The most realistic judgement that can be expressed on the American presidential campaign, fortunately quite shared, says: it is impossible to make serious predictions, at least at the end of August, because, given the technical characteristics of the vote, outcome national will be determined by local results in about 2016 or so counties in five or six states, with Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin leading the way. Furthermore, if the results of 2020 and 100 are any indication, the winner will snatch the White House by 1 or fewer more votes than his rival; all decided by less than 3% of the more than 0,05 counties and less than 150% of the approximately XNUMX million voters. Therefore, the White House could go either to Donald Trump that Kamala Harris, and by a hair's breadth. Then, the gap could be even more consistent, but hardly large.
On these 5 thousand votes here, 8 thousand votes there are also vital ones hanging European interests, by choice of women and men who vote obviously thinking of the United States and certainly not of Europe, where most of them have never been, and of which they know very little. There is not much clarity on these vital interests of ours even in theEuropean public opinion, assuming that this exists beyond the individual, very tenacious and numerous national realities, strength, pride, and at the same time weakness of Europe. And equally we are not sufficiently aware of the fact that this Europe is the daughter of the two suicidal wars of the 900th century, the second in particular, from whose disastrous consequences it was not at all easy to save oneself, and it would have been very difficult to do so without the United States, which in the end – not with Franklin Roosevelt, but with Harry Truman – decided that the European rebirth was in its own precise interest. It happened almost 80 years ago, but the past passes in its own way, and it does not always really pass.
The Complex American Electoral System
Le technicalities: in United States The voters they choose the president not directly, but by entrusting their choice, which obviously must be respected, to a total today of 538 "grand electors" appointed State by State, generally local political figures but not only, and equal to the number of federal deputies elected in the State plus the two Senators. The California, the most populous, therefore has 54+2 electors, the half-empty Wyoming and the two Dakota they have 3 each. In the end, the American presidential elections are the sum of 50 votes State by State, much more than a big national vote. All states except Maine e Nebraska who assign grades differently, respect one rule: whoever has most popular votes in the State takes all the votes of the "grand electors". Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 vote aimed to ensure that, by invoking electoral fraud, never proven despite immediate investigations and then over 60 lawsuits, the Republican "grand electors" would at least partially dissociate themselves, preventing Joe Biden from reaching the 270 votes needed for victory. At that point it would be up to the House to decide, with one vote for each State expressed by a majority of the parliamentary delegation of each State. And since the Republicans would have won this game barring a crisis of conscience, Trump had a good chance of becoming president despite having lost the election. But it was an attempt to coup d'etat, failure also because Vice President Mike Pence opposed it, in particular on January 6, 2020, the day of the assault on Congress.
Presidential Immunity: A Delicate Question
La Supreme Court surprisingly decreed two months ago that it was a presidential choice in its own right, therefore linked to national interests, and that on this the president in office, then Trump for a few more days, he enjoyed the full immunity. It was an astonishing sentence, which confirms the serious moral decline of the highest American judiciary, never sunk so low in the last century, and must make Washington's allies reflect on the lost reliability of the American political-judicial system, with Trump above all.
There is, however, one positive aspect: the broad and never-before-articulated concept of immunity on presidential choices, even if brazenly tailored to Trump's needs, obviously also applies to Joe Biden, who will be president until January 20. Now, Trumpism has worked intensely in the last two years to place people of total MAGA faith, make America great again, in the electoral commissions of the various States, to better prepare also in 2024-2025 for the aforementioned trick of the 270 electoral votes to be missed by the rival, if necessary, and thus let the president be decided by the House of Representatives. But at that point Biden, still with full powers until late January 2025, totally protected by the new pro-Trump immunity which also saves him from any subsequent retaliation, could use all the tools that the law entrusts to him in the face of a subversive attempt. It would almost be funny.
But leaving the Americans with their game, of which we are only distant spectators, let's take care of ours, Europe's.
NATO and the Role of the USA
THEAtlantic Alliance , NATO, its military arm, demonstrated after Vladimir Putin's attack on theUkraine, two and a half years ago, a surprising vitality. The most striking fact, in addition to the response with aid to Kiev, was the entry of Sweden, even more significant than that of Finland, because Stockholm thus abandoned two centuries of total neutrality. But we cannot delude ourselves too much. The alliance that guarantees European defense from a Russia expansionist again, and which theorizes with the ideological help of the Moscow Patriarchate its right to interfere in European affairs, will soon be 80 years old, depends crucially on an allied country that is 6 thousand kilometers from our coasts, is also considered for this by the Russians to be an unnatural fact as well as a betrayal of the promises made by Franklin D. Roosevelt to Stalin at the summits of Tehran and Yalta, and will not remain as it is today for long. It is not at all clear that American public opinion, faced with the need to apply theArticle 5 of the NATO Treaty (the attack on a country to be understood as the attack on all), is in favor of sending a division to defend Lithuania or Estonia, or something else. It would be something if one could count on American air intervention on this occasion. For the ground troops, the answer could also be, especially under Republican pressure, that it is a European affair. Treaties, especially as they age, often risk this end. Then there remains the nuclear issue: to what extent would the NATO umbrella, which is American, be credible in the event of a strong Russian missile threat? For more than 50 years, Europe has been asking itself this question from time to time.
One thing is certain: whoever wins in two months, the European contribution to NATO costs will have to increase significantly, and beyond 2% of GDP. military spending It is the most useless of expenses, except when one is forced to defend oneself. With Trump il future of NATO risks being in the name of Chaos, with threats of the US exit from the military structure, without a clear political-strategic plan and with a constant use of propaganda for internal purposes, to warm the heart of the strong anti-European component of Trumpism, all with the applause of Moscow in the background. With Kamala Harris the appeal, now repeated for over 30 years also by many Democrats, for a greater and above all a best european shopping for NATO, it will be pressing, but all in a different, more collaborative and far-sighted framework.Europe spends a lot on the defense, but spends badly, with national budgets that would often draw enormous savings from a common management of the various programs and weapons systems. Unfortunately, a frequent brake on rationalization comes from the military commands themselves, reluctant to give up power, from Parliaments, and sometimes from the Defense industry itself, which fears forced collaboration.
Democrats vs. Republicans: A Two-Speed Europe
In the field democratic However, the idea that one dominates close relationship with Europe It is vital for American interests, even in the face of the Chinese question, because it would be suicidal to abandon Europe to concentrate on one anti-Beijing roadblock thus losing many important allies. The very close economic, commercial and cross-investment relations between the two sides of the ocean make the transatlantic world unique in the world panorama, and the Democrats will remain, more or less, faithful to this reality, if the Europeans get a move on.
among the Republicans it is not so. And not everything is attributable to the demagogic outbursts of Trumpism, which rides the atavistic instincts isolationists, present in the belly of the country for at least a century and a half; Andrew Jackson, president from 1829 to 1837, was of this school, and a large portrait of him dominated Trump's office in the White House. Even before Trump, right-wing isolationists supported theNATO's uselessness for American interests, and after the end of the USSR the thesis has strengthened. Two important academics of the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank (anti-bureaucratic and nationalist) founded in 1977 and financed by the Koch family, a major contributor to the causes of the American right, offer an exemplary picture of Trumpian sentiment filtered and reshaped by the Cato Institute. In an essay entitled Post-American Europe, Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson now write in Foreign Affairs that "if after two years of fighting Russia has not managed to subdue Ukraine economically and militarily, it means that it does not represent a hegemonic threat for Europe". After this hasty judgment, which completely ignores the nuclear blackmail, they continue by stating that the guiding principle of Washington's European policy, not having a hegemonic enemy on the European continent, no longer has any reason to exist, because this hegemonic threat no longer exists. "For the first time in centuries - they confidently state - Europe no longer has a potentially hegemonic nation. Russia - they add - represents only the shadow of what was the Soviet threat". Seen from Warsaw, Vilnius, Helsinki, Stockholm, Berlin, and even from Rome if we want, the picture is not exactly this.
The Hypothesis of an American Disengagement in Europe
More complex, but substantially similar, is the gaze of Elbridge Colby, in 2017-2018 at the Pentagon as head of strategy, nephew of William Colby head of the CIA during the years of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and Trump's probable right-hand man to the White House for national security, in case of re-election. The China is the problem, says Colby, and all energies should be concentrated there. Diverting forces from the Asian theater for commitments in Europe, which should not be abandoned but “Europeanized,” would be like inviting China to attack Taiwan, argues Colby, who believes the United States can do very well without Ukraine. With this last judgment, in particular, Colby has become a constant presence in the Moscow propaganda. His thesis, based on the impossibility for Washington to simultaneously ensure the balances in Asia and Europe, is music to the Kremlin. On the Moskva it has always been thought that the European nations alone, to be kept rigorously divided, said the Soviet strategic plans of 1944-45, would never have been able to resist the Russian sphere of influence, and from 1947-1949, after the surprise of the American return with the Marshall Plan, Moscow's goal has always been to loosen and dissolve ties between the two sides of the Atlantic. Once this is done, it would be a matter of hollowing out the EU, which for Moscow is always another product of the Cold War and a threat to Mother Russia. At that point, divide and conquer.
