. But rapprochement seems anathema as long as the Democrats rule the White House and NATO remains united in its support for Ukraine.
As to Chinanothing has changed ostensibly since Biden took office. Beijing was Trump’s favorite scapegoat, but his policy toughness has largely remained with the Democrat, who also appears to have given up on reviving the Iran nuclear deal.