If Trump wins, so will China

For the liberal-democratic order to endure, Western countries must defend the principles of their success

COMMENT | CHRIS PATTEN | During the darkest days of World War II, as young British pilots valiantly fought the Luftwaffe over southern England and German forces prepared to invade the British Isles, Prime Minister Winston Churchill took on the task of boosting his fellow citizens’ morale, offering them a brighter future to look forward to.

To this end, Churchill’s inspirational wartime speeches occasionally featured a poem he likely encountered at Harrow School in the late nineteenth century. The poem, authored by Arthur Hugh Clough, a scholar who had served as an assistant to Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, urged people to reject the notion that fighting for good was futile. It concluded with the phrase, “Westward, look, the land is bright.”

Churchill, whose affinity for the United States was influenced by his American-born mother, confidently asserted that the U.S. would continue to uphold liberal-democratic values in the face of the totalitarian Nazi threat. Implicit in this declaration was the hope that, if necessary, the U.S. would come to the aid of the United Kingdom and other Western European liberal democracies.

When we look west today, however, we see dark, lowering clouds on the horizon. Should former U.S. President Donald Trump win November’s presidential election, there is no guarantee that he would defend NATO or champion liberal-democratic values, as his predecessors did. Similarly, there is little hope that Ukraine could rely on his support, given that the Republican Party’s leader prefers authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin to America’s democratic allies.

For many years, “the West” has been used as a shorthand for liberal-democratic societies worldwide. Historically, U.S. presidents have served as the de facto leaders of this alliance, formal and informal, all united by shared values and principles. But the growing possibility of a Trump return to the White House in 2025 calls into question the stability of this coalition.

Can the Western democratic alliance endure an American president who does not believe in free and fair elections? Trump, who is currently facing four criminal indictments and 91 felony charges, appears to regard the rule of law as a means of settling scores with his critics and perceived enemies, rather than as a fundamental pillar of democratic governance. If he were to be elected, there is little doubt that his second term would put the U.S. on the path to authoritarian rule.

As the Western and Chinese governance models compete for global dominance, a potential Trump victory could tip the balance toward the latter. In their insightful recent book The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung argue that China’s president does not propose an alternative to the postwar liberal international order. Instead, Xi’s strategy is rooted in his vision of China as a Leninist one-party state ruled by a single leader – himself.

Consequently, Xi’s domestic political interests consistently overshadow any notion of global responsibility. He embraces the Confucian concept of the “Mandate of Heaven,” according to which rulers derive legitimacy from divine selection, and he expects his regime to be treated with the same deference accorded to imperial China at its peak.

Moreover, Xi has repeatedly touted China’s authoritarian system as a governance model for others to emulate. He believes that when countries, particularly those in the Global South, are presented with a choice, they will find the Chinese model more attractive than Western-style democracy. This could well be the case if Trump wins in November and heads an administration plagued by corruption and chaos.

For the liberal-democratic order to endure, Western countries must defend the principles that have underpinned their success during nearly 80 years of relative peace and prosperity. But it is not enough to fight for these values in Ukraine, East Asia, or the Middle East; they must be upheld domestically as well. As Adlai Stevenson, a two-time Democratic presidential candidate who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations between 1961 and 1965, famously said, “We cannot be any stronger in our foreign policy – for all the bombs and guns we may heap up in our arsenals – than we are in the spirit which rules inside the country.”

Trump clearly does not share this sentiment, and neither do his fellow Republicans, almost all of whom seem to have forsaken their principles or, at the very least, concealed them to save their own political futures. Those of us who live outside the U.S. and admire its achievements and founding principles pray that Americans make the right choice when they cast their ballots in November. Then, and only then, will we be able to declare, with the same confidence as Churchill, “Westward, look, the land is bright.”

*****

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, is Chancellor of the University of Oxford and the author of ‘The Hong Kong Diaries’ (Allen Lane, 2022).

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.