Week signals: Polls, polarisation and multipolarity
Plus: watch points for Palau, Moldova, Hungary, Turkey, and Indonesia.
This week:
IN REVIEW. Overwrought commentary, underrated institutions, and unceasing geopolitical trends.
UP AHEAD. The other Tuesday election, Moldova tries again, Europe and the Turkic states meet, and Prabowo takes a trip.
The Week in Review: Leading in a leaderless world
The week began with a long-awaited strike on Iran and an election in Georgia that upended EU policy. It ends with speculation of retaliation on Israel and the second round of an election in Moldova that could upend EU policy again. In between there was yet more conflict in the Middle East, more upending in Europe, election surprises in Botswana and Japan, and, among much else, a missile test from North Korea.
But the main focus has been on the US, where a rancorous election reaches its end stage amid tightening polls and widening polarisation. Too much has already been said on the candidates and their controversies. Commentary, even by US standards, has been breathless and terms like “unprecedented” and “existential” have almost lost meaning.
The election is doubtless the most important geopolitical event this year, but it’s by no means the only important event, nor is its importance of a unique magnitude. It matters who wins – and businesses and investors can’t ignore the outcome – but the choice is neither existential nor absolute. And whatever the outcome, more will likely stay as it is (or as it is trending) than will change.
Thanks largely to the intensity of its partisanship, few appreciate – particularly in the US – how resilient American democracy is. The constitution (which is not under any real threat from either side) is among the world’s most robust. The separation of powers hampers the presidency to a degree unthinkable in most presidential systems, let alone parliamentary ones, where the executive and the legislature are bound up in one. This self-designed gridlock is usually seen in the negative (the inability for Congress or the White House to pass reforms; the theatre around the debt ceiling; the structural drivers towards polarisation), but it creates a check on power that even if a tyrant were elected, they’d be a tied in lawsuits and procedure. And then there’s the states, the countries, and the two-party system.
Even in foreign policy, where the White House does have broad powers, there are limits to what either Trump or Harris could do. And that’s not because national interest is eternal or managed by an unelected deep state (though many contend it is), but because the US is now at a stage where it’s increasingly reacting to events, rather than leading them. It still has the world’s biggest economy and biggest military, but Trump or Harris will inherit a system where the drift towards multipolarity, or at least bipolarity, has gone so far it has become almost impossible to reverse, outside of a world war or internal catastrophe in China or Russia beyond Washington’s control.
The economic and strategic trends of the last three decades have seen the ‘Global South’ develop from what was the ‘Third World’, to what became the ‘Emerging Markets’, to what is now a realm outside the US orbit. The political and technological trends of the last three years have seen the levers of power change from who has the most money and the most oil, to who has the most pricing power and the most advanced batteries, chips and composite materials. In many respects, it’s still the US, but only just. And even with China’s present difficulties, the gap is narrowing.
So in the multipolar order, if that’s what emerges after our current geopolitical interregnum, what is a president to do?