US will awaken from its Trumpian dystopia

A US horror show that is playing out in real time is taking turns that are darker and darker from the point of view of not just the domestic but the global outlook. The US is a federal system where the Constitution defines the limits of power between the centre and the states. President Trump has taken a pickaxe to the construct and is engaged in tearing it apart. Within the cities, the mayors of individual cities have their own powers, authority over selected matters that cannot constitutionally be usurped by the Governor of the state, much less the President of the United States. Under the system, each holder of authority was expected to remain within the Lakshman Rekha (limits) sanctioned by the Constitution. In Minneapolis on January 7, what took place was the showing aside of the elected Mayor and the effective takeover of his authority by the state and federal officials. The Attorney General of the United States has by law to uphold the Constitution. She is duty bound to be impartial on the side of the laws, but Attorney General Pam Bondi is instead acting as the personal enforcer of the US President. Her record of backing the decisions taken by the 47th President of the US presently remains at 100%, even though several of those decisions have transgressed the law. The takeover of authority from the city mayor and police force by federal agents acting under the orders of the White House did not just take place in Minneapolis but earlier in cities across the US, mainly those run by elected officials from the Democratic Party. Centre-state ties and ties between federal and local security forces are under almost unbearable strain. This has been a boon to China, giving the country to exploit the fault lines created through White House policies by ramping up divisive messaging through the apps and the algorithms created for them by those linked to China.

The US has long advertised itself as the “land of the free and the brave”. The Executive headed by the White House had its powers limited by the Judiciary and the Legislature. The time is near, if not already here, for the US Congress and the Judiciary acting in their separate chambers of authority to assert the primacy of the US Constitution by curtailing the utilisation of powers by the Executive. President Trump has been acting not as an elected Head of State and Government but as an unelected Monarch of the US. Le Etat, C’est Moi (I am the State) was said by King Louis XIV of France on April 13,1655 to justify his absolutist power in France. The present US President seems to believe he has the powers of King Louis XIV, given the way he has recently been acting. Those visitors who love the US cannot wait for the Supreme Court of the United States and the US Congress comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate acting separately to limit the powers of the US President in order to retrieve the country from the brink of chaos it is teetering on.

Different watchers of the US Presidency have their own theories about why President Trump has been acting the way he has been across all but the initial months of his second term. It could be that the combination of the trappings as well as the substantive nature of the powers the President has, have caused him to have a personality transformation that has made him believe his powers as President of the US are greater than that of the other two pillars of the governance system, the Legislature and the Judiciary.

Meanwhile, China and Russia are watching developments in the US with even more than their usual attention. Should corrective measures not be taken soon to curb the White House by the US Congress and the Supreme Court of the US, both Beijing and Moscow are likely to seek to replicate the carving out of a US Sphere of Influence by seeking to carve out their own spheres of influence. China has been emboldened by the dust and chaos created by the peremptory manner of the US takeover of Venezuela by seeking to carve out their own spheres of influence. China could proclaim a Xi doctrine policy in which Taiwan, Japan and South Korea would be posited as within the Chinese sphere of influence. If Beijing were to succeed in imposing its will on Taipei, Tokyo and Seoul, three key allies of the US since 1945 would be prised out of the US grip.

Fortunately, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are not anything like Venezuela. The three would not meekly roll over the way Caracas has done, but fight back and almost certainly prevail over the Chinese military. Nor would kidnapping their leaders in the dead of night on the Maduro model work. The three are made of sterner stuff. In Taipei, the security cordon protecting President Lai Ching-te would be immune to efforts at coercion or bribery. They would defend President Lai with their lives if needed. Unlike South America, which for over two centuries has been subjected to US overlordship, East Asia has never been under the control of China. Even Kim Jong-un of North Korea is at the base of his thought a Korean patriot, albeit of an unusual kind fused with a family dictatorship. As for Japan, if anything, it is Tokyo that had in part of the previous century itself been the overlord of much of China, not the other way about.

Xi would be less than realistic were he to attempt a takeover even of Taiwan on the Venezuela model. A bigger problem is that the US under Trump is not any more a reliable partner. Indeed, were it left to the White House, it could have worked out a deal giving Beijing access to Taiwan in exchange for a mess of pottage. Fortunately, US institutions such as the Legislature and the Judiciary are made of sterner stuff where US interests are concerned than what seems to have been the Venezuelan case. In brief, perhaps sooner rather than later, the US will find itself shaken awake from what the White House has inflicted on it. That is the resilience, the strength, of democracy over autocracy, which even the US under Trump still is, a democracy.