Above photo: Financial Times/Getty Images.
As US voters go to the polls on November 5th, they need to remind themselves that when the US elects its next domestic president, it is also selecting the emperor of a violent, global imperium. Choices made over sundry domestic issues have far reaching effects, far beyond local pocketbook or civil rights issues. They determine who lives and dies across the planet, and how much pain, harm and suffering the rest of the world will have to bear.
In this context, it’s fair to ask, who is the lesser evil? Trump or Harris?
The answer, of course, is “neither”. Like infinity, when it comes to evil, there’s not much use in finger-counting which is greater or lesser. They are cardinal equivalents. Third party is the moral choice.
However, between two terrible choices, President Kamala Harris–to the extent that she has institutional continuity with the Biden/CNAS administration and retains their key advisors–is likely to wage more wars: in Ukraine and most certainly with China.
This is not because Trump is less hawkish or more prudent, but because he is likely to be less effective.
These have to do with:
Distraction, Obstruction, and Opprobrium:
Trump is likely to be focused on attacking/settling scores with domestic enemies, who have harassed, belittled, betrayed, tattled, audited, impeached, sued, indicted, prosecuted him, and possibly attempted his assassination. He is also more likely to be thwarted or obstructed by institutional forces as he implements his agenda, even if it is similar to Joe Biden’s, and more likely to attract opprobrium and opposition, including if he wages war.
Bean-counting vs Seoul force:
Trump has contempt for South Korea’s Yoon administration and wants to multiply the cost of stationing US troops in Korea nine-fold to $10 Billion/year. That could be a deal breaker. He openly refers to South Korea as a “money machine“. This mercantile transactionalism is likely to put sand into the gears of the US war machine that is preparing Korea as the easiest and first place to start an omnicidal war with China.
South Koreans are already furious with President Yoon Sok Yeol for subordinating South Korea’s political and economic interests to US foreign policy, and they are likely to impeach Yoon if he submits to such flagrant extortion. On the other hand, If he doesn’t pay up, and the US administration weakens its support of Yoon, the Korean people will rise up and overthrow him as they have other US-quisling presidents like Syngman Rhee, Chun Doo Hwan, Park Geun Hye. This will strategically diminish the prospects of the Empire. The canard of North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine is an attempt to stave off this bad end by heightening the stakes, promoting South Korea (and Yoon’s) status as a global “pivot state”, and enmeshing Korea into the Ukraine-NATO-Empire trainwreck.
Compassionate rape indulgences:
Trump was openly contemptuous of “Shinzo” (Abe), but he has even less relationship with Japanese Prime Minister Ishida (or any future potential Japanese PM). However, as with South Korea, his uncouth transactionalism around the omoiyari yosan (Japan’s “empathy contribution budget”) for US troops in Japan, is likely to disorient and vex the Japanese leadership, and outrage the populace who are already livid to be paying reverse indulgences for occupation and rape. JAKUS, the Japan-Korea-US alliance is already brittle, due to the current political weakness of Japan’s ruling LDP and South Korea’s hatred for Yoon’s pro-collaborationist position. Prime Minister Ishida has lost the lower house and the LDP, which has governed Japan as a virtual one-party state, is at its weakest in decades. Simultaneously, Yoon’s military collaboration with Japan, Korea’s former colonizer, is sending Yoon into crisis territory, as his approval rating plummets down to 17%.
Deadly Insurance policy
Trump has said that the Taiwan authorities need to pay the US for protection because the US is “no different from an insurance company”. But Trump’s insurance company is a corporation that has no intention of paying out if Taiwan becomes the next Ukraine. He has also stated that Taiwan should spend 10% of its shrinking GDP on the military, a coded demand to buy more marked up US weapons systems. Again, the ruling DPP will be bewildered and rattled by Trump’s demand—an offer they can’t refuse: being asked to pony up for an extortionary “insurance” policy that guarantees almost certain denial of services while bankrupting the country: Trump has refused to state if he will commit troops to Taiwan to support US-prompted secessionism.
Currently Vice President Louise Hsiao, a former US citizen and deep state denizen, serves as President’s William Lai’s US minder. A prissy preacher’s daughter from New Jersey, it’s a pretty good bet that neither Trump nor Vance will get along with the self-proclaimed “cat warrior” princess. Hsiao, for her part, has bet all her chips on Ukraine–stating that “the Ukraine war sends a powerful message to China”–the de-knickered message of a person squatting in an outhouse hit by a tornado. Trump’s potential Ukraine pullout could heighten the mortification.
Disdain for the McCain Stain
Certainly, Trump is hawkish and belligerent on Iran and could greenlight war. He will also support Israel in continuing to wage its horrific genocide and ethnic cleansing, just as the Biden administration ministers to, indulges, and excuses every genocidal whim and action of Israel.
But Trump is likely to force some kind of settlement on Ukraine, because he hates losing and losers, and Ukraine is a losing war, which he can blame on Biden.
Trump’s language is extremely belligerent and hawkish, and he is rash and impulsive, but his narcissism traps him into trying to make himself look like a winner at all times. Like the over-validated child, who will avoid any challenge that might reveal the limits of his competence, Trump is less likely to test the outer limits of US power with peer competitors. That means he could be less likely to start conventional wars he cannot win, and be more likely to try to get out of losing wars. This could even be true for the genocidal war on Gaza, which despite its stream of atrocities, is Israel’s John McCain moment: a strategic and political loss for a colonizer that has been taken hostage by its own insanity.
Catastrophic Reboot Risk:
The catastrophic geopolitical risk with Trump is he may not understand the real risks of nuclear war—he has asked “Why have nukes if they can’t be used?”—and could be recklessly tempted or prompted to use them. This is in contradistinction to the CNAS neocons who will control Harris’ foreign policy and her nuclear threat posture: they understand the risks and costs, and they still seek to use them deliberately. They believe in integrating nuclear war seamlessly into conventional doctrine, exercises, signaling, and operations.
This is true also for climate change. Trump denies global warming and has stated that it is a Chinese conspiracy to undermine the US economy. The Harris-Biden administration understands global warming but sees sustainable transition as unacceptable because it would boost China’s development and global status. They see doubling down on burning fossil fuels as in US core strategic interests of maintaining hegemony. They would rather burn up the planet than let China shine.
In fact, they would rather destroy the planet than give up an ounce of privilege to the burgeoning multipolar world. Wonk-speaking necropolitical ideologues from their first cakewalk to the final funeral march of mankind, they would rather be dead rather than be led into a better world of sovereign independence, equality, non-interference, and peace.
If Trump is elected, the global south will pray that he never abandons his neo-mercantilist transactionalism and his petty narcissistic fraudulence. Until the dismantling of Empire and Capital, and until the West stops using wars to reboot the economy, this may be about the only thing that saves the world.