Hello and welcome to DEEPER LOOK.

I'm Del Irani, it's great to have your company.

We're just over a year out from the 2024 US Presidential elections

and campaigning from both sides is gaining momentum.

While President Joe Biden is widely expected to be the nominee within the Democratic Party,

the Republican side presents a more intriguing landscape.

While there are a lot of contenders vying to be the Republican nominee,

including Florida Govenor Ron DeSantis, former Vice-President Mike Pence

and former US ambassador to the US, Nikki Haley...

the leader of the race, as of mid-July is former President Donald Trump.

How exactly is the campaigning ahead of next year's US Presidential election shaping up?

And what impact will the outcome have on the world and specifically Asia?

Joining me once again, to talk more about this is Ian Bremmer.

He's the president and founder of Eurasia group, the world's leading political risk research and consulting firm.

Welcome back to the program, Ian. Great to have you with us again.

My pleasure.

Former President Donald Trump is still the front runner to be the Republican nominee,

but he's embroiled in this series of controversial and very serious lawsuits.

Just briefly, can you explain how significant are these charges?

The charges are very significant.

They're unprecedented in the United States.

You've never seen indictments of a former or sitting president before, federal indictments.

There are more cases that are coming.

On the other hand, there is nothing that prevents a president from running or from becoming a president.

Even if they are convicted of serious crimes, even if they are sitting in jail.

The fact is that Trump will still likely get the nomination irrespective of all of these charges.

His popularity in the Republican Party has actually gone up somewhat in part

because it's an anger and grievance-based campaign.

He's saying the Democrats are out to get him.

And all of these cases are allowing him to more effectively say, you see,

they're out to get me, the media is out to get me.

And most of the other Republicans running against him.

Not all, but most of them have been unwilling to criticize him

and instead have also turned their fire on the Department of Justice, on the FBI,

saying that these are politicized efforts by the Democrats to undermine Trump.

There is no evidence of that.

But that is the politics of these cases.

What are the implications for American democracy if Trump, as you said, he's elected Republican nominee?

Well, I think that the United States democracy is in trouble.

It gives me no, no joy, to say that to you.

There are so many things about the United States that are doing so well.

The dollar is the global reserve currency, it's unchallenged,

the US economy is actually coming out of the pandemic quite solidly and successfully.

The technology advances in AI, the Americans are leading the world, so many things.

And yet the political system, which has been such a critical component of America's success on the global stage,

post-World War Two is under deep and abiding challenge,

and there is virtually no guardrail that's preventing that from continuing.

And the fact that Trump is overwhelmingly likely to be the nominee,

and may well become president, I wouldn't bet on it.

But it's certainly plausible.

I mean, it's at least 30, 35, 40% likely that the next president is actually going to be Trump.

I think that some of the damage that would be done to US political institutions would be permanent.

I mean, certainly, in his effort to politicize the DOJ, the Department of Justice

going forward to ensure that it does more of the bidding of the President,

as opposed to acting as an independent, investigative and judicial branch.

I think the role of the political parties, we've already seen that impeachment,

which is meant to be a check on the executive, impeachment has been broken.

It is now only a political tool that has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the American people,

and of course, of those around the world.

And especially given the unfitness, the authoritarian impulses, the incompetence, the narcissism of Donald Trump.

And that is a very, very serious problem.

The fact that you have lost the legitimacy of these political institutions.

And this is something that we've been seeing that's kind of been building up.

In the last few elections, we've seen a huge amount of polarization and divisions within American society.

The 2020 presidential election, of course, even the 2022 midterms as well.

What do you predict or expect for next year's presidential elections in terms of just how divided American society is right now?

Well, the fact that we have all of these indictments, and the severity of the indictments is not what matters.

That's what should matter.

What should matter is like, are these felony charges?

How serious are they, do they affect the functioning of the government?

You know, I mean, what is the nature of the evidence?

Who's the jury? How are they going to rule? Like that.

That's what one would expect.

Doesn't matter at all.

The only thing that matters is, do you support Trump?

If you do, then this is a witch hunt.

And if you don't, then he's guilty and it doesn't matter what the evidence is.

Trump once famously said before he became president, that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue dead.

And he would not lose a voter.

And at the time that he said that, that was considered to be an exaggeration by a showman.

It's true!

It's become true.

And it's become true not just because of who he is.

But it's become true because of the damage that's been done to US political institutions.

So, you know, if you have a close election, if Trump wins the nomination, and the election is close,

it will be considered illegitimate by the losers.

There will be major demonstrations.

There will likely be violence.

There may be secessionist impulses in certain states

that say we don't want to be a part of a union that has gone against

what we believe to be the rightful election of the President that we want.

I don't think this is a civil war we're talking about; I don't even think it's a constitutional crisis.

But it is a level of damage that will affect America's credit worthiness,

it will affect investment flows,

it will affect, a lot, the state of alliances and US ability to project power around the world.

I mean, the biggest national security threat to the United States today is not Russia, it's not China, it's not Iran.

It's actually the internal threat by Americans, on Americans, to the political system.

There's a lot of issues that are going to be discussed in the lead up to the presidential election.

We're still more than a year out.

Let's talk about some of these issues and where the Republican versus the Democratic Party stand on them,

particularly with a focus on Asia.

You know, when it comes to the issue of China, for example,

as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict and perhaps climate change,

give us a sense of how much similarity or differences there are on the policies between the two parties.

China has the most alignment between the Republicans and the Democrats.

I would say Biden himself is more interested in this de-risking as opposed to decoupling language.

And Biden is more of a multilateral.

He wants to make sure the Europeans are on board, the Japanese, the South Koreans are on board.

Trump is more of a unilateralist.

But they both see China as the most important strategic competitor and threat.

They both would want to spend more on defense, ensure that Taiwan is defended,

get more companies to bring more money home, do more insuring, invest less in China,

certainly strategic sanctions, export controls on semiconductors, all that kind of... tariffs.

Those are things that you would see consistently from Biden and Trump.

Trump is of course much more volatile.

He's much more willing to say things that would unsettle American allies.

Like saying why are we supporting South Korea unless you pay us more.

Biden would never do that.

So, I do think that American allies like South Korea and Japan would be much more concerned by Trump.

Modi in India doesn't really care.

He has a good relationship with both.

When it comes to Russia-Ukraine, the relationship is radically different.

Trump has already promised that he would end the war in 24 hours.

You say why so long?

I mean, he must have... probably because he's busy doing other stuff.

But so within 24 hours, he'll end the war.

He would certainly try to end US support for Ukraine; he would end conversations of bringing Ukraine into NATO.

He'd press the Ukrainians to give up on land that belongs to them.

He would want to work with Putin.

Having said that, if he does all of that, and the Russians are still involved in military attacks,

you could also see Trump suddenly escalating the war in ways that are incredibly dangerous,

like he did against the Iranians, when he suddenly decided to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian defense forces.

So, that's, that's interesting.

And then you have climate.

And on climate, of course, they could not be more different.

On climate, Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accords, Biden immediately put the Americans back in.

Biden is spending an enormous amount of money to try to bring the United States into a post carbon energy transition.

Trump administration is much more aligned with energy CEOs in fossil fuels.

Biden doesn't even talk to those people.

So that's a very, very dramatic change in important policy.

So, as we see the rhetoric heating up around all these issues in the lead up to the elections,

how do you think, you know, I guess, the campaigning will affect what President Biden does

on these issues for the remainder of his presidential term?

It's interesting, I've been speaking to a number of members of Biden cabinet in the last, directly, in the last few days.

And they all are saying different variants of you know, it's like, we don't have a lot of time left.

So, we're thinking about what are the few things we can get done.

It's less about affecting policymaking.

And it's more about like a lot of the big things that you could do in the administration.

You've kind of already done infrastructure bill, inflation Reduction Act, you know, a lot of these sorts of things.

Some things they've tried, for example, like student loan forgiveness that they haven't been able to get done.

So, I don't think there'll be a dramatic shift in policy orientations.

It's a very cohesive cabinet, most of them have been around Biden for decades.

Almost no one has quit, or been fired over the course of the first,

you know, sort of three, almost three years of this administration.

That's historically very unusual.

They're exhausted.

They're mostly not taking serious vacations, you know, over this summer.

They're just like, I gotta get through the election time.

And I don't expect any significant changes in the next 6, 12 months.

How do you think of the divisions within the United States?

We sort of touched on this briefly, but I just want to really get into it a bit more.

The divisions within the United States, how are they going to affect America's standing in the world,

particularly in view of the fact that you've got China,

which is, you know, continues to be on the rise?

Do you think the US can continue to attract the rest of the world as a Democratic leader, even with China's rise...

- and... given the problems of...
- No. No. No.

The United States cannot attract the world as a Democratic leader.

The United States can attract the world as by far the most powerful creator of national security and defense.

Let's remember that the United States out spends the next 10 countries combined on national security.

And most of those next 10 countries are aligned with the United States,

the Japanese, the Germans, the Brits, the French, the Italians,

and they have weapons systems that are interoperable with the United States.

Intelligence systems that are sharing information with us, no one else is close.

So, the US is the only military superpower in the world.

If you want to get anything done and global security, you either do it with the US or you fail.

Now, that does not mean that the Americans have much authority in other areas of power.

And, for example, in the global economy, the Chinese have an economy that is almost as large as the US.

And the state plays a bigger role in the economy.

So, they are the much more important trade partner of most countries around the world.

And they have more political influence over economic policy in those countries than the Americans do.

Then you have the question you asked. A very specific question.

And it was about democracy.

And will the Americans have Democratic leadership?

Well, I mean, it's increasingly not clear that the Americans have any legitimacy

in terms of convincing other countries that their political system should run more like the United States.

Why should it?

And some of that is because the Americans don't have a very functional democracy.

Some of it is because some countries are seeing that authoritarianism is more attractive,

especially given control of technology.

A surveillance economy, which the Chinese are making work to their advantage to a very great degree.

There are many poor countries around the world that would like to have,

that would like to learn lessons from the Chinese,

to have more political stability in their own authoritarian governments.

So yeah, I worry about that.

Ian Bremmer, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Even though we're just at the early stages of the 2024 US Presidential race...

the world is watching closely.

Because no matter the outcome, the US' dominant economic and military strength,

means the results will have ripple effects for Asia and the rest of the world.

I'm Del Irani, thanks for your company.

I'll see you next time!