Trump Won Battle & Lost The War: India Must Prepare For A Clinton Presidency

It is now all over bar the shouting – of which there will be a lot of post 8 November, the date of the US Presidential election. The world, and especially India, will have to prepare for a Hillary Clinton presidency.

The world will heave a sigh of relief that it will be dealing with a known devil; India will have to deal with the possibility that America will elect someone who is part of the consensus that worsened the situation for the world, especially the rise of violent Islamists and crumbling regimes.

We also have to live with the suspicion that Donald Trump may have been better for us, given that he brought with him some refreshing new ideas on how to change the world, including how to deal with Pakistan and how to work constructively with Russia.

For India, the reality is clear: we have to build bridges to Clinton before it is too late. While this writer believes that Trump did quite well in the last of the presidential debates yesterday (19 October in US, 20th morning for India), it will make no difference to the electoral outcome.

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is losing largely to himself. His voter base has remained solid, but his ultra-misogynist statements have alienated women in general. And the fact that his opponent is a woman enabled her to shift the focus from her own shortcomings to his. It is difficult to see women voting for Trump even if they badly dislike Clinton. When serious misogyny is the issue, you don’t vote for the man believed to be practising it when his opponent is a woman.

In the third presidential debate, Trump held his own, even though a CNN poll later put Clinton ahead by 52-39. But here’s the interesting bit. After the first debate on 27 September, Clinton was said to have won 62-27. In the second, she won 57-34, and in the third 52-39. Can you see the pattern? In every succeeding debate, Clinton is seen to have won by lower margins while Trump gains. But the polls probably do not matter for most people may have made up their minds. In national polls Clinton leads by 6.5 percent over Trump, according to RealClearPolitics poll averages.

The third debate went into several topics: who has better plans for the economy, immigration, the judiciary, dealing with foreign hotspots (Syria, Iraq, etc), the possibilities of a rigged election, and Russian hacking into Clinton’s emails (read the highlights here).

But the Trump reply that dominated news analysis immediately after the debate, and which will continue for a while, was his indication that he is not obliged to accept the election results in advance, thus indicating that he may dispute it later. His answer to a question on whether he would accept the electoral verdict was neutral: “I will look at it at the time. I am not looking at anything now.”

Such a statement would not be amiss in India, where candidates and parties often allege rigging and people not being allowed to vote, but in America this statement is considered sacrilege, a slur on their democratic values and peaceful handover of power. The media went to town over it, claiming Trump was alleging the elections won’t be fair.

Perhaps Trump could have given a better answer, something which went like this: “I will accept the verdict, assuming there is no rigging on 8 November.” But he said “I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?”

But to an Indian, Trump’s statement hardly sounds outrageous, given that allegations of unfair means are made by almost every party in every election. But, in the end, the reputation of the Election Commission has only gone up in recent years. Not so in America, where it is the states that conduct elections, and that too each in its own way.

The American system of voting is outdated, with at least one election – George Bush versus Al Gore in 2000 - depending on how you counted “hanging chads”. The matter was ultimately decided in the courts even though Gore actually won the popular vote.

Even today, America has a pathetic and disparate voting system, with multiple methods being adopted. There are states using paper votes; there are states which use paper ballots with optical devices recording the votes directly on a computer; yet others use ballot marking devices and punch cards. Not for nothing did the Brennan Center for Justice note that most voting machines were over 10 years old, with some machines being so old that replacement parts are difficult to find. Some state election officials wondered where they would get the money to fix their voting machines.

If this is the state of voting in the world’s oldest democracy, while the world’s biggest, India, has moved on to 100 percent electronic voting machines, one wonders if some parts of the voting may not be suspect.

Trump may have done himself some damage with this statement, but it is difficult to say how much. If he keeps asserting the voting may be unfair, is it not possible that his own voters may stay at home? The only situation in which his remarks may sound prophetic is if Clinton does not get 270 electoral votes to get elected outright. RealClearPolitics gives Clinton 260 electoral votes to Trump’s 170, 10 short of the halfway mark, before toss-up states are decided. It is unlikely that Clinton will not win even one toss-up state, when many are tilting her way. If there are no toss-ups, Clinton wins hands down 333-205. But if Clinton does fall short, the election shifts to the House of Representatives, and there it may be depend on party clout. Currently, Republicans dominate Congress. Trump has an outside chance only in this event, but it’s a 1 in 100 possibility. So his decision to doubt the electoral outcome in advance seemed unlikely to be of help. However, they do define what Trump is all about.

On Clinton’s allegations that the emails were leaked due to Russian hacking, Trump seemed uncomfortable acknowledging the point that Russia may well be interested in damaging Clinton. She is decidedly anti-Vladimir Putin. The tragedy is that Trump actually seemed to have a better policy on Russia and Putin – a promise to work with Putin rather than against him. Under President Obama and, possibly under a future Hillary Clinton presidency, America seems to be working under the assumption that the cold war isn’t over.

The Obama administration has put Putin in the enemy category instead of dealing with him as the head of a nuclear superpower and permanent member of the Security Council who may have something meaningful to contribute to world peace and the capping of Islamist violence. If America can work with a backward state like Saudi Arabia, a terrorist state like Pakistan, or a hegemonic power like China, one wonders why it can’t work with a Putin, even assuming he is an autocratic ruler and possibly backed by oligarchs. There are more US billionaires backing Clinton than Trump.

This US-Russia schism has played a major role in the rise of Islamic State, with Russia backing regimes that the Americans are targeting, creating more chaos. Moreover, this treatment of Putin has pushed Russia into China’s willing arms, something that will cost the US some loss of global clout. In its long-term fight with China for global supremacy, a Russia on China’s side is worse for the US than a neutral Putin.

Overall, though, this is the reality: Trump won the debate on points, but lost the war hollow, and possibly the election.

This reality is important for countries like India to absorb, which face terrorism from a next-door neighbour, and also a bully in China. India’s diplomacy with a Clinton administration needs more work than with a Trump presidency. We should focus on the following issues:

One, the Modi government needs to emphasise that a US-Russia-India-Japan-EU coalition will contain China and Islamic terrorism better than a situation where US slots Putin as an enemy and pushes Putin into China’s arms and forces him to help rogue nations to keep American influence out.

Two, the US has to lean harder on Pakistan both to control anti-India terror and to prevent it from sliding permanently into China’s embrace. India could also seek gentle support for human rights in Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and emphasise the fallacy that Pakistan can be appeased by making concessions on Kashmir.

Three, while India will up its purchases of military and high-tech hardware from the US, this depends on how much of the technology will be transferred and enable India to make more of its defence equipment at home.

Four, we need the US to marshall more support for our entry into the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, especially by overcoming China’s blackball in some way. However, we have to realise that ultimately this will happen only when China feels the need to recognise India’s rise as inevitable.

Five, of course, the economic cooperation that deepened under Bush and Obama needs to further enhanced.

Modi has his work cut out. It would have been far easier under Trump.