US Election: a view from the region

Oh yes, we're gonna talk about it

November 04, 2020

Hello friends! 

Today is the day I usually draft my premium newsletter to go out to paid readers. Who was I kidding today! I’m flicking between Twitter and various group chats, like most people, and we’ve only got so much brain space. So I’ll switch it up this week and premium readers can spend the weekend digging into the regional wrap-up. 

For us today though, let’s do something very painful and revisit the newsletter sent three days after Trump had won in 2016. Rereading any work from six months ago hurts enough but four years 😬 !

So let’s cast back to November 2016. Bersih 2.0 were planning a mass rally in Kuala Lumpur to call for the ouster of then PM Najib Razak, Singapore announced only candidates of Malay extraction would be eligible for the forthcoming presidential election and Jakarta was gripped by anti-blasphemy protests which would eventually get the head of then-governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama.  

We didn’t have too much to go off just yet. President Obama had visited Laos, a country bombed to hell by the US, as Vientiane hosted Asean that September and pledged extra funding to remove UXOs once and for all. The truly successful visit set it up for a Clinton presidency to continue the work and build and reform relationships in the region.

In practice, cuts to funding in Southeast Asia put similar programs in Vietnam at risk and Obama’s successor didn’t bother coming to Asean, the response to which hurt the feelings of some in the State Dept.

Reading back over the 2016 piece I see now there were no bold predictions, which probably just goes to show how unexpected the win was. There were no interesting Bloomberg or Asia Nikkei pieces about economic relations or foreign policy bits from the usual suspects because it was Clinton and it was just going to be the same as usual. True, President Trump did ditch the Trans-Pacific Partnership despite Japan’s best efforts to keep it afloat. And the yuan and yen did keep flowing although that would’ve happened regardless. 

I’ve been thinking a lot the last few days about what happens if Trump wins again. I think there’s a view that the US could have clamoured back some of the influence lost under him, but another four years would be irreversible. I do wonder how accurate this is. It seems reasonable to assess the situation as already done.

Earlier in the year, a very smart person from one of the larger Asean states said something along the lines of: in the battle between China and the US for leadership in the region, only one party is demanding the allegiance of each country in the Asia Pacific to pick a side. And the country making those demands will lose. 

That’s come up, again and again, this year as China’s expansionism took a back seat to the pandemic and brokering vaccine deals with the neighbourhood — and the US’s domestic collapse. It really stood out to me in this relatively recent one from Tom Allard and the Reuters team ahead of the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visiting Indonesia in October:

“The U.S uses sanctions and muscle too much,” said one Indonesian government source. “China is smart. It always uses the soft power approach, the economic approach, the development approach.”

That’s not a Trump thing. That’s a long and enduring view which has proven itself over and over for decades. 

This was supposed to be a light-ish-hearted look at how far we’ve all come in four years but I think I’ve convinced myself into the ‘terminal decline’ camp. Did I just become a Quad person??? 

Anyways, here are some election pieces from around the region. I’ve started with one from the right-leaning Manila Times earlier in October which made my jaw smash into the ground. 

Donald Trump became, to use that phrase Americans are fond of saying, the “leader of the free world” because of his hugely successful reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Americans were fooled into thinking that the tough, all-knowing chief executive officer that was Trump’s role in the show could become the tough, all-knowing CEO of the US of A. Exactly in the same way Filipinos voted for Fernando Poe Jr. thinking he was the movie hero “Panday.”

Other facets of US “democracy” proved to be obstacles to that country’s response to the pandemic. States asserted their independence from the central government and from each other — resulting in a chaotic response to the pandemic. States at the start of the pandemic even tried to outbid each other and the federal government itself to secure masks and other medical equipment needed for the pandemic.

A Biden administration would begin to redress many of these shortfalls. A long-serving member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden would spearhead a revival of the State Department. In terms of his Asia policy, Biden would preside over an updated, stiffened version of President Obama’s “pivot” or “rebalance” policy, the formulation and implementation of which will at least take regional interests more seriously. Biden’s senior advisor Anthony Blinken has promised, “President Biden will show up and engage ASEAN on critical issues.” More diplomacy doesn’t necessarily promise more effectiveness, but it will ensure that U.S. policy is more cogently formulated and reliably telegraphed to Southeast Asian capitals.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Thanh Nhan, 28, said he and his colleagues have been reading news about the elections every day since mid-October and discussing it during lunchtime.

"I enjoy talking about the differences between Trump and Biden, and many of our discussions ended up in arguments," he said. Constantly reading about the elections sometimes stressed him, "but it is an addictive habit now."

Vietnamese are also interested in the two candidates’ characters, personal lives, hobbies, and families.

"I do not know much about politics, but I like reading about Trump and his family because they are successful and united," Le Thi Hanh, 30, a housewife in Hanoi, said.

In Texas, a Republican bastion, Nguyen Le is also thinking about the American values he grew up with after fleeing to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1979. After four years of the Trump administration, the proud Reagan Republican cast his vote early for Democrat Joe Biden.

"This is not the Republican Party that I grew up with, the party I knew had compassion for all Americans," said Le, a real estate broker.

"My vote for Joe Biden is a vote against Trump also," Le said. "I was hoping Trump would rise to the occasion of the presidency and he never did. He never did anything in these past four years to sway me to give this person a chance."

Vietnamese and Filipinos are the top two Asian groups supporting Trump in 2020, according to a survey by the Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote organization. At 48%, more Vietnamese respondents indicated they would vote for Trump, up from 45% in 2016, while 52% of Filipinos said they would support Biden.

As the United States prepares for its presidential elections, the rest of the world waits to see whether Americans decide to give President Donald Trump another four years in office, or elect Democratic nominee and former vice president Joe Biden.

Why exactly do the elections in the United States matter to the rest of the world? How crucial are the results to countries across the globe amid the pandemic? What issues and policies overseas will the polls impact?

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