Trump-Harris Contest: America’s Moral Crossroads

When Donald Trump was defeated in 2020 in a tight race with Joe Biden, the world took a sigh of relief. During his tumultuous four years in power, Trump polarized America, undermined global institutions and also encouraged dictatorial leaders in other countries. But as Trump bids for re-election this year and India-origin Kamala Harris takes over from octogenarian Biden as the Democratic contender, the Republican contender doesn’t appear all that bad now. For the image of a liberal America that democratic party represented has been mortally dented in recent years, some would say even beyond repair.

The hope that Biden’s victory had generated in 2020 has been all but belied.  Under Biden, America has come across as a cynical defender of its geopolitical interests across the world rather than a champion of democracy, human rights and civil liberties. Biden during his term exhibited an ice-cold unconcern to  these principles, exposing the US commitment to them as a mere charade  which means nothing when its own interests are involved. And the hypocrisy was brought out in sharp relief by the wars in Ukraine and Palestine.

The glaringly differential approach to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza has only further detracted from the credibility of the western-led order.  The US’ conduct through the hostilities so far stands out for its blatantly partisan support to Israel in the face of the unconscionable death toll in Gaza - and now in Lebanon - with most of the dead being children and women. In a sense, the sharply contradictory positions towards the two wars has made the US position ludicrous. What the country  stands for in Ukraine, it goes against the very same position in Gaza: For example,  Russia’s aggression in Ukraine becomes Israel’s right to self-defense in Israel.   Killings of civilians in Ukraine is a crime against humanity, but those in Gaza are collateral damage.

The US  has found it hard to straddle Ukraine-Gaza moral divide without contradicting its professed principles. And in the process, it has not only lost the moral high ground that underpinned its geopolitical goals but also the credibility of its liberal discourse. It is not that the US didn’t practice double standards in the past, or just false virtue when it came to applying or interpreting its own values under different geo-political contexts. It always did, but wherever it didn’t conflict with the US core interests, the country did take a stand for altruistic causes like human rights and pursuit of democracy.  But the abdication of this role has probably never been as flagrant as in relation to the Ukraine and Gaza wars.

The US, as a result, has ceased to be a moral guardian of the world, a role that once forced the countries to adhere to some global norms of decent behaviour. With the US under Biden remorselessly conniving with Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign in Gaza by supplying him with money and arms and at the same time villainizing Vladimir  Putin for invading Ukraine, old norms of international conduct have lost their salience.

Will the succession of Harris as a Democratic candidate change anything? Unlikely, although she has made some right noises. She recently called for an end to the Israel-Gaza war and said that Israel must not reoccupy the Palestinian enclave once the nearly year-old conflict comes to an end.

Trump, in contrast, has framed it differently in his characteristic style, saying that  he would support Israel in the war but told Netanyahu in their meeting in July to “get your victory and get it over with.” He also told the Israeli leader that the war “has to stop, killing has to stop.”

To Trump’s credit, this doesn’t show an uncritical backing of Netanyahu unlike the unreserved support extended by Biden. Even in his term in power, Trump generally avoided military interventions across the world. But domestically his presidency had a malign agenda, especially towards minorities. Trump uninhibitedly aired views that even the radical right in America had traditionally refrained from uttering. His hate against Muslims and non-whites was in-your-face and unreserved. During his current campaign, however, the Republican candidate seems to have relatively sobered up.

But whichever of the two candidates wins the presidency, the US will struggle to reclaim its global moral high ground.  The country cannot harmonise its ethically untenable contradictory stances towards wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Democracy, human rights, freedom of expression, equality of rights are ideal means to build a just world and to transfer power to common people. But as the war in Gaza has made it clear, the west uses them more as stratagems to perpetuate its power than practice them in good faith. The glaringly differential approach to the two wars has only further detracted from the credibility of the western-led order.  And remedying this seems irreparable unless the US actively works towards not just the end of war in Gaza but also towards a just solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestine conflict.

By: Ahmad Rizwan