In two days’ time the most bitter and controversial US presidential election campaign in living memory will be over. America shall either have as its President the first woman or the first billionaire plutocrat. Whoever wins will make history. One of them might risk breaking it.
But this campaign was unique for other reasons as well. Americans know more details about some of Trump’s extremities than about some of his policies. The most talked-about documents are the ones they cannot see: his tax returns and her e-mails.
Trump has broken every rule in the book and insulted practically every category except fat white men. And yet the latest polls put him within the margin of error of what was unthinkable a few months ago. Clinton has ticked most of the right boxes, and yet she is still dogged by her husband’s transgressions and both their penchant for lying.
Who becomes America’s President matters to Malta on three levels. The first is the direction that America’s foreign policy will take in our part of the globe. Will President Trump’s admiration of Vladimir Putin translate into better co-operation on Syria and Nato, or a retreating America and a Russian carte blanche? Will President Clinton antagonise the Russian bear even more, or is she the right insulation for the inevitable worsening of the already cold political climate?
Would it be easier for Malta to consider having a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, which has been something of a holy grail for a string of American ambassadors to Malta, with a Clinton or a Trump Mediterranean policy?
The second level that matters to Malta is America’s international agenda. Will America continue leading global efforts to address global warming? Or will it retreat into its own fantasyland where Science and History are just the names of the rides?
In a world awash with mass migration on an unprecedented scale, will America set the example with common-sense policies that save lives, respect cultures and rebuild economies, or with paranoid ‘solutions’ to build new walls?
American voters have been presented with a hamburger on a plate, and their choice is either to eat the burger or the plate
The third level is America’s domestic policy. In today’s global e-village, nothing is purely domestic. As we saw with the Lehman Brothers and Snowdon scandals, when America sneezes the world gets pneumonia. How America deals with its poor, its sick, its migrants as well as its families and its super-rich will be observed carefully by the rest of the globe. How Americans choose to conduct their daily living may be emulated or rejected, but it will not be ignored.
So, who will it be? Crooked Hillary or kitten-loving Trump? Indeed, never have the two contenders for the highest political prize on earth been so little loved and so greatly reviled and feared. There is none of Obama’s charisma and drop-dead cool, or even Bush’s or Bill Clinton’s easy charm or Reagan’s affability. But it would be wrong to think that there is no real choice to be made.
The choice may not be between a prime ribeye steak and a hamburger. American voters have been presented with a hamburger on a plate, and their choice is either to eat the burger or the plate. Hillary Clinton may be unpalatable for some, but the alternative may be an imperial indigestion.
Mogherini sounds good
I heard Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, give a speech a few days ago on security in the Mediterranean in the light of Malta’s impending presidency of the EU.
There was the usual bland politicese and the deft dodging of shoe-shaped questions. One question she ignored was why during the year that saw the highest number of migrants passing through Libya drowned at sea, they have stopped coming to Malta.
But in her weary and determined face there was also a glimmer of what is truly attractive in the European project: the will to marshal Europe’s disparate forces and harness its huge soft power to save and transform lives, to build countries and new futures, in the Union but also in Libya, Syria and elsewhere.
Mogherini made all the right noises. But will she deliver? She certainly deserves all Malta’s help to do so. And hopefully her influence will lead to a more ethical Maltese foreign policy, which should not just be about looking out for ourselves.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall and see her face set as some government functionary explained why exactly Malta even considered allowing the Russian fleet to refuel on its way to bomb Syria.