American allies are alarmed by the confusion and associated legal questions which presently define the U.S. presidential election.
Speaking to the BBC, a former Conservative Party government minister, Jeremy Hunt, offered a veiled condemnation of President Trump’s threat to go to the Supreme Court to stop vote counting. Behind the scenes, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government is watching nervously to see what happens next. As with the vast majority of U.S. allies, Britain would prefer a Biden victory to a Trump reelection.
But what has been the media reaction in the capitals of America’s closest allies?
Like Hunt, Canada’s CBC News is focused on Trump’s effort to see the Supreme Court suspend vote counting. There is more fear-mongering here than actual legal analysis.
In France, the media reaction has been one of shock over Biden’s failure to secure victory (that said, Ben Haddad, a French commentator in Washington, did offer an amusing riposte of the New York Times). A columnist for Germany’s influential Der Spiegel magazine declared that Trump’s “coup” had failed for now, in that votes are still being counted. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun has stayed analytical, considering why the pollsters got the 2020 election so badly wrong, again.
Perhaps the most alarmist take came from Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald. Its America correspondent warned, “The foundations of America’s centuries-old democracy are shaking. … Rather than delivering clarity, election night only plunged a fractured nation into deeper uncertainty. Are its democratic institutions — the Congress, the courts, the election systems — able to withstand what is coming?”
I would suggest that the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.” Regardless, the key here is that America’s closest friends want the same thing as most Americans: quick certainty as to the election’s definitive outcome. Their rationale is well placed. Enduring doubt over this election will create political and physical space for adversaries to act in America’s distraction — the Russians are almost certainly preparing to take advantage in some fashion.
But more than that, our allies fear that doubt over this election will seep into the broader partisanship that has come to define American politics in recent years. They worry that as this partisanship grows, America will turn in on itself rather than, as it has for the past 79 years, stood for the defense of liberal values and security around the world.
