As most of the western world is finally liberated from months of COVID-19 mitigation measures, the United States has been commemorating its 4th of July Independence Day national holiday with states that had emerged from lockdown in the spring now responding to a resurgence of the virus with a return to that lockdown.
The debate in that country over the wearing of masks, which has degenerated into political controversy, epitomises the epidemic of denial that has only exacerbated the outbreak.
The economic and political ramifications are far-reaching.
President Donald Trump, besieged by a summer of disease, disorder and depression, trailing in the opinion polls and seemingly unable to take his foot out of his mouth on any topic, had been counting increasingly desperately on a return to some kind of normality in time for the November presidential election. That may prove elusive.
Even before the publication of John Bolton’s memoir about his 17 months as US national security adviser, the carnivalesque conduct of Trump’s administration was well established. It had long ago ceased to make sense to measure Trump according to normal presidential standards. Bolton’s book presents Trump as intellectually and temperamentally unfit for the greatest office and the leader of the free world.
People brought up to respect the United States as the defender of western liberal democratic values see Trump as incompetent, reckless, thin-skinned and ignorant. That Trump is morally reprehensible finds echoes in Berlin, Paris, Brussels and most West European capitals. In Europe, his policies are viewed with suspicion.
His prospects for re-election in four months’ time seem to have suffered blow after blow over the last few months with his disastrous handling of the pandemic, the effects on the US economy and his failure to show the kind of leadership America needs.
Opinion polls consistently place Trump well behind his likely Democratic contender, Joe Biden, in swing states he must win to remain in office.
But the problem for European leaders and global perceptions of the US is that among the many reports devoted to Trump’s manifest shortcomings, scarcely anybody has much to say in praise of his Democratic challenger.
Biden appears a decent man who would probably appoint decent people to pursue rational policies and perhaps rebuild some of the institutions Trump’s administration has lain to waste. But a danger persists that a lack of enthusiasm for Biden will allow Trump’s fanatical base to re-elect him.
Trump’s qualities as a campaigner must never be underestimated.
America appears directionless under Trump, a power in decline. It no longer appears to know its place in the world.
The next six months until the inauguration of the new US president in January 2021 will be pivotal for the West.
If Trump wins re-election there is no knowing what another four years under his leadership will do to European and global perceptions of America.
The tragedy for America’s allies is that while there is much agreement about Trump’s shortcomings, the Democrats do not seem to have an answer when it comes to combating China or anything else. Biden’s plan, if he becomes president, appears to be to move closer to Germany’s Angela Merkel, for no better reason than that she leads a great economic power.
Either way, there is a hole where a proper US foreign and defence policy should be. The rediscovery by America of the complex art of statecraft and the power of intelligent diplomacy, married with a level-headed approach to military matters, seems today like a distant dream. The world is the worse for it.