In a year which Time Magazine called “perhaps the election year”, when at least 64 countries representing nearly 50% of the global population are meant to hold national elections, the most important of all these elections remains the US presidential election. We have already seen the results of elections in major countries across the world, some with surprising and potentially far-reaching implications such as in India, Indonesia, France and Mexico, to name a few, but the US presidential election, scheduled for November, will take the spotlight.
And while we have seen great drama already in the results of some of these elections, it is difficult to beat the Americans in the 2024 election. It is almost as if some major TV network were scripting a reality show around this election. In the past weeks, we have seen the Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden go terribly for Biden, followed by calls for Biden to step aside given his age and his alleged declining abilities, followed by an assassination attempt on Trump’s life, followed by Biden withdrawing his candidacy, and the rise of Kamala Harris, the current vice-president, as the presumptive Democratic party candidate for the election.
It almost feels like a TV series, with a cliffhanger each week. And certainly, heading all the way to November, with Harris’ vice-president candidate yet to be named, and with rumours that Trump may be less than enamoured with his current running mate, J D Vance, the series will keep everyone glued to their TV sets, like a modern day Game of Thrones with the Oval Office instead of the Iron Throne as the prize. Honestly, at this point, US politics has reached, at least for me, what sportswriter Bill Simmons calls the “Tyson Zone” (named after boxer Mike Tyson) — it has become so unpredictable that nothing can happen that would shock or surprise the general public (or at least me).
Naturally, whatever happens with the US election will impact the rest of the world. For instance, should Trump come to power, and should he manage to also have the Senate and the House red, US fiscal policy is likely to escalate exponentially. This flood of expansionary policy will no doubt be inflationary, then necessitating interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve — or at least a greater reluctance to cut already high rates — strengthening the US dollar and impacting currencies worldwide. This would be less of a problem if the US were still focused on advancing globalisation — which was the case for much of the post-World War II era — but it is becoming increasingly insular, attempting to capture more domestic production and consumption.
At the same time, the circus that is the US has led some to argue that its power is waning and that its position globally has somewhat eroded. There is some truth to this, for sure, but just as Boromir said at the Council of Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, “Gondor wanes, you say. But Gondor stands, and even at the end of its strength, it is still very strong.” We should not get caught in a binary mindset where the US is either strong or weak. Many of the aspects that have driven its status as a global hegemon remain relatively intact. For instance, it remains a place where innovation happens consistently due to its military spending, its attractiveness as a destination for high-skilled (and less-skilled) migration, its tremendous funding for research universities, among others.
But the rest of the world is catching up. And the rest of the world is preparing for the rather inescapable reality that regardless of whether Trump or Harris emerges as the next American president, the insular turn of the US is still likely to continue, particularly in their attempts to stave off China as a challenger to US “hegemony”. And so we do see some commentary that the world is “deglobalising”, but that is, in my view, a pretty Western-centric perspective. Because while it is true that the US and maybe parts of Europe are becoming more insular, the rest of the world is not.
It is in this vein that Malaysia is attempting to join the BRICS organisation (founded by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), further enhancing South-South cooperation. Chinese firms, as we have heard, have been seeking new shores for themselves, both as a matter of geopolitical risk diversification, as well as a matter of searching for new markets. Countries like Brazil and South Africa have played more prominent roles in global politics, stepping to the fore in what they view as a void in leadership by higher-income, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development-type countries.
Therefore, it is not really that the entire world is “deglobalising”, it is probably more accurate to think of today’s situation as a reordering of globalisation, with greater prioritisation by countries in the Global South on their fellow countries in the Global South. Malaysia must also figure out how to navigate these new waters. The attempt to deepen engagement with BRICS is encouraging, but even cooperation with BRICS nations must be but one of Malaysia’s many new foreign policy strategies.
When there is a global hegemon, such as in the case of the US in, really, the 1970s until maybe the 2000s, there may have been more “order” in global geopolitics. The US has made full use of that “order” to strengthen its own position, most evidently in the continued prominence of the greenback as the global reserve currency. But when the world becomes more multipolar, it therefore becomes less structured, and a more structured, well-thought-out foreign policy becomes more crucial.
A quote in the movie Lincoln, in which Daniel Day Lewis plays Abraham Lincoln, comes to mind here. In the movie, Lincoln says, “A compass, I learnt while I was surveying, it’ll point you true north from where you’re standing but it’s got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp … what’s the use of knowing true north?”
The implications for Malaysia are as follows. Whatever happens with global politics following the year of elections — especially with the US presidential election — navigating the waters of global policy means navigating “swamps, deserts and chasms”. First, we must know what our “True North” is regarding our foreign policy. I sense that a sense of continued neutrality lies at the core of this, where Malaysia remains open to cooperate with like-minded nations. But as Lincoln argued, it’s not enough to know your True North. How do we get there amid the greater entropic situation in which the world finds itself?