The American Election and the Usual Arab Rhetoric

We have a right, as Arabs and as Gulf Arabs in particular, to feel worried about the return of Barack Obama’s agenda, which caused a mess and whose repercussions we still suffer today.

Some Arabs wish to portray the clash between supporters of President Donald Trump and those of President-elect Joe Biden as a conflict between two personalities. The first person is good; he will realize all the Arabs’ ambitions and work to solve the crises they face. The second person is evil; his only goal is to hinder Arab projects.

Before elaborating on this idea and offering clarification, I want to emphasize our rights as Arabs, and as Gulf Arabs in particular, to feel worried about the return of Barack Obama’s agenda, which spread chaos and whose repercussions we still suffer today, both in Iranian and Turkish expansion and in the attempts of Islamist movements to seize power. However, we should not be so anxious about the chance we may be faced with two scenarios when Biden takes office.

First, that Biden will restore Obama’s infamous policies in the region and that Arab countries will not be able to stop this chaos or put an end to its recklessness. That’s not true.

And second, as soon as Trump leaves the White House, the fear that the United States and the other great powers will witness an internal collapse that will affect international stability. It is believed that this scenario awaits us on Jan. 20 and that Trump’s presence in office is necessary to preserve American unity, which is an important factor for world stability.

The sad thing is that these two scenarios are not just a figment of this writer’s imagination, as some might think, but a political issue raised by some analysts on Arab satellite news programs and which has circulated in the street and on social media.

Arab thinkers have disagreed throughout history about the political idealism of the Democrats and the political realism favored by Republicans. But Arab enthusiasm this time reminds us of our Arab differences in the 1950s and 1960s, and continuing until recently, with some controversial television stations who have presented personalities who lived through this period and were shaped by it to the point they were unable to see the truth that the Arab people had become aware and would not accept being dictated to.

The most striking feature of this rhetoric, which returned in a new package, is the idea of “raising one’s voice” in order to convince someone an opinion is true. This phenomenon can be felt on social media even where it is not said out loud and where one finds individuals who refuse to accept any idea that differs from their own.

This rhetoric is further marked by assertion that the election was stolen and its results rigged, despite the fact that U.S. election officials have said exactly the opposite. There has even been discussion about abolishing the electoral system there, with people stressing that it has been influenced by private sources. This rhetoric even allows one to negate elections that are fair, without any respect for the legitimacy of the ballot, a process that removed Great Britain from the European Union.

Yes, there are fears and concerns about the return of the Democrats, especially Biden, who served as vice president under Obama and who was considered the architect of his policies, but this does not mean it will be easy to face a repeat of Obama’s policies. For this reason, we should see the American election as a domestic issue and weigh it accordingly, even if its effects are international. The constants remain the same. There is a U.S. Constitution that governs this relationship, and it is not easy to tamper with. American unity is one of the most important factors in the U.S. world leadership. These factors do not easily collapse just because there is a new president who has different ideas.

Many craved this divisive moment both at the American and global level, seeking to spoil the story of American success around the world, and they hoped the day would come when the U.S. would collapse both politically and socially, whether due to strategic interests as is the case for China and Russia, or due to the intellectual whims of those who do not care for the American experiment.

The problem is that this “collapse” is taking place today among the Arabs and among the supporters of the American experiment who do not realize that Trump’s intransigence doesn’t favor anyone. Rather, he is only a catalyst for the destruction of the image drawn in our minds of the superpower, the United States.