How a Donald Trump victory in the US elections could lead to global instability

A professor has shared a grim picture of what the world would be like if Donald Trump wins a second term as president of the United States.

Experts are divided over which US election outcome could restore stability to the United States, and fear that any of the results could have dangerous implications for the world.

A Trump victory could spell world disorder, as the president’s inward-looking administration spells the end of America’s stabilizing global leadership, the professor fears.

That’s the view of Eliot A. Cohen, dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, who predicts that a second Trump term could cause “chaos” in the world a century ago.

Cohen, who worked for the State Department under Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, wrote on foreignaffairs.com, said that a second Trump victory would “permanently tarnish America’s reputation for stability and predictability” and forever change perception. of people about America. State.

“Since its inception, the country has been the land of the future, a work in progress, a place of promise regardless of its flaws and tribulations,” writes Cohen.

“With a second term from Trump, the United States could also be understood as a monument to the past … a great power in decline whose time has come and gone.

“A second choice would signal that the system is fundamentally flawed or that the United States has suffered some kind of moral collapse.

“His days as a world leader would be over.

“The country that had built international institutions, that had affirmed the basic values ​​of freedom and the rule of law, and that had supported the allies, would disappear.

“A Trump victory would mark a sea change in America’s relationship with the rest of the world.

This is not the first time the professor has spoken out against Trump. After winning in 2016, Cohen wrote about being a “Never Trumper” and a year later wrote about his dislike of the president as a person.

But Cohen’s article has come under fire, with claims that regardless of who wins the election, the United States faces challenges as a superpower.

“What you have to realize is that the global power of the United States is failing and that is an empirical process over several years, regardless of which of the two main parties owns the White House, or Congress for that matter,” Finian Cunningham writes in RT in response to Cohen’s piece.

Former German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the US elections could have broader implications for the world if there is a bitter legal fight over the outcome.

“No institution is more fundamental to the broader appeal of the West than free and fair elections,” he wrote in The Strategist.

“If the former de facto leader of the West can no longer even uphold this principle, the rest of the world can opt for other political systems.”

Cohen wrote: “I would point out to others that Washington has given up its aspirations for global leadership and has abandoned any notion of moral purpose on the international stage.

“It would mean a return to a world that has no other law than that of the jungle, a world similar to the chaotic twenties and thirties.

“But worse than that, because there would be no America on the periphery, ready to be awakened and come to the rescue.”

“It would usher in a period of bristling disorder and conflict, as countries obey the law of the jungle and struggle to fend for themselves.

“The appeal of authoritarian systems would increase.”

Cohen says Trump and his advisers have formed isolationist policies under the slogan “America First,” which poorly masks a disdain for international bodies like the UN.

This is coupled with Trump’s notion that “others are playing dumb to Americans” and has hampered America’s reputation for nearly a century as a “globally engaged power” in world affairs.

Cohen said the methods by which Trump could win – the quirks of his electoral system, plus “voter suppression” and “ingenious” Republican politicking – were a recipe for instability at home.

And launching “America First” to the rest of the world “would permanently tarnish America’s reputation for stability and predictability.”

Cohen hoped that after winning a second term, Trump would try to do what all second-term American presidents try: “secure his place in history.”

Cohen predicts that this would likely be Trump’s display of the art of the deal on an international scale – for example, the handling of China / Taiwan, or an Israeli-Palestinian peace pact.

Meanwhile, at home, politically motivated violence on American streets could escalate, fueled by a victorious Trump and doubts about the validity of his victory.

Cohen notes that the United States has been at crucial moments in its history before, during the Civil War and the Great Depression.

But he counted on Abraham Lincoln in the early 1860s and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s to guide him again on the way forward.

“This time,” Cohen writes, “the country would have a leader crippled by his own narcissism, [and] incompetence.

“There is no reason to think that Trump’s bombast, self-pity, incoherence, belligerent narcissism and irresponsibility diminish after a second miraculous victory over a more popular Democratic opponent.”