The tone is reassuring. The controlled statement. This is not Kirsten Hillman’s first rodeo: for the Canadian ambassador to Washington, the government is ready. On several occasions over the past weeks, the diplomat has been reassuring, emphasizing the existence of a network of economic and political ties at the national, state and local levels with the United States. A safety net that would cushion potential tensions between the two capitals, particularly in the event of a change in the White House. Ottawa is not worried, but certainly (very) concerned.
It’s a shared concern. While the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the D Day, Western Europe doubts the one we celebrate on the beaches of Normandy: only 6% of Europeans (and 24% of Americans) see the United States as a very reliable ally of European security. Pressure is mounting perceptibly in Western chancelleries. Several, of Drezner’s Worldhas Politico Passing by The Atlantic, even evoke a wave of panic that would rise in Western capitals. With this nagging question: are the neighbors, the allies of American power ready for a version 2.0 of 2016?
Like Ambassador Hillman, analysts may be tempted, a priori, to understand the risks based on the stability of a certain amount of data, on the relevance of analogies: knowledge of the decision-making circle which could take over the Oval Office. The permanence of the rule of law. The existence of counterweights. The diversity and constancy of local and regional political and economic agents. The experience of the first mandate. In Hillman’s speech there is the reassuring idea that we know the character and his universe, this conviction that after January 21, 2025 will still present elements of continuity.
It’s possible. As it is just as possible that it is only an illusion. Because a second version of this presidency will be neither a repetition nor an outgrowth of 2016. And the science of analyzing the decision-making process explains both this quest for constants to circumscribe uncertainties and the inevitably unprecedented nature of what could happen. next January.
First, things have changed in eight years in Washington. The Republican team that won the election in 2016 and governed for four years did not foresee its victory and did not have a governing plan. In 2024, it’s a whole song. The adults in the first-term room will no longer be allowed in, the old guard of the Republican Party has gone home, the GOP moderates are gone. Around the candidate, a kaleidoscope of political groups – (Heritage Foundation, Center for Renewing America, America First Legal, America First Policy Institute) whose leaders are part of the candidate’s inner circle – lent a helping hand. The obstacles that slowed down the first term have been identified and are in the crosshairs, the decision-making process has been disciplined and the former president is no longer a neophyte. Things will go quickly. Very quickly. We went from a Fiat 500 to a Mercedes M139.
Then, the former president’s intentions are not disguised. In recent weeks, several organizations (Think Tanks, press organizations) have drawn up a list of measures that are already explicitly listed. The resulting portrait is that of a new constitutional order, to use the words of the historian Douglas Brinkley, that of an “authoritarian imperial presidency”.
On the menu, bringing the FBI and the Department of Justice into line to pursue “political opponents”; the deployment of the army throughout the national territory and that of the national guards in the cities; the gathering of itinerants and “illegal” immigrants in camps to expel the latter quickly; reducing reproductive freedoms by leaving red states free to monitor pregnancies and punish women violating the bans; the restriction of the rights of the LGBTQ+ community; the takeover of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates media broadcasting; the erection of substantial tariff barriers; the subordination of American military support to the notion of “fair share” of the supported state — South Korea, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, everything is on the table… including the reassessment of the participation of the United States to NATO.
Finally, this transformational presidency will not operate in a vacuum. Around it, at the local level, at the federated level, equally significant changes are taking place. The split between red and blue states is growing. Politicians in Democratic states lose their entrances, leverage and networks in Washington, and red states turn crimson as they move away from the logic of the rule of law, increasing the unpredictability of their behavior and the ability to do so. find allies. The MAGA component of parliamentarians mobilizes resources, time and confines Congress to deleterious inertia.
It would be a mistake, writes the director of the American Civil Liberties Union, to downplay what Trump is saying out loud today, when he sets out his authoritarian plans for a second term.
It would be an equally big mistake here to minimize this tendency to brush aside what, seen from a distance, could be nothing more than fantasies. We often hear them, armchair relativists, questioning the media’s approach, questioning experts, stating opinions as truths. However, a true risk analysis does not involve relativism. It cannot be based on false equivalences, a tendency which aims to place on the same level, experts and pamphleteers, scientists and editorialists… or even a president convicted of a criminal who aspires to become president again and the son of a president who does not aspires to more of anything.
We can absolutely name the two trials and say that the rule of law applies to everyone, without creating equivalence. Take a step back, understand the forces present. And above all, be aware that our vulnerabilities lie as much in our commercial and economic dependence as in a certain democratic nonchalance.