If Joe Biden were to win the White House, transatlantic
relations could return to default or be transformed—with much depending
on how Europe reacted.
A political cliché is rehearsed every four years in the United
States: ‘This is the most important election of our lifetime.’ Yet it is hard
to think of a more important election in US history—rarely, if ever,
has the country faced two such sharply divergent paths.
All its deep-seated divisions have been exposed in 2020. Covid-19 has
foregrounded the jaw-dropping inequality, the frailty of a for-profit
healthcare system and the impact of a generation-long, conservative effort to weaken the functioning of government. When Americans needed the state, the state couldn’t cope.
Economically, Wall Street hasn’t missed a beat but queues for food
banks grow and ‘for lease’ signs populate vacant shop fronts. Socially,
the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May and the subsequent
protests—believed to be the largest in US history—brought into the
mainstream a conversation on systemic racism and exposed the abusive
nature of law enforcement, militarised and immunised from public
sensitivity after ‘9/11’.
Read more at:
Reviving transatlantic relations after Trump – Max Bergmann
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