Whoever wins this tawdry U.S. election, we face the most perilous weeks since the Cold War

THERE are now just seven days to go in the most colourful, most outrageous, and, quite frankly, most depressing U. S. presidential election in living memory.

Seven days before the American people choose the next incumbent of still the most powerful office in the world.

And what a choice! On the one hand, Donald Trump: a boor, a braggart, a liar and a bully, a conspiracy theory made flesh, a man who has openly invited Russian hackers to leak secret files about his opponent and refuses to say if he will accept the result if he loses.

No wonder so many people accuse him of being merely a puppet for the Russian President Vladimir Putin. After all, could any Russian scientist have come up with a more convincing embodiment of every cruel stereotype of the ‘ugly American’?

And then you have Hillary Clinton: tired, tarnished and shopworn, a woman seemingly incapable of giving a straight answer to a simple question.

She may be one of the most experienced candidates ever to run for the Oval Office, but if she serves a full two terms, she will be almost 80 upon leaving.

And even if she wins — as polls suggest she will — she will take office hobbled by the legal investigation into her private emails, which was dramatically reopened at the end of last week.

In that case, it will probably not be long before her opponents call for a major investigation led by a special prosecutor, which could destroy her presidency before it has even begun.

Tragedy

The choice, therefore, lies between a paranoid, bullying, posturing President Trump, who could prove a Russian puppet, and a tainted, indecisive and politically crippled President Clinton, who could easily end up on the wrong side of a criminal investigation.

Either way, the chances of decisive American leadership seem almost non-existent.

For the Western world, the decline of U.S. power is nothing less than a tragedy. Yes, our Atlantic cousins have not always wielded their power wisely. They have not been perfect. But then, what country ever has?

Much as we in Britain like to moan about our American friends, we need them. Indeed, the world needs them, for without American leadership, the Western alliance is nothing.

Throughout the dark years of the Cold War, it was U.S. leadership that held the alliance together, from Harry Truman and John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

Alas, there has always been a streak of isolationism at the heart of the American dream: a belief in the United States as a ‘shining city on a hill’, standing aloof from the dangerous complications of the Old World.

And since the debacle of George W. Bush’s adventure in Iraq, the American people have turned ever further inwards.

As president, Barack Obama has cut a graceful, decent and intelligent figure. But he has not been a leader.

His mantra, by his own account, has been ‘Don’t do stupid s***’. Fair enough. But, too often, it has seemed more like ‘Don’t do anything at all’.

It is more than two years since Mr Putin’s forces seized Crimea and poured over the Ukrainian border to support pro-Russian secessionists in war- torn Donetsk and Luhansk.

Yet, even though this put Russian forces on the border of Europe, Mr Obama’s response could hardly have been weaker. Our leaders can talk about sanctions all they like, but those sanctions have done nothing to dissuade Mr Putin from his increasingly aggressive path.

Indeed, for all his fine words, Mr Obama has not even provided strong rhetorical leadership.

Remember John F. Kennedy, who went to Berlin and intoned ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’? Or Ronald Reagan, who followed him to the German city and told his Soviet antagonist: ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’

Where has Mr Obama been? Where was his ringing denunciation of Soviet adventurism in Ukraine? Who can remember his blistering words about the brutal bombing of Syria?

The answers, respectively, are ‘nowhere’ and ‘nobody’.

Disturbing

In historical terms, the quality of today’s Western leadership is astonishingly poor. Mr Obama has been no Roosevelt or Reagan, just as Angela Merkel is no Konrad Adenauer ( Germany’s first post-war Chancellor, who led the country from ruin to prosperity) or Helmut Kohl.

(As for Francois Hollande, a comparison with Charles de Gaulle would simply be unkind.)

But behind all this lies an even more disturbing trend. Perhaps not since the Thirties has Western democracy itself been at a lower ebb.

It is telling Mr Trump refuses to say whether he will accept the result of the election, just as it is revealing that so many people refuse to accept the result of the Brexit referendum.

For not only have we lost a sense of Western solidarity in the face of tyranny, we have also lost a sense of the sacredness of the democratic process.

Once, it would have been unimaginable for a major U.S. presidential candidate to question the process itself. But in a nation crippled by division, blind to anything but its own discontent, Mr Trump’s disregard for democracy is merely a symptom of a deeper malaise.

American democracy — once an inspiration to the world, and a beacon of freedom during the Cold War — has never been in a tawdrier condition.

By contrast, Mr Putin’s domestic popularity has rarely been higher. And as a man who knows his history, he surely remembers what happened 60 years ago this week, when, with the West distracted by the Suez crisis and with President Dwight Eisenhower absorbed by his re-election campaign, the Red Army rolled into Budapest to crush a Hungarian uprising.

Back in 1956, the Hungarians were fighting for freedom. They appealed to the West for help; but answer came there none.

To younger readers, this may sound like ancient history. But this week, of all weeks, it could hardly be more resonant.

For today, the West appears rudderless and divided. And while Washington dithers, the Russian president remains ruthlessly focused. Since coming to office in 2000, he has steadily strengthened his grip on power and rebuilt his nation’s standing in the world.

Like his predecessors in 1956, he has reportedly identified the U.S. election as the crucial moment of Western weakness.

According to reports, he has now ordered a final assault on Aleppo, held by rebels defying his blood- soaked client, President Bashar Al-Assad. In other circumstances, such an escalation of the Syrian conflict might raise fears of a full-blown superpower confrontation — perhaps even all-out war.

Shameful

But Mr Putin is no fool. He knows the West has no intention of moving against him, because he knows the West is weak.

In stark contrast to the pygmies contending for the White House, he is one of history’s most ruthless pragmatists. He knows the West’s weakness is Russia’s opportunity — and it is one he will not waste.

In the past few weeks, he has sent short-range missiles and motorised rifle divisions to the Baltic borders, menacingly close to the former Soviet territories of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. And as the world readies itself for seven more days of Mr Trump’s demagogic blustering and Mrs Clinton’s half-crazed grin, Mr Putin and his Syrian clients move ever closer to the final battle for Aleppo.

If he strikes — as I suspect he will — then the next few weeks could prove the most perilous since the end of the Cold War. The security of the West may well hang in the balance.

And the tragedy is, in that case, it may not even matter who wins this shameful circus of a presidential election.