By tradition, an outgoing American president continues to carry out his duties after the election, and invites his successor if not to co-govern, then to get up to speed on the job. It has been the case even when a one-term president was defeated by a challenger. But Donald Trump is different. He is refusing to concede and has not allowed the incoming Biden administration to start on the transition.
Periods of leadership vacuum are notoriously dangerous. In medieval Rome, the death of a sitting Pope was usually followed by riots and settling of scores by the city’s princely clans. Putting an end to the chaos was an important incentive for the cardinals to elect a successor as quickly as possible.
Historically, the lengthy American lame duck interregnums have caused a number of serious problems. For example, disputes surrounding the 2000 election kept George W. Bush from installing his administration, which may have contributed to its failure to heed the warnings of the impending September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
And of course during the “Secession Winter” of 1860-61, after Abraham Lincoln had been elected but before he could assume power, Southern states broke away from the Union and formed the Confederacy, laying the foundations for the Civil War.
In the current highly radicalized environment in the US the drumbeat of a “new civil war” has been loud and clear. “Patriotic” militias, consisting of armed right-wingers with military training, have talked of rebellion, calling themselves “boogaloo boys”. Some have been arrested for hatching terrorist plots against state officials. Meanwhile, widespread protests after the killing of George Floyd, many accompanied by looting, are still fresh in the memory.
An established government could deal with all this, but in a power vacuum, the situation could get out of hand — especially as Trump keeps repeating baseless accusations of voter fraud and stoking anger among his followers.
Americans like to play fast and loose with internationally accepted terms. What they call football is not the world’s most popular sport but a peculiarly American variety of rugby. Likewise, the American Revolution wasn’t a revolution at all but a separatist rebellion, like the 1971 uprising in East Pakistan which created a new country, Bangladesh.
The same goes for the American Civil War because it too was a separatist rebellion — only a failed one. While the South seceded, the US government continued to carry out its duties, maintained a foreign policy and passed legislation. It even held regular nationwide elections. True, no foreign country recognized the Confederacy, but that still happens to most separatist entities today, until they become fully established.
A bona fide civil war is a very different story. It is a war without front lines that divides communities and families. A real civil war shook to the core the Russian Empire, Spain, and, most recently, Syria and Libya. A real civil war spells the death of the state and the destruction of the unified central authority.
And, with the central authority in shambles and many competing claims to being a legitimate power, a real civil war invites secessions and intervention by foreign powers. That was the case in the Russian Empire, where Finland, Poland and the Baltic States gained independence while Ukraine, the Caucasus and Eastern Siberia tried and failed. Foreign nations intervened, too, sending troops to various parts of the country, but after four years of bloody warfare in Europe they had no stomach for more fighting.
In Spain, when the military staged a coup against the Republican government, Hitler and Mussolini intervened in support of General Franco. Stalin did the same for the Republican side, so that Germany and the Soviet Union effectively fought a proxy war a few years before facing off directly.
Western nations didn’t take part in the conflict, but volunteers, including the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the United States, came to Spain to fight fascism. George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway also fought in Spain, and wrote about it.
And of course, Syria and Libya have now become an arena where Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, along with various non-state actors such as Hizbullah, Hamas, and ISIS, fight for regional dominance.
Could the same thing happen to the United States? Could the world’s greatest superpower, with the strongest military in history and an arsenal of nuclear weapons large enough to end life on earth, end up becoming Syria writ large — a place where rising powers vie for leadership in the post-American world?
It sounds far-fetched — but not so far-fetched as not to be considered.
First, there is the office of the US president. The Founding Fathers, having no experience with the republican form of government, made America’s chief executive similar to a king, endowing him with quite a lot of power. Elected for four years, the president has a carte blanche to implement any policy he wants with only a minor risk of impeachment for crimes — but not for policy decisions.
It is remarkable how easily the system of checks and balances crumbled under Trump, as the legislative and judicial branches allowed him to become an absolute monarch ruling by decree. In fact, Trump claimed repeatedly that under Article Two of the Constitution he can do whatever he wants.
Nor does the Constitution have any real provisions for the peaceful transition of power. The obstruction of his successor that Trump is engaging in is perfectly legal— and he can continue doing so and escalate for the next two months. This is how long he will also keep his unlimited powers, which is plenty of time to stir trouble and egg on his supporters.
And then there is Vladimir Putin, who’s been bent on reversing Russia’s defeat in the Cold War and restoring the dominance it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Empire. In many regions of the world, Putin has stirred civil unrest and supported separatist movements. Ukraine knows that at first hand, but he has done so also in Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and other former Soviet republics, as well as in Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic.
The same modus operandi was documented by intelligence agencies and Special Counsel Robert Mueller during the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Russian trolls specifically targeted different American groups, sowing discord and hatred and setting Americans on each other.
While the exact nature of the Trump election campaign’s cooperation with Russia has never been fully revealed, Trump has admitted that he welcomes foreign support in elections and his relationship with Putin seems remarkably close.
Ominously, Russia remains the only major country not to recognize Joe Biden as the American president-elect. Putin and Trump are the only heads of state — with the exception of some Third World autocrats — not to accept the result of the US election.
If America begins to slide toward social unrest and political violence in the next two months, what if a sitting US president asks Putin to send his “little green men” — soldiers wearing no insignia who were used to annex Crimea from Ukraine in 2014? A sitting US president can do whatever he wants and cannot be indicted, as the Trump Justice Department has asserted. The country can ask the Supreme Court for its opinion, but it so happens that Trump has appointed three of his stooges as Justices, creating a 6-3 Trumpist majority.
