THOUGH it is still not official but there are bright prospects that Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden would benext inmate of the White House, edging out the incumbent Donald Trump in an election that has become most interesting in modern history. It is one of the rare occasions that the losing candidate is levelling wild allegations of electoral fraud and rigging, casting shadows on the core democratic principles that the United States has all along upheld and sending shockwaves among the majority of Americans who are unable to digest attempts aimed at making the entire process controversial. Trump made similar allegations during the 2016 elections, which he won but at that time he was only a candidate and this time he is indulging in rhetoric as a sitting President.
Trump will have the dubious distinction of being the first president in the last hundred years to have failed to get a second term for the Republican Party and the outcome of the presidential election shows re-election is not automatic and one has to lay solid grounds for the purpose during the first term. Trump presided over a period of uncertainty not only on the domestic front but on the external front as well because of his mercurial policies that were launched and publicized through Twitter. It is, therefore, rightly said that Biden based his campaign not on his own policies but on failures of Trump, the latest being his inability to handle the Coronavirus crisis that rendered 11 million Americans jobless during the last eight months. He did not build his team and policies in the world’s most powerful country were being formed by family members especially his son-in-law than the relevant institutions and platforms. He also picked up almost daily quarrels with the media, which he considered hostile, not giving due coverage to his ‘revolutionary’ ideas and policies. On the external front, he gets credit for living up to his commitment of not opening new war fronts and winding up the existing theatres (with limited success). He did not pursue the policy of regime change and Arab Springs that his predecessors followed but coerced countries to have normalization deals with the Jewish State besides adopting a one-sided approach on the Middle-East conflict. The Trump also mindlessly pursued the policy of ‘United States first’ triggering tension with different organs of the United Nations and trade disputes with other nations, especially China, harming the economy of the United States and that of the globe as well. President Trump unilaterally withdrew from Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as Iran deal, which was a binding international legal framework for resolution of the issue of Iranian nuclear dispute.
A change in the White House, would hopefully lead to reversal of some of the highly controversial policies and programmes initiated by the United States, which were leading to sort of increased diplomatic isolation of the world’s only superpower. Joe Biden has already hinted at the possibility of a return to the deal and there are also prospects of some visible change in Middle-East policy as there would be no Kushner, the second-most powerful man in the White House watching interests of Israel and Israel alone. Experts also argue that the Trump years have not been good for the U.S. State Department and the career Foreign Service officers that have long represented American interests and values to the world and therefore, the Biden Administration might bring predictability to the US policies towards different regions and important countries of the world. The Trump Administration also took a confrontational stance against China on everything from trade, tech and the coronavirus pandemic to the South China Sea and Taiwan. Trump was, however, moving towards total withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was central to restoration of durable peace in the conflict-ridden country. He entered into an agreement with Taliban and his Administration was committed to clear roadblocks in the way of its implementation and it is to be seen whether the process of national reconciliation gets delayed or not with the assumption of office by the new administration. As for Pakistan, there is hardly any hope for a substantial change in relationship as Pakistan is being viewed in Washington through the mirror of Afghanistan and even sacred principles are sacrificed at the altar of the bigger Indian market.
