Written by: Wajahat Masood
By the time this column reaches your hands, the US election will be just two days away. On Tuesday, November 5, approximately 18 million citizens out of 35 million Americans will vote to choose their president from the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and the Republican candidate Donald Trump for the next four years. According to opinion polls, this is the tightest election in America since the Second World War as the difference between the two candidates is about one percentage point. Kamala Harris has a slight lead, but this lead is not a guarantee of success in the American style of election, because the election of the president is not based on the counting of individual votes, but on the basis of population, each state is assigned a certain number of electoral votes. Even if a candidate wins the overall vote, he can get the required 270 electoral votes if he wins in just a few states. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was defeated in the Electoral College despite getting almost three million more votes than Donald Trump. This year is being declared as the biggest election year in known human history because this year three billion and seventy million voters around the world have to choose their government in 72 countries. Among them, Narendra Modi succeeded in forming a government in India, a country of one and a half billion people, but contrary to expectations, his party could not get a simple majority. The elections in the United States, the country with the world's largest economy and the most powerful military force with an economic volume of 28 trillion dollars, are considered to be the most important in changing the future of the world. America can change the map of the world due to its influence on international relations and the most important financial institutions.
Special attention is being paid to the recent US election because American politics has never suffered from such extreme polarization since the Second World War. Republican candidate Donald Trump is considered a metaphor for far-right populist politics. He refused to accept the result of the 2020 elections and attacked the US Congress through his supporters. They openly want to implement conservative policies in their country. In a world where the governments of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Narendra Modi in India and Xi Jinping in China are in place, Donald Trump's victory in America could have far-reaching effects on history. The average American voter is more interested in issues like taxes, inflation, immigration and abortion, but the outside world has few concerns about other aspects of Trump's policies. A fundamental question in America since Woodrow Wilson's presidency has been whether America should play its role on the world stage or isolate itself from the world and focus on domestic affairs. The roots of this political disagreement go back to the policy of James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States in 1823, that the intervention of any foreign power against the allied countries of the United States will be considered directly against American interests. In the current situation, Donald Trump believes in a complete disengagement from NATO or a very weak relationship if he wins the election. For example, regarding Russia's aggression against Ukraine from February 2022, Donald Trump wants Ukraine to accept Russian demands.
Donald Trump wants to impose a 20% tariff on all foreign imports to boost the US economy. They plan to impose tariffs of up to 200 percent on Chinese imports. The current average rate of tariff on Pakistan's total exports of three billion dollars to the US is 2 percent. It should be noted that America is the only trade partner of Pakistan in which Pakistan has a trade advantage. Our compatriots are unhappy with Kamala Harris in love with Palestine, but they forget that Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there. If Biden did not call the former Pakistani Prime Minister, then Trump also made insulting tweets against Pakistan in January 2018. In addition, in August 2019, the Indian government took action in Kashmir. Donald Trump wants to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, which will exacerbate the global climate crisis. At present, many new global forces are emerging simultaneously in the world. Pakistan could not get BRICS membership. Pakistan is in deep trouble on the foreign front and fingers are being raised on the diplomatic ability of our Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar. In this background, Donald Trump is not ready to guarantee the defense of Taiwan. As if this 13,000 square mile island of prosperity with a population of two million and a per capita income of thirty two thousand dollars should be left at the mercy of China.
A noteworthy point is that Donald Trump wants to change the administrative structure of the United States by making about fifty thousand federal officials directly subordinate to the president instead of the constitution. The election of the United States will not only affect the internal unity and economy of this country, the outcome of the contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will affect the prospects of democracy around the world. At the heart of the recent election is the credibility of American democracy. Trump supporters have been preparing to riot over his possible defeat. In such a situation, the hearts of a handful of Pakistani progressives are with Donald Trump, considering Kamala Harris as a symbol of bourgeois democracy. Our religious people are dreaming of the failure of enlightened democracy in the success of Donald Trump and the desperate revolutionaries of Tehreek-e-Insaaf have pinned their hopes on the possible success of Trump to release Imran Khan. It has fallen on which tomorrow electricity why should it be my aashian.
