Who would other world leaders have voted for in the US presidential election?
Agreat deal of decision-making on the part of world leaders was on hold until the result of the US election became clear.
The camp rooting for Democratic candidate Joe Biden is led by China and Iran. It is joined by several European countries, who saw Donald Trump’s presidency as a menace to Nato. A number of Arab states, on the other hand, were reassured by the Trump administration’s reset of their relationship with the US, which was restored after former president Barack Obama’s U-turn in favour of Iran, Turkey and their common project to impose religion on the state.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could never forget the support afforded by Mr Obama, Mr Biden (who was then vice president and is now president-elect), and former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton for his project to install the Muslim Brotherhood in power throughout North Africa. However, in spite of the venomous rhetoric frequently traded between Turkey and the US, he has also enjoyed a close personal relationship with Donald Trump, which has saved him more than once. It saved him even when he sought to acquire the S-400 missile defence system from Russia, much to the US government’s ire, and forged relations with the Russia’s Vladimir Putin, though these recently deteriorated.
Mr Putin prefers Mr Trump to Mr Biden, who the Russians see as a threat for the likelihood that he will reinvigorate Nato. The likelihood that Mr Biden could lift sanctions on Iran could also impact oil prices in a way that could hurt the Russian economy further. Fear of the Democrats’ retribution for Russia’s alleged role in meddling in the 2016 US elections also looms large.
All of these leaders build their policies, to a great extent, based on a US president’s identity. At the same time they have to balance that strategy with an awareness that the US is led not only by the presidency, but also the legislative branch.
There is also Wall Street, which this year remarkably dropped their traditional support for the Republican Party in favour of Mr Biden.
Iran is more invested in a Biden presidency because of the JCPOA nuclear deal it signed with the US, along with European powers. The Obama administration had made the JCPOA a priority at a heavy cost, including the deliberate abandonment of Syria to Iran, Russia and Turkey.
Mr Biden and much of his team, who were complicit in Mr Obama’s abandonment of Syria, have said that they would automatically return the US to the JCPOA and undo Mr Trump’s withdrawal from that deal. The Biden camp believes this is the easiest and quickest foreign policy victory it could achieve – a “master stroke” that would restore warmth to US relations with Europe.
One problem, however, lies in the question of how to resume negotiations with Tehran in a way that accounts for Iran’s missile programme and its role in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. A Biden administration must also assess how it could ease sanctions on Iran when they have been enshrined in law, given that Republicans may continue to control the Senate. The Biden camp’s interest in returning to the JCPOA without thinking too hard about these issues is good news to Iran. That’s why Tehran sees value in “strategic patience”.
The same could be said of China, a tentative ally of Iran. Beijing sees defeating Mr Trump as a strategic goal and sees Mr Biden a softer alternative. The socialist tendencies of some sections of the Democratic Party also bodes well, even while Mr Biden has the backing of Wall Street. While New York’s financiers are no ideological bedfellows with Beijing, they have been disturbed by Mr Trump’s open hostility to Chinese investment and the unpredictable impact of his capricious tweets on US financial markets.
Russia, which prefers Mr Trump to Mr Biden even though it is a signatory to the JCPOA, is concerned about the prospect of sanctions relief for Iran. Allowing Iran to resume pumping oil into global markets could push Russian oil prices down. Mr Putin also sees Mr Trump’s shakedown of Nato as a positive. Moscow has also found itself trapped in multiple quagmires around the world, including in Syria, and does not trust Turkey’s designs there or in Libya and elsewhere. In other words, while the Russian relationship with Mr Trump’s America is difficult and complicated, but it would be even more difficult with a Biden administration.
Kevin Rudd, Australia’s former prime minister, recently remarked that, in his view, China is hedging its alliances between Arab states and Iran. “Its strategy is along these lines: be friends to all, be enemies of none until someone finds you out and then duck for cover,” Mr Rudd said.
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki al Faisal flipped that logic on its head. “What I’m afraid of is that actually … the Iranians will two-time the Chinese, in the sense that they will get all the benefits and the Chinese will get nothing in return for that strategic engagement”.
Prince Turki also said that Arab Gulf countries will not be radically impacted by either Chinese-Iranian relations or the outcome of the US election. “Arab countries,” he said, “will have to take into consideration that a Biden administration is emanating from an Obama administration, but not necessarily bound by Obama’s implementation of his of his foreign policy, particularly on issues like the JCPOA and other issues in the area.
“Biden has said that he will go back to the JCPOA, but that he will have conditions …We still don’t know what those conditions are, but he talked about Iranian missile production and also Iranian malign activity in the area.”
World leaders are thus drawing various scenarios for the US election result. Either way, Donald Trump will remain president until January, and a lot could happen until then. In the meantime, the presidents, prime ministers and supreme leaders of other nations will continue to hold their breath.
World leaders build their foreign policies, to a great extent, based on the identity of the person in the White House