Looking ahead, through the mist

 Translation of yesterday’s opinion piece I published in Diário de Notícias (Lisbon). 22 Aug. 2020

 

Back to the imponderables

Victor Angelo

 

The great challenge in our societies is to find and support the rise of leaders who are realistic, transformative, and convincing. This challenge is pressing today. With the summer vacation approaching its end, and as we look at the four months left to complete the year we cannot find it strange that many of us are apprehensive. We see a high tide of trouble and a low of international leadership. No current leader can go beyond the limits of his parish and propose an encouraging and credible perspective regarding what lies ahead.

The world scene will continue to be marked by the Covid-19 pandemic and, to a large extent, by American domestic politics. Not to mention other complications in our geopolitical neighbourhood, such as the growing tension between Europe and Turkey, now in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, plus the endless conflicts and difficulties in the Middle East and the Sahel, starting with Mali. A list of concerns that is constantly growing and which now includes Belarus, thanks to the dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a reminiscence of Soviet times and of what the single party culture has produced as political monsters. Not forgetting, of course, the fractures within our European area, which is very fragile as a whole and with several national crises already visible or in the pipeline, as will be the case with Bulgaria and, for other reasons, Italy, where there is a very acute social malaise. The pandemic is a global inferno to which a number of local fires are added. The wisdom will be to understand what all this entails as consequences and to know how to propose a different international order. To think like that seems like a mirage. But this is an exceptional moment that challenges us and demands a different vision of the future.

Regarding the presidential elections in the United States, a friend of mine told me this week that we must be patient and wait for November. He added that he had no doubts about the defeat of Donald Trump and that afterwards everything would return to normal, including in international relations. I do not take Trump's defeat for granted. Democrats should not take victory as a bean count. There are, it is true, little more than seventy days to go before the election and the forecasts are not favourable to the President. But this is a time when imponderables can happen. The more objective and attentive analysts remind us that the country is immersed in a multidimensional crisis. It is not only the chaos in the management of the pandemic, its impact on the economy or the President's widespread and flagrant ineptitude. The Trump-Covid mix is causing a deep social shake-up, structural, with racial dimensions, poverty, and despair. It undermines the system and democracy, with the radicalisation of population sectors, especially those who believe that defeating Trump would mean tightening the siege they think exists against their interests.

Donald Trump does not see himself as a loser. He will try anything and everything to reclaim the lost ground, or, in desperation, throw the chessboard down the river. We face unpredictable times. He and his people need to continue the capture of the federal administration for another four years. Some analysts think this could lead to the president playing very dangerous games for the stability of his country and the world. And they are even more concerned when they see the blind alignment of GOP leaders, who dare do nothing to counter the president.

I am one of those who think those fears are exaggerated. The American institutions are strong enough to stop any temptation from the abyss. And the rest of the world is patient enough not to fall for provocation. Including China. But the truth is the year has been a sea of unimaginable surprises. So, for the months ahead, it's best to think of the unthinkable. That would be the challenge I would launch to a couple of European centres of strategic thinking. In the meantime, we should be careful that we continue, here on this side, to work for the best, without neglecting to prepare so that we can respond to further confusion.