The end of US democracy and what this means for international relations
Once the pillar of democracy, the US now flirts with authoritarianism.
When teaching a course on US Politics and Foreign Policy, I posed a question to my students: what is the single factor that safeguards US democracy from collapsing into authoritarianism?
The answer I was fishing for was not the Constitution or the Supreme Court, it was political culture.
I asked them to consider what might happen if the US political elite no longer held basic democratic values. Without a culture that values democracy, the system’s essential laws, rules, norms and processes could be corrupted.
With the re-election of Donald Trump, what I believed was a purely hypothetical thought experiment has come to pass.
In his first term, Trump seemed to lack both respect for and understanding of the US democratic system.
In his second term he seems to have learned more about how the US democratic system works, and with the support of allies such as Russell Voight’s Project 2025 and Steven Miller’s America First Legal, he has prepared tactics and strategy to defeat this impediment.
Is US liberal democracy doomed?
I intuitively feel the system is doomed, but the social scientist in me will only claim that the most likely outcome over the next few years is the demise of the US liberal democratic system.
Unlike most Americans, I have lived in non-democratic states and witnessed the absence of true or “liberal” democracy.
Because most of us living in established democracies do not have this lived experience, there is probably less alarm and a higher assessment of the US system’s resilience than is warranted.
But once we realise the democratic system is gone, it’s too late – we can’t just vote it back in.
“There will no longer be a superpower that is also a democracy.”
As a graduate student, I lived in and travelled between Russia and Ukraine.
The main insight I take from these experiences is that the dismantling of democracy can be accomplished with a few deft moves that undermine essential democratic institutions.
A major lesson for me was Vladimir Putin’s takeover in Russia in the early 2000s. He seemed to need just two fundamental things: control of the mass media and the ability to pervert the rule of law towards his political aims.
What Trump has done so far makes me believe we are well on the way to sham ‘illiberal democracy’, or ‘electoral autocracy.’
First, he’s curtailed the free press for the public. The high degree to which Trump-aligned news media – such as Fox News – are partisan propaganda machines is–reminiscent of Soviet propaganda.
Second, he has undermined the rule of law with political bias. By marshalling the Justice Department as a tool for political attack, favour, and retribution, Trump is well on the way to being able to use the state’s laws, courts, and law enforcement tools to bludgeon, intimidate, divide, deter and exhaust political opponents.
Trump’s ‘illiberal’ rule
For elections to meet the basic democratic standard of ‘free and fair’ they need to be free not only from direct voter fraud or ballot stuffing on election day, but also from bias in democratic institutions such that candidates can freely compete and all voters can participate.
There is good reason to think that Trump will throw the old system out the window and adopt a new illiberal system.
He and his closest advisors see the old system as fundamentally corrupted and in severe violation of the US Constitution.
Trump himself has indicated illiberal democracy is the path he will take through his frequent expressions of admiration and intention to emulate leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
We also have clear evidence that Trump will readily engage in direct election manipulation if he can, as he’s done in the past.
All he needs for the next attempt is more compliant accomplices, who I believe are much more likely to be found now that the Republican Party has essentially become a Trump personality cult.
Won’t he have to cede power in 2028, you might ask? Not necessarily. Trump has frequently implied that he intends to serve a third term as president.
Alternatively, he could also run for Vice President in 2028 – would his “president” (say, perhaps, JD Vance or Donald Trump Jr.) wield real power? I doubt it.
Another path he could take is to become Chair of the Republican Party and use informal power. Or he could engineer an end to presidential term limits in a more dramatic act of autocratic takeover.
While he could also die or retire, the new system he will have created would allow his party to retain power indefinitely in an electoral authoritarian regime similar to today’s Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela or Russia.
The new international system
What might all this mean for the future of international relations?
The fundamental change is that there will no longer be a superpower that is also a democracy.
The strongest advocates among the major powers for liberal democratic principles in international affairs would likely be the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan.
India could also play this role, although it is also a severely backsliding democracy under Modi’s party.
There are seven key elements of the emerging international order:
- The dominant ideology of great powers will be nationalism.
- International politics will resemble the realist vision of great powers balancing power, carving out spheres of influence.
- It will make sense for the illiberal great powers to cooperate in some way to thwart liberalism – a sort of new ‘Holy Alliance’ type system could emerge.
- The existing institutional infrastructure of international relations will move towards a state-centric bias, away from a human-rights, liberal bias.
- International economic interdependence, although curtailed since the days of high “globalisation,” will continue to play an important role in tempering great-power behaviour.
- Democracy will be under greater pressure globally, with no great power backing and perhaps active US encouragement of far-right illiberal parties in established and new democracies.
- Mass Politics and soft power will still matter, but the post-truth aspect of public opinion in foreign policy will be greater.
The end of an era
In the future, the decades between 1946 and 2025 and the era of liberal institutionalism we experienced after the Second World War might be looked back upon as an anomaly.
This brings us back to my contention about US ‘political culture’. Many types of US elites no longer seem to value democracy. Or never had high value for democracy to begin with.
Trump is more popular in his second term than his first, but still lacks majority support. His voters either do not see him as a threat to democracy or are unconcerned about this threat.
To retain power, he will be incentivised to tilt the electoral playing field to his advantage through illiberal means.
The degree of risk is fatal. But I could be wrong. Trump could fail to wreck US democracy either because that is not his intent, or because his efforts are insufficient
Despite the possibilities, I think the survival of US democracy is the least likely outcome over the next years. I hope I am wrong.
This is an edited extract from an article that first appeared in E-International Relations.
Top image: Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock.com
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