This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Martin Wolf on democracy’s year of peril — 2024’
Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Sunday, June 2nd. It’s Marc Filippino here. Today and over the next four Sundays, the News Briefing is doing something a little bit different. We’re running a series about the outlook for democracy hosted by the FT’s chief economics commentator Martin Wolf. He’s been talking to leading political thinkers about what this year, a pivotal year for democracy, has in store for the liberal democratic system. Now, Martin recorded his interviews before New York made Donald Trump the first former president to be convicted of a crime. But the US constitution does not explicitly bar a convicted criminal from holding the highest office in the land, a fact which sets up the US polls later this year as possibly one of the greatest challenges facing liberal democracy to date. So here goes. Over to Martin.
Jonathan Derbyshire
(Knocking on door) Oh, he’s not there. Where did he go?
Martin Wolf
Oh, hello. I thought you said 1.15. You’re not going to get in? Already made a fool of myself last time, once is enough.
Jonathan Derbyshire
We’re hovering threateningly, to take you for your appointment.
Martin Wolf
Well, I suppose the time has come to sort out democracy at last.
Jonathan Derbyshire
Let’s go and do it.
Martin Wolf
Yup.
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Jonathan Derbyshire
That’s Martin Wolf, our chief economics commentator here at the Financial Times. And I am Jonathan Derbyshire, the FT’s executive opinion editor. Many of you listen to our podcast series last year on Saving Democratic Capitalism, where Martin spoke to leading thinkers and politicians about the threats confronting the western liberal political order. It struck a chord with listeners and FT readers across the world, generating hundreds of thousands of downloads. Martin was keen to revisit the subject again this year. 2024, after all, looks set to be a pivotal year for democracy. Across the world, billions of citizens are being asked to cast their votes in elections taking place in over 50 countries. And these polls come as populist, liberal and far-right parties are either growing in support or consolidating gains they’ve already made, with worrying consequences for the future of democratic institutions. So we’ve decided to bring Martin back to discuss why the electoral stakes this year are so high. Martin, hello.
Martin Wolf
It’s good to be with you again.
Jonathan Derbyshire
Since last year, Martin, what’s been keeping you up at night?
Martin Wolf
Well, the truth is that usually I get to sleep pretty well because at the end of the day, writing columns, for example, for you, I end up very, very tired. But I tend to wake up at 3.00 or 4.00 in the morning and sometimes find it difficult to get back to sleep. At that time, I’m usually worrying about some disaster that is coming our way, and quite often it’s about these sorts of subjects, strangely enough. First of all, though it was already possible, but not clear the fact that Donald Trump is pretty clearly going to be the Republican candidate this time, despite his attempts to overthrow the results of the last election. In addition, we are seeing really remarkable success by far-right parties in really important countries in Europe. In France, Italy, of course, where they’re in power, in Germany and quite a few smaller states. And we are seeing Ukraine one of the most important sort of fighters for, principles, doing really rather badly. And with a lot of people in the west not wanting to support it, that’s striking to me and really quite shocking. A year ago I was much more optimistic about that. And if we look into the wider world, well, it’s been some good news here in Europe. The reversal of the defeat of the Kaczyński government in Poland was a good news. But in India, it’s very likely that Narendra Modi will win again. And this government has very strongly authoritarian streaks. So looking at the balance between the free world, as it used to be called, the world of democratic capitalism and the rest of the world and its own health internally, things have not improved since we did this series.
Jonathan Derbyshire
All of which suggests it’s going to be a while yet before you have an undisturbed night’s sleep.
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Jonathan Derbyshire
Before we talk about what you’ve planned for this podcast series, let’s revisit that term “democratic capitalism”. Perhaps you can remind listeners what you mean by it.
Martin Wolf
So what I mean by this is that this combination of terms defines the operating system of the modern western world, and it was much admired in the world as a whole. And the two elements are capitalism, a market economy, not necessarily a completely free market economy, but an economy in which there are property rights, there’s competition. People can start businesses, essentially a functioning and dynamic market economy. And by democracy, I mean what is called liberal democracy, by which I mean a system in which power goes to people who win in free and fair elections, and the holders of power are constrained by democratically elected parliaments and by the law. And that’s the essential democratic element of it. And it’s the combination of the two that has been the winning formula for the western world over much of the last 70 or 80 years.
Jonathan Derbyshire
And what do you have planned for this follow-on series?
Martin Wolf
Well, we have a series of interviews with some of the most interesting thinkers on this. One new participant is Bob Kagan, very well known. Of course, he was one of the neocons, but he was above all a man. And he’s a man passionately committed to democracy. And he talks eloquently about the enormous danger that Trump presidency poses to the survival of American democracy. And this is the most important country in the democratic camp by far. Then we have Anne Applebaum back again, but with a very important story to tell, not only about America, but also about the attempted rollback of autocratic rule in Poland beginning. It’s not quite difficult to do because they were in power for so long. We have Fiona Hill, one of the world’s great experts on Russia and the foreign policy challenges posed for us by the rise of what is now quite clearly a powerful autocratic alliance, above all, between China and Russia. So she gives a genuine foreign policy perspective, which we didn’t have last time. And we have Raghuram Rajan, former central bank governor in India, to talk about the world’s largest democracy and in many ways, possibly the most important, certainly one of the one or two most important where Modi is increasingly entrenching, so it seems, his power. So this gives us a new perspective on the world being shaped by these elections in a time of growing trouble for the democratic system as a whole.
Jonathan Derbyshire
I’ll be speaking to you again in the last episode of this series to hear what conclusions you’ve drawn from those conversations. But for now, Martin, allow me to hand the baton over to you.
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Robert Kagan
I think we’re definitely seeing globally a reaction against liberalism and hardly for the first time.
Martin Wolf
My guest in this episode is Robert Kagan. He’s a conservative scholar and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. He’s advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on foreign policy, and he’s just written a book called Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart Again, which lays out his thesis on how America’s ingrained tradition of rebellion has inspired the phenomenon of Donald Trump.
Robert Kagan
The rebellion is the movement that is sort of at the core of Trumpism. It actually has long historical roots going back to the founding. The founders established a system that was pretty radical historically in its insistence on universal rights, as opposed to rights of certain groups. And from the very beginning, there’s always been a strong anti-liberal reaction to that in the United States. First among, obviously, the slaveholders who denounced the Declaration of Independence and then, of course, later the Jim Crow south, various Christian Americans sometimes, who insist that America should be a Christian nation, which is contrary to the founders. And this rebellion has existed all the way through. It was suppressed in the civil war. It was handily defeated during the Depression and World War II. And as a result of immigration. And it’s sort of making a last-gasp effort, I think, to try to change the system and has found the perfect person to lead them in Donald Trump.
Martin Wolf
Why do you call it a last gasp? I mean, some people looking at what’s going on in the United States, and I have to admit, I’ve been one of them, think that this might be a victory for this side and that a profound change indeed, an abandonment of those very values that you referred to embedded in the constitution of the Declaration of Independence is what we are seeing. So last gasp sounds rather more optimistic than I expected of you.
Robert Kagan
It’s a last gasp that could unfortunately succeed, and that the great danger is that, of course, Trump wins in 2024. By the way, I think even if he loses, we’re gonna have a crisis in the country because he won’t accept the loss. And I think most of his followers won’t accept it either. What I’m trying to say is, if we can get past this particular crisis, the group that is attempting to, you know, seize control of the country through the Republican party is a shrinking group in America. Whites are becoming a minority. White Christians, white Protestants are certainly a minority. Right now, they have a capacity as a minority to take control of a political party and have someone like Donald Trump. But I think if they don’t succeed in this case, and that’s one of the reasons they’re so desperate, if they don’t succeed in this election, they may not have another chance because of the demographics, if only for that reason.
Martin Wolf
What has surprised me, and I wonder if you want to put it in a broader context, but that this has arisen in this way, because, of course, we’ve all been aware of America’s past history of slavery, Jim Crow. But then we have civil rights and then sort of general view, I think I lived here for a while, was that America was healing this past. People were adapting to the modern world, and the country has been pretty successful, prosperous country by most standards. So why now? What has happened to lead to the emergence of Trump? He’s taking over the Republican party. It’s been a really big shock. Is there an answer to the question “why now?”
Robert Kagan
You know, it’s one of those things where historians will find 18 different factors that came together. But what I think one of the explanations is, has been the resorting of the two political parties. And there was a time, if you go back to the 1940s, when the anti-liberal forces were pretty evenly distributed between the two parties, the Democrats had the south, which was the anti-liberal south. The Republicans had sort of white Protestant America. What happened after World War II, increasingly, was that anti-liberal forces moved away from the Democratic party, the Republican party became the party of white southerners. So the Republican party has become essentially an ingathering of all these anti-liberal forces, so that even though the anti-liberal forces themselves are shrinking as a percentage of the American population, they have grown in importance within the Republican party. You know, the fact that Trump won, you know, he is a special person. We can talk about that. But in recent elections, it was Donald Trump versus Ted Cruz versus various other anti-liberals. It used to be Mitt Romney, John McCain, et cetera. Even George W Bush is what I would call a Liberal Conservative, not an anti-Liberal Conservative. And so I think it’s just demographic shifts. Interesting as a historical matter, before the civil war, that was the same resorting between the two parties to the point where the Whig party basically collapsed. And so I think that that’s my attempt, an explanation, plus the rather freaky occurrence of having a fairly unusual figure like Donald Trump come along. He is special as a person, and I think it’s the intersection of this movement into the Republican party of these groups and someone like Donald Trump coming along.
Martin Wolf
I’ll come to that in a moment. Before we get there, I’d like to put this a bit in a global context. Because what you’re describing is something which is a story of America, rooted in the history of America. And obviously that’s unbelievably important because America has been the standard bearer for liberal democracy throughout the world and has created the world order, which most of us regard has been such an extraordinary success. But let’s put it in a broader context. People are referring to this as sort of a year of democracy worldwide, and we’re having a large number of very important elections. But we are also aware that across the world there’s sort of a rising tide of authoritarianism, which we can see that’s done not just in China or Russia, but in many emerging and developing countries. India, for example. Mr Modi is clearly in that broad category. And then, of course, increasing strength of similar politicians in continental Europe. So how far do you think what we’re seeing in the US is actually very much America-specific? And how much of it is part of this broader global tide?
Robert Kagan
Well, I think we’re definitely seeing globally a reaction against liberalism. And hardly for the first time, as you know well, the 1930s were also a period where across the democratic world, faith in democracy was gravely diminished. And fascism seemed like the ideology of the future. Democracy seemed not to work. And so on both sides of the Atlantic, there was a real crisis of democracy. So clearly, I think what we need to understand is that and this sort of gets to the earlier question about what we expected here in America. There is a kind of, I would say, liberal mythology, that liberalism is the endpoint of human development, that human beings are naturally heading in this direction if you give them the chance. And I think that obviously underestimated the degree to which there’s always pushback. Ever since liberalism was invented, there’s always been anti-liberal forces who are anti-liberal for perfectly understandable reasons. Liberalism is destructive of traditions, traditional hierarchies, certain kinds of community organisation, certainly its intention with religious practices. And so I think it’s understandable. A lot of this, I think, maybe comes in waves, but I’m very careful in saying it’s not the same problem in Germany that it is in the United States. Germany has its own historical background. What the AfD represents in Germany is different than what the Trump movement represents in the United States, because each of our histories are so different from one another.
Martin Wolf
I suppose my view has been that one of the factors in the interwar period, and particularly for Germany, was economic. Do you think there is any plausible economic element to what’s happened, for example, deindustrialisation, the decline of the working class, the sense after the financial crisis that the traditional Republican establishment was pretty well corrupt and incompetent? Are these sorts of factors relevant in the US, or is it just essentially a culture war?
Robert Kagan
Well, there’s two things that I would say. One is that we all have this tendency when these things happen, to want to blame the thing that we’re always blaming for everything. So people who are upset about inequality, for instance, and the inequality produced by capitalism, want to say, yes, that’s what it is. It’s inequality that’s caused this. People who didn’t like the Iraq war say it’s the Iraq war, who caused it, etc. And I think each of these proximate causes can be pointed to. But because if you look at the historical record that these groups have appeared in so many different guises under so many different circ*mstances. The Ku Klux Klan spread like wildfire in the 1920s in America, when the American economy was booming and it was very much middle class and even upper middle class. So I’m a little bit sceptical of an overarching economic reason. And here’s where I feel like I can only speak for the United States. Here, it is impossible to separate American history from the question of race. I think race is at the bottom of this. I think the objections to American liberalism are fundamentally based on issues of race and religion and ethnicity.
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Martin Wolf
So let’s turn to the character of Donald Trump, who has emerged to, I think many people’s surprise is such a dominant political figure. Tell us a little bit about your sense of what makes him unique and uniquely successful in seizing the Republican party for his own ends, and with it creating such a passionate base and turning it into what seems to many of us a sort of cult.
Robert Kagan
Yeah, I would say Trump is the closest thing to a fascist leader that we’ve had in the United States, because the level of devotion of his supporters to him is unlike anything. You know, Reagan never enjoyed that level of support. Conservatives were constantly criticising him. FDR could not count on a solid Democratic support. And in many cases, like with the court packing. And so Trump is unique in the sense that even people who are supporting him for what they regard as religious grounds, are completely untroubled by his obvious lack of any religious principles. So they see him as a messenger of God, and therefore they don’t question what he’s like. So it’s important to remember that he introduced himself in the American political system as a white supremacist. In 2011, his number one, and really only issue at the beginning was birtherism, saying that the first American Black president was not really an American. And so in doing that, he signalled to everyone out there who cared that he was one of them. And I think that was the first attraction. He decided not to run in 2012, but he was ahead in the polls when he left. And so I think what Trump discovered was that there is a large number of Americans out there who have been basically taking their lumps in a predominantly liberal society. He has come along — like other demagogues in the past, like Huey Long or Pitchfork Ben Tillman or Joe McCarthy or the Birch movement — to play on this fundamental white insecurity. And so he has figured out that you can go a long way on that. The next question is: Why does he have so many supporters outside that hardcore movement? And that is an interesting question, which, you know, I think unfortunately, my conclusion is that they share a lot of the prejudices, even if they wouldn’t necessarily act on them in the same way. They also are fundamentally white and feel that whites are disadvantaged in American society today. And so they’re sympathetic. But more than that, to my view, they’ve lost their allegiance to the liberal system, to the American founders system. And this is not the first time that that’s happened either. Both Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, in his Lyceum speech in 1838, what they addressed particularly was the loss of fervour for the founders’ principles. We assume that everybody’s just all in. And we discovered that that’s not only are many people opposed to it, but other people are sort of indifferent. I think a lot of white American Republicans think whether they admit this to themselves or not, they’ll be fine, even if Trump is an authoritarian. And I think that’s just very unfortunate. But I think there’s no other way to explain. It’s no mystery what Trump represents. It’s no mystery the threat that he poses. I no longer believe that people don’t understand. I think they do understand and they don’t care.
Martin Wolf
And if you think that you will do perfectly well in this autocracy, and indeed it will give you low taxes, allow you to run your business the way you like, this might be seen as a perfectly reasonable, if somewhat Faustian bargain.
Robert Kagan
Right? And you look at the comments that Jamie Dimon made in Davos, and I don’t know what he thought he meant by them, but everybody took them as a signal that he was saying, we can live with Trump. Trump’s not so bad.
Jamie Dimon voice clip
When people say MAGA, they’re actually looking at people voting for Trump and they’re basically scapegoating them that you are like him. But I don’t think they’re voting for Trump because of family values. And if you just take a step back, be honest, he’s kind of right about Nato, kind of right with immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.
Martin Wolf
In February of this year, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon got people’s attention when he spoke about Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Jamie Dimon voice clip
But he wasn’t wrong about these critical issues, and that’s why they voting for him. And I think people should be a little more respectful of our fellow citizens. You should always ask the why. Not like it’s a binary thing: you’re supporting Trump, you’re not supporting Trump.
Robert Kagan
I think you’re right to say capitalism may be incompatible with authoritarianism at some level, but capitalists are not incompatible with authoritarianism. There are billionaires in China. There are rich men in Russia. I mean, you can be rich and you’ll be fine in any society.
Martin Wolf
Could you describe a little bit the impact of and the significance of the Big Lie on the election? Because to me, that seemed a very important moment in his establishment of his dominance over the party, because I use the phrase, the word Führerprinzip for the idea that the leader of a party defines what is true. And I must say, I was surprised that he could get away with that. I’m showed perhaps naivety. Would you agree that this sort of is at least a decisive symbolic moment, an indication of his complete power over the party? And are you surprised at all? Were you surprised then? Are you surprised now that he got away with it?
Robert Kagan
I mean, I’m now done being surprised, but I certainly have been surprised on numerous occasions over the last eight years, and the idea that 70 per cent of Republicans now agree that the election was stolen is surprising. Now, I actually don’t believe that they believe it. And this is, I think, where I feel like I think the polls are misleading in a way that only polls can be. People can tell you they believe something. It doesn’t mean that they believe it. I think that, as you say, they “believe” whatever Trump tells them to do. And I put “believe” in quotation marks. If Trump is saying he won the election, then he won the election. If Trump is saying the sun is not shining even though the sun is shining, then the sun is not shining. It has nothing to do with facts. They are basically expressing their allegiance. And again, I would say in a very fascist way, the leader knows and we are following him. And of course what’s driving them are not these facts or what this is or that is what’s driving them is the desire to get at the people that they think have been oppressing them, to change a system that they feel is stacked against them, etc. And Trump is that man. They see him as their hero, their defender. You know, we who are not Trump supporters tend to focus on all the ways in which he’s constantly attacking everyone. They see it in a completely different way. They see him under attack from the liberal establishment, and so they see him as a kind of David vs Goliath, and they see him as a champion. There’s all these drawings of him as Superman, as Rambo, as a strongman. And what they admire about him is his ability and willingness to tell the liberal forces to go jump in the lake, and that’s what they want. That’s how he pays them off. They don’t need, as you say, they don’t need tax breaks. They don’t need money. They don’t need anything. They need him to say those things about the people that they hate.
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Martin Wolf
So let’s then, given that, given the sort of party it is, look at what would happen in the election and afterwards. First of all, let’s consider the possibility that it’s a close election and it’s not decisively clear that he’s won. But it looks as though he’s lost. I mean, the outcome looks a bit like last time. Perhaps not to that degree towards Biden. It’s close. What happens to that?
Robert Kagan
Well, I think there are some things you can be confident of. And then there are some things you don’t know. The thing you can be confident of is he’s going to declare fraud. He’s, by the way, he declared a fraud when he won in 2016 because he thought he’d been cheated out of votes that would have given a majority. So he has challenged every presidential election he’s ever been in as being fraudulent. So he’s going to do that. Then the question is: what is the Republican party’s response to that? And I believe that whereas the Republican party was sort of like, well, I don’t know, you know, as an official matter after 2020, this time, I believe the Republican party in the main will just support him. They will be down the line. It will be a test unless they’re ready to abandon him at that moment. And I think that because the movement lives on, they won’t abandon him at that moment. So the Republican party, I think, will take almost as an official position that the election has been stolen. OK. So what are the consequences of that? I think we will see violence. I think it’s a heavily armed country. And Trump has been saying that the perpetrators of January 6th were patriots. They see themselves as patriots. And so I imagine we’ll see more patriots.
Donald Trump voice clip
The first day we get into office, we’re going to save our country, we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots. And they were unbelievable patriots and are. You see the spirit just cheering the cheering while they’re doing that. And they did that in prison. And it’s a disgrace in my opinion.
Robert Kagan
The other interesting thing and this is something that I get into in the book, which is the possibility of secession or nullification. It’s been a long time since we had a state. Although Texas is engaged in a form of nullification right now by trying to take over border responsibilities, which are the federal government’s. But certainly in the 19th century, there was the full secession movement that was the civil war. But then there were repeated threats of secession. Andrew Jackson had to threaten to send troops into South Carolina, etc. Our system hasn’t changed. It’s the same system. At the end of the day, it is still — even though the constitution suggests that you can’t get out — the fact is, the country was formed by a voluntary association of the states, and it is easy enough for a state to say we don’t recognise this government. And that’s what I wonder whether that might happen, because if you have Republican-dominated states, Republican governor and Republican legislature, a state like Wyoming or something similar, they could easily say, we don’t recognise the federal government. We’re taking control of federal offices, etc. Sure. Then the federal government could send troops, it could cut them off, etc, etc. But I wonder whether that would in fact happen. So I think it’s possible we could have a real whether you want to call it secession or nullification crisis, on top of the potential violence, on top of the fact that the Republican party as an official function is declaring that the election was not fair.
Martin Wolf
Is it plausible in that situation that the president, who would be Joe Biden at this stage, would be unable to rely on the armed forces and other key elements of the federal state? But that would be the most important to defend the federal government and the unity of the country.
Robert Kagan
It’s a good question, and I don’t know what the answer is. And I know that if you had someone from the US military here right now, they would say, of course they’re gonna obey their commander-in-chief. But that is an interesting question. But I think I question whether even long before you get that, whether that’s something even Biden would want to do. I mean, it’s a big step to talk about sending troops into states. That’s why I think it’s more dangerous than it might otherwise seem. Just because I don’t think Joe Biden will want to send in the troops, I think he will try to reason with them. I think they’ll be . . . But now we’re in the area of just pure speculation. I do think whatever will be true in answer to your question, your basic question, it will be a perilous moment. We will be in a constitutional crisis and I don’t know what the outcome will be.
Martin Wolf
But you are talking about a potential civil war situation.
Robert Kagan
I mean, it doesn’t have to be a civil war. As I say, it could be a civil conflict, short of war. I don’t think that Wyoming’s gonna take up arms against the United States. And as I say, I don’t think the United States will send troops in the Wyoming. But I do think we will be at a kind of an impasse. And it’ll make for an interesting several months, at the very least, while we try to straighten it all out. In terms of world affairs, for instance, a world would have to watch the United States be even more self-absorbed than usual.
Martin Wolf
Well, we’ll come to that in a moment. The global implications of all this, which are obviously very profound. Now look at the alternative, that it is actually clear or accepted that Trump won the election and he becomes president again. There is now a project in the Heritage Foundation to transform the whole basis of American governance. Take us through what you think a second Trump term might look like, and what its implications will be for the US and also for the world.
Robert Kagan
Well, in addition, there’s the most recent Time magazine interview with Trump — which you should take a look at if you haven’t looked at it already — because in it, he reiterates a lot of these things that people have been fretting about that he would do, including using the military to deport immigrants, which is currently not legal. And I would say that’s something to keep an eye on, because it’ll be very popular in very large portions of the United States to do anything you want to immigrants. That’s the way the mood is right now. And so to start using the military for that purpose, to me, as an opening wedge for using the military in all kinds of purposes. We already know from his first term that he wanted to use the military. You know, any president, when they come into office, they find out that the one thing that they can control without asking permission is the US military. They can do a lot with the US military as the commander-in-chief. I feel like he also wanted to do a lot with the Homeland Security Office and use that as a domestic force as well, and was resisted by the people who were running Homeland Security at the time, but will not be resisted in a second term. And that’s part of the big difference, is that when Trump came to power in 2016, he had no entourage. He had no group. He didn’t come with the usual number of people around you, so he had to take what was out there, who were people, who were not his people. This time they will be his people. Project 2025, in addition to some of the other things, is pretty clear on its desire to make America a Christian nation. Certainly, a lot of people involved in it talk about that. Trump has talked about turning the Justice Department and making sure that it has an anti-Christian bias office to go look after anti-Christian bias, and that it will be more defending of white people than it has been. And so it could be that it’s not obvious right away what the problems are. But I think if you have what is fundamentally a white nationalist and white Christian nationalist movement in charge in the government under Trump, that will lead to some substantial changes in our society. And I think people are very sanguine about that prospect, and they’re not imagining. You know, if you could say to yourself, well, it’s not gonna be, you know, jackboots in the street. So what are you worried about? Sure. It’s probably not going to be jackboots in the street. It’s going to be a thousand little cuts, which really do have overall a very big impact. And then finally, I’m sorry, there’s a longer answer. But Trump himself, it’s not that he has a fully formed ideological sense of what it means to be a dictator. He just wants what he wants. And in wanting what he wants, he will be violating the constitution left and right, as he attempted to do when he wanted to make sure that he was still president after 2020.
Martin Wolf
And what about the guardrails in this situation? He will want to use the Department of Justice against people he regards as difficult. Maybe media bosses, maybe others who are significant. There’s the Supreme Court, the judiciary broadly defined. Is there any chance that these core institutions of government, states you already mentioned on the other side, we’re now talking about states on the other side. The judiciary, broadly defined, would actually be able to put up or be willing or interested in putting up any serious resistance to some of what you described.
Robert Kagan
I mean, it’s possible, of course, that that could happen. But I would say the trends that we’re seeing right now suggest that those guardrails may not be as powerful as we would like to think. If Trump is elected, he will have done so by defying the American court system. He will have gotten away with what appear to be some pretty obvious crimes, because, you know, the Supreme Court has clearly stepped in to prevent him being prosecuted on immunity decision. They clearly have worked it so that we’re not gonna have that trial. Are we supposed to believe that once he’s president, that’s when they’re really going to get tough? I mean, you’ve clearly have at least four justices who seem to me to be down with Trump, no matter what he does, who believe in that. And by the way, some of them who are, in my opinion, anti-liberal themselves. Justice Neil Gorsuch talks about the so-called separation of church and state. And I think Clarence Thomas is pretty clearly anti-liberal in that regard. So I don’t think we can rely on the court to stop him. We know we can’t rely on Congress to stop him. And I don’t think we’re going to be able to rely on those alleged adults in the room that were there in the first term, because there won’t be any adults in the room in a second term. So this is what I find worrying. And this is why I feel like even if we don’t know for sure what Trump is gonna do, the warning signs are flashing red all over the place. And therefore, to support him at this point means there’s more going on than your reading of the situation.
Martin Wolf
So tell us what this means for us outside. I mean, the US has been the dominant liberal power since 1941, arguably potentially, obviously long before that, it shaped the world in the direction we know. It has a huge alliance system. It remains with its allies, the dominant economic force in the world and military force. But it’s facing some very big enemies, opponents against whom particularly China, that Trump envies, there’s the war in Ukraine. And then there’s the whole fragile situation of democracy in the rest of the world. So what does this sort of term in the US mean in terms of both the symbolism for democracy and the practical impact on the balance of forces in the world?
Robert Kagan
Well, the symbolism is clear. I mean, the American people will have been faced with a choice, which includes someone who is what we would call an isolationist. I think Trump is, as a matter of temperament, an isolationist in the sense that he has no allies in his personal life. He doesn’t have those kinds of relationships. He doesn’t make commitments to people. Everything is transactional. Everything is about what’s benefiting him at the moment. So the regardless of what he says he will or won’t do, I think we just know that he has no feeling for the Atlantic Alliance, for the alliances in general. He doesn’t regard them as anything other than sucker jobs for the United States. So that’s a big problem. And if he wins, the faction that is gonna win with him is the isolationist faction. And some of the people that he’s close to are named into critical positions. They will be fundamentally hostile to liberalism everywhere, which means liberal allies, which means our democratic allies. And they have shown their sympathy for Vladimir Putin. So I don’t think there’s any question about what the natural tendency of a Trump administration would be. By the way, America is not gonna climb in behind its border. It’s too powerful in the world not to be a factor, but it’s going to be what I would call what I have called is more of a rogue superpower. It’s a superpower that is only interested in its own interests and really in this case specifically in the interest of its president. And so if you’re dealing with the United States under Trump, you’ll want to make sure that Trump is happy. You want to make sure you’re giving him money somehow. A lot of this is going to be about money, but otherwise no commitments. Now, there’s only one thing to be said against that, and I don’t want to go too far with it, which is this most recent vote on Ukraine showed a Republican party willing to disregard Trump on this one very important issue. Interesting. It’s pretty much the only issue they have ever really resisted him on, and I find that a little interesting. So the question is: Given the way evidently a majority of Americans feel about Russia, for instance, can Trump really ignore that? Even as a dictator, dictators can’t ignore what their people think. They don’t. So there might be some check on the most extreme version of Trumpism. That would be the positive spin. The negative spin is that the very Republicans who voted for Ukraine legislation this time wouldn’t do it if Trump were president, because the price then would be obvious and very high if he decided to go after them. So I would say mostly we should assume it’s gonna be bad news in terms of if you’re an American ally, it’s gonna bad news. They’ll have to find a different way of dealing with us. It doesn’t mean he’s going to necessarily turn on everybody, those who can bring him money, as I say, he may be more interested in.
Martin Wolf
So this sounds like a world-transforming event. And if you were Chinese, would you be very happy with that outcome?
Robert Kagan
I think the Chinese are nervous because I think that they really don’t know what to make of Trump. Now, I personally think that Trump is a classic bully coward, and so anybody who tries to bully him will be successful if they have the power. But the Chinese may not view it that way, and they may view the Biden administration — to borrow a Biden administration phrase — as stable and predictable. But at least they know what Biden is gonna do. You know, there are people who say that Trump has a kind of a madman capacity working for him. That’s not wrong. I think that other countries don’t know what he’ll do. If they knew him better, I think they would know. But I think the Chinese are nervous about it. I think they’d rather stick with Biden, quite honestly.
Martin Wolf
So if Trump wins and operates in the way you’ve described, is that the end of the American constitutional liberal experiment, or is it possible that, you know, Trump will actually only have one more term, that he won’t be able to bypass the constitution? He is a unique figure that after this experience, with any plausible electoral process, the Americans won’t try that again. And horrific though it will be and disturbing, it’s an interlude in the story. Or is it actually the moment when I see where the Roman republic became the Roman empire and it’s gone. And with it, this whole dream which America is built about, about a society built on the principle of equality and freedom.
Robert Kagan
I mean, as we say, that’s the $64mn question, and I don’t think anybody can pretend to know the answer. You certainly could say that a country that has only known a democratic tradition is ultimately going to go back to that tradition, so that even if there is a dictatorship or a quasi-dictatorship or whatever Trump is going to be, that over time things will return to the mean and the mean in the United States that there is no pre-democratic United States as opposed to other countries. So you could say that. On the other hand, we also haven’t had this experience in the United States before. We haven’t had a president trying to really change the system and become a dictator. And we haven’t had the victory of this movement since the anti-liberals controlled the Democratic party in the 19th century. And so it’s hard to predict. And there’s a lot of damage that can be done to the nature of the system. By the way, with or without a Trump victory, clearly the nation is in big . . . we’ve got big problems in terms of the cohesiveness of our ideology. And so I think that’s going to continue to be a problem. But I’m not here to say it’s the end. It’s over. I think even if Athens return to democracy under threat of bullies after overthrowing various tyrannies, etc, so it’s hard to say. But I don’t want to go there, you know, I don’t want to find out. And I would rather not have to go through this process.
Martin Wolf
I tell you, I hope Mr Biden wins.
Robert Kagan
I’m certainly hoping Mr Biden wins. And by the way, not because I think Biden is the greatest candidate. Everybody’s aware of his flaws, including him. And I think if it weren’t that he was running against Trump, he wouldn’t be running. But I think in this situation, the downside risk as they say of a Trump victory, is so enormous that I don’t understand how anybody who values our system could make that choice.
Martin Wolf
Bob Kagan, thank you very much.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Though Bob Kagan is, as he put it, dumb being surprised, I still have the capacity to be shocked by what I see happening in the United States. If even some of what he talked about in our interview comes to pass — post-election violence, threats of secession, or of a thousand little cuts splitting the fabric of America — the world will look a very different place from the one we’ve taken for granted for decades. Whether this turns into a permanent change, or one where the damage could be undone, is something I’ll be discussing with my next guest, the author and journalist Anne Applebaum.
Anne Applebaum voice clip
I essentially think now and for the rest of my life, this will be a constant and permanent threat. There’s not going to be a moment when we all say, oh, it’s OK now, you know, we can go back to the end of history and everything’s fine.
Martin Wolf
I’m Martin Wolf, and you’ve been listening to my series Democracy’s Year of Peril. It was produced by Sandra Kanthal. The sound engineer was Nigel Appleton and the executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
