The titles look alike but are not identical. Because those to whom they are dedicated are far from identical. In American political history there are many Hillary Clintons (all but her male) and very few Donald Trump .
That the two are then opposed in the final of the political marathon for the White House had never happened. We had seen an electoral campaign like the one that will end in a few days, in which all the surprises have accumulated in one field, the Republican one and almost all the forecasts have been confirmed in the Democratic one. Including the twists and turns of public opinion, which appear to have strengthened and exacerbated in the very last few days, to the point of endangering conventional wisdom, which for the rest of a marathon lasting almost a year and a half had provided the walls, or at least the hurdles, to keep the forecasts in the “normal” and therefore predictable field.
Today we can predict what Hillary Clinton will do in the White House if she wins, we cannot repeat this formula by replacing Hillary Clinton with Donald Trump, but it cannot be ruled out that the latter will be able to break the odds and win. in the sprint, in the last few meters or seconds. All you can do is put in a headline is “What Would Donald Trump Do If He Wins”.
That said, we know very little about it. The only field in which, by retiring the rules and conventional wisdom, something can be foreseen and therefore, with due precautions, affirm is that a Trump White House would follow a very different course from that of the Clinton dynasty in relations with the Russia. It is not necessary to take all the statements, pronouncements and slogans of the Republican candidate literally to draw a line of foreign policy on them. However, in almost all of his forays into this field, Trump has proposed, or at least hypothesized, initiatives and reactions that are the opposite of those advocated by the Democratic candidate.
Although Clinton is careful not to use these two words, she intends to move the steering wheel in the direction of a re-edition of the Cold War, to a lesser extent and without the intention of culminating it in a military confrontation. But you support Ukraine against Russia, minorities in Crimea, a solution in Syria completely opposite to that desired by the Kremlin, the maintenance or tightening of economic sanctions against Moscow, a photograph of the Russian Federal Republic that looks like that of the defunct Soviet Union.
Hillary’s line is clearer and more predictable if we recall her initiatives in the four-year period in which Clinton was Barack Obama’s secretary of state , then succeeded by John Kerry during her second term., diplomatically but consistently on a different line.
What is expected for Moscow also applies to Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, perhaps Egypt and certainly Iran. A continuity is emerging that leads, if anything, to the line of George W. Bush rather than to that of Obama, who above all tried to mediate between two lines, two visions and perhaps above all two instincts.
In the event of a Trump victory, the European allies should somehow suffer the consequences. Not in terms of bilateral relations, which Trump seems to prefer, but in the context of NATO.
If his statements have been thought through and kept to a coherence (unfortunately it is not easy to say given the habits and the electoral style of the Republican candidate), the Atlantic Alliance could be led by Washington towards a “slimming cure”. Financial, because Trump has repeatedly denounced the insufficiency of contributions to the common defense fund, because even in the economic sphere there is a vague nostalgia for autarchy in the words of the republican candidate as a defense of the US national budget and jobs, magnified the first and the second eroded as a consequence of globalization and finally strategic again as it presupposes a reversal of a global trend of over a quarter of a century, of a defense (if not nostalgia) of the world of yesterday.
At least in this Donald Trump is recognizable as a conservative and therefore as the heir of a republican tradition, otherwise often unrecognizable in the style and content of his proclamations. Starting with the passionate intention to build a wall as a border between the United States and Mexico, representative and intermediary of the migratory wave from all over Latin America.
Less known, or less clear, is the intention of this possible (though not probable) US president towards our Euro-African migratory problem, much more serious and complex than the influx (moreover very slow) of South Americans in America North. Today this is perhaps the only answer that can be given to those who ask the question of what Donald Trump would do if he was elected president of the United States next Tuesday.
(Published in Italia Oggi, a newspaper directed by Pierluigi Magnaschi)
