Much has been written about the risks to the rest of the world if former U.S. President Donald Trump wins the election on Nov. 5. Less has been discussed of the risks associated with his defeat.
In the event that Vice President Kamala Harris wins in the electoral college, team Trump is highly likely to contest the result—and we know how that played out in 2020. The violence and instability caused by Trump’s Big Lie was mostly contained to the United States, in no small part because much of the world was under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Much has been written about the risks to the rest of the world if former U.S. President Donald Trump wins the election on Nov. 5. Less has been discussed of the risks associated with his defeat.
In the event that Vice President Kamala Harris wins in the electoral college, team Trump is highly likely to contest the result—and we know how that played out in 2020. The violence and instability caused by Trump’s Big Lie was mostly contained to the United States, in no small part because much of the world was under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2024, the world is in a very different place. Wars in the Middle East and Ukraine have set up clear divides between the U.S.-led democratic West and the new axis of autocracies: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. In this context, the political stability of the most powerful country on Earth is extremely important and any question over the outcome of its presidential election could have global consequences.
Brian Klaas, an associate professor of global politics at University College London, said the prospect of a Trump-contested election creates two major risks for the rest of the world—one short-term and one long-term.
“In the immediate aftermath, Trump refusing to concede would suck up the attention of every politician and news organization on Earth, leaving little bandwidth to deal with anything else,” Klaas said. “That immediately creates space for opportunist bad actors to do things with limited blowback.”
More alarming is the impact that Trump’s rejection of a second election could have on U.S. democracy’s standing around the world—a cloud that could hang over Harris’s entire presidency if she wins.
“America’s ability to curb the actions of autocrats comes from threats to remove foreign aid or other support if leaders incite violence or flagrantly disregard democracy,” Klaas said. “How can America lecture the world about democracy when things like Jan. 6 happen? Nobody sees America as an aspirational model for democracy during the Trump era.”
The first and most obvious risk comes in Ukraine, where European security officials and sources inside the country believe Kyiv is grinding toward a slow, bloody defeat.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s requests for more weapons and his “victory plan” come at a critical time in the war. Ukraine is in the paradoxical position of needing to prove to allies that it can win the war in order to get the weapons it needs to win the war. Trump has made his hostility to Kyiv and favoring of Moscow extremely clear. But even if Trump loses, Ukraine could be in trouble.
“We know Russia is stockpiling weapons sent to them by Iran,” said Jade McGlynn, a researcher in the department of war studies at King’s College London who is currently in eastern Ukraine. “The expectation here is that they will bombard Ukraine over the winter. This would be a disaster for areas that have already had most of their energy infrastructure taken out by Russia. It could force people to flee, making it easier in the long run for Russia to launch new, successful assaults.”
NATO officials are concerned that instability after the U.S. election makes this more likely. Some have noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the window of a transition period to carry out horrific acts of war before, pointing to the 2016 operation in Aleppo, Syria. Samantha Power, then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called Russia’s actions at the time a “modern evil.”
The multipronged conflicts in the Middle East are also becoming more dangerous by the day. Unlike the war in Ukraine, few Western officials believe that instability in the United States would provoke further escalation by Israel, Iran, Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon. As it stands, the United States and all of its allies have, thus far, failed to prevent the conflict snowballing into the most dangerous situation the region has seen in decades.
NATO sources, speaking on deep background, said that the West’s near irrelevance in the region is the product of more than a decade’s disengagement there. The political, diplomatic, cultural, and intellectual withdrawal from the Middle East has reduced U.S.-led influence. Why would any regional party act on U.S. demands if they ultimately know no NATO troops are coming and policy toward Israel is unlikely to change?
While instability in the United States isn’t likely to be seized upon in the same way as it could in Ukraine, there are question marks about what the Western response would be if Iran and Israel’s tit-for-tat exchanges get out of control.
“If Israel decides to target civilian and economic infrastructure inside Iran, Tehran’s retaliation would be key,” said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department advisor on Arab-Israeli negotiations and a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment. “That is the point—that a full-scale war between the two nations might become an active question, which could bring in the United States on the side of Israel.”
That is where a contested election could become an issue. While the Biden administration would still be in power during the transition period, the chaos of uncertainty about the next administration would complicate all foreign-policy decisions, especially in the Middle East.
While overseas wars are the most obvious areas of concern, uncertainty about the outcome of the election would also play into the hands of those who seek to run down and discredit the United States as an example to the world.
“America’s main international rivals are Russia and China, which relish any opportunity to paint Western democracy as a failure,” said Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham.
Running down their democratic opponents has been a norm for communist states since the early days of the Soviet Union, and China is no exception. But although the propaganda is constant, it gets a big credibility boost if it has a real basis. If there is violence on the streets of the United States or people claiming the election was rigged, then is democracy really so great? If open society cannot keep people safe or the country stable, then maybe a communist dictatorship is better than liberal democracy and human rights?
U.S. diplomacy has already been affected by internal politics, with the tortuous Capitol Hill arguments over Ukraine funding being the most obvious and recent example. What might that look like if Republicans drag their heels on the confirmation hearings of officials or diplomats that Harris, as president, might want to appoint?
Instability in U.S. politics has the potential to cause global uncertainty. Of course, it’s natural that U.S. voters will be primarily concerned with the domestic implications of their own election. But a vacuum in Washington creates opportunities for people who want to diminish the United States and its values to step in and redefine the international order in their own autocratic image.
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