The recent US presidential election has had hundreds of millions of people around the world holding their breath as they await the outcome of one of the most exciting presidential races of recent decades. This, in my view, reflects the strategic standing, weight and influence of the United States in today’s world order, despite all the talk of its declining influence and shrinking global presence.
In this thrilling election battle, a few details hogged my attention in the coverage of Arab television channels as well as in the columns of newspapers and opinion editors.
The first of these is this myth that some people believe in the Arab world: it’s about changing faces, not politics. Two candidates, Republican and Democrat, are just two sides of the same coin. This is not true and reveals a confusion in the understanding of how American politics works. In the United States, the president holds sway over domestic and foreign policy-making unless it conflicts with the country’s chief strategic interests.
Proof of this is how current President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord signed by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, about a year before he left the White House. This is the kind of approach or tactic pursued by every US president to address sources of threat to US national security.
Threats are assessed and identified by national security institutions so that the White House deals with them in coordination with Congress, in accordance with the Administration’s strategic vision. In other words, there are the strategic interests of the United States and the strategies and tactics to address them. These interests are defined and prioritized by the President and his administration in concert with Congress.
So it is not fair to say that it is simply a matter of changing faces. We all know how much US policy in the Middle East has changed since President Trump’s coming to the White House and the Obama administration’s leaving after a series of mistakes.
Tremendous mistakes have been made, from supporting the so-called Arab Spring and the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in some Arab countries, to signing a blemished nuclear accord with Iran’ mullahs. The latter used it to push an expansionist sectarian project that caused widespread chaos and unrest in the Arab region.
The second point is that many Middle Eastern observers and analysts are missing out on the calculations of American voters, which have nothing to do with their considerations and priorities. Voters have their own interests that determine who they vote for.
Many have ignored President Trump’s broad popular base that clearly stamped the 2016 and 2020 elections, regardless of the characterization and intellectual, religious, and political orientations of that base. His large base made President Trump a fixture in American political history. His ability to mobilize this base to vote for him will serve as a template for other leaders who will take the same approach to garner support. Trump’s broad base will naturally look for an alternative in future presidential elections. Trumpism in American politics, as a result, will continue.
Contrary to what some people think, it is not about the president’s identity or ideological and political leanings. Rather, it is about reflecting the sentiments and attitudes of a large part of the American public. It is not so much a question of persons as it is a matter of the identity of American society. It is about conflict and division over vital issues such as the future of the country, immigrants, pluralism, racial discrimination, and gun laws.
The divisions were not created by Trump, needless to say. But objectively speaking, they matter to him, and he has pushed them to the forefront of daily political debate, for political gain.
Many blame him, that is, for sowing division in American society. Such a charge is misplaced, however. These divisions have existed from the start. What Trump did was to express them in detail, far from diplomacy and political correctness.
The violent phenomena that American society is witnessing at this point are not an invention of the president. They are manifestations that surfaced when they found their place in the project of the White House resident.
