In a speech to the Washington Press Club in March 1969, the late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau said: “Living next to you (the United States) is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
This remains true today for both Canada and Mexico. As a Canadian living in Mexico, I can see how whatever happens in the United States affects both countries. As a former diplomat, I also appreciate how it can also affect the rest of the world in the current global environment.
Since its war of independence, the U.S. has sought to portray itself as the paragon of democracy.
Four years of the Trump presidency – culminating with his attempted coup in January 2021 – made this long-crafted image look like a fantasy. The inability or unwillingness of the Republican Party to propose or support positive policies and ideas and the inability of the Democrats to unite behind a single policy platform underscores the unwieldy nature of today’s United States government.
The failure of the Democrat left to compromise and show they understand that American society lies mostly at the center and that voters everywhere vote with their pocketbooks, also speaks to the current divisions in U.S. society. This situation is replicated in many democracies where consensus has given way to confrontation and where reasonable dialogue between reasonable political leaders is portrayed as weakness and appears to be a thing of the past.
This year, American Democrats face the very real possibility of losing control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections. This resulting from their inability to unite and overcome their very deep divisions and President Biden’s inability to bring all sides together to capitalize on the slim majority that they currently enjoy.
Regardless of the pressures being brought about by the Democrat left, Americans don’t like the kind of big government that they and President Biden appear to be espousing. In addition, President Biden’s inability to pass the Voting Rights Act will go down as a major failure in governance upon which Republicans will capitalize.
Finally, apart from the internal frictions, after one year, the pandemic that President Biden promised to end has not abated, inflation is at a 39 year high, store shelves are lacking supply, the Supreme Court remains unresolved and there has been no tangible progress by the Democratic majority in addressing the January 6, 2021, insurrection, filibusters and attacks on voter rights. In this context, he and the Democrats have their work cut out for them over the coming months before the mid-term elections.
Should they win in November, the Republicans have threatened to use their majority to concentrate on attacking the Biden administration with myriad investigations and impeachment proceedings against the President and Democrat members of both Houses.
Their main platform thus far appears to be simply to pursue their established policies and offer little room for compromise. Their followers appear content to leave it at that.
At the state level, Republicans will continue to pass legislation to ensure that minorities face great difficulties in trying to cast their vote.
The Democrats usually win the popular vote for President but face great difficulties from an election system that is both antiquated and somewhat undemocratic since victory does not always go to the winner of the popular vote. By failing to pass the Voting Rights Act they may well continue to lack the legislative wherewithal to gerrymander in their own interests or even put an end to that practice.
How does poor governance in the United States affect the rest of the world?
The United States is the major trading partner of both Canada and Mexico. To date, it has been difficult to keep the United States focused on respecting the rules that govern bilateral and trilateral trade agreements.
While the Biden administration is a “America first” as any, a more nativist and nationalistic Congress might further reduce North American unity as the weaker two members of the USMCA try to find their way across a minefield put in place by a Republican-run country.
Authoritarian regimes are expanding their hold on national governments. Nativism and extreme nationalism are rearing their ugly heads. Hatred and racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism are on the rise. Yet the unifying glue that the United States and their own centrist political leaders provided for decades will be absent should the Republicans continue to pursue their policies and take control of the Congress in 2022 and Trump control the White House in 2024.
Democracy around the world is under attack and nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S.
Leaders and governments in democracies are losing the confidence of many of their citizens given their inability to provide quick solutions to the problems of the day. They are not connecting with the people, much in the same way as in the U.S.
This is providing much room for maneuver by authoritarian leaders who promise quick fixes at the expense of true democracy and the principles of separate but equal institutions, a free media, respect for individual rights, and freedom of expression.
Republicans today have little or nothing in common with the Eisenhower, Reagan, and Bush Republicans who guided positive foreign and domestic policies and worked across the aisle to achieve what was best for Americans and support the security institutions such as NATO in the face of creeping totalitarianism.
Democrats today lack the party unity required to meet the Republican challenge at all levels of government.
The current deep and perhaps irreconcilable internal divisions plaguing the U.S. will likely be reflected in an increasingly polarized world where the rules-based multilateral system of the past is replaced by a laissez-faire global free-for-all.
And that will affect us all, both the elephant and mice around the world.
Eduardo is a former deputy spokesperson for Ban Ki-Moon.
He is an expert in public diplomacy.
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