随著美国总统竞选进入白热化，美国选民以及世界各国政府和民众都在关注，谁将在未来4年内领导这个世界上最强大的国家。
一方面，台面上的替代候选人被许多方面——包括民主党的支持者——痛斥为无能和无生气。
挑战者，共和党候选人特朗普将民主党候选人哈里斯描述为“愚蠢”、“软弱”、“低智商”和“懒惰”。他还称她为“三流虚假候选人”。“比她的老板拜登总统更无能”；以及在吸引了数百万听众的科技亿万富翁马斯克的音频采访中，特朗普更用上的“激进左翼疯子”字眼来形容哈里斯。
最近，特朗普在宾夕法尼亚州巴特勒的一次集会上嘲笑哈里斯是“精神障碍”，此前他就在那里遭遇暗杀企图。
另一边，哈里斯形容特朗普“越来越不稳定和精神错乱”，“特朗普的第二个任期……对美国来说是一个巨大的风险”。
这一严厉的评价最早是来自一名美国退役将军、最高级别将领马克米利。在《华盛顿邮报》副主编鲍勃伍德沃德即将出版的书中，他指出，就美国的国家安全风险而言，特朗普是“彻头彻尾的法西斯主义者”和“对这个国家最危险的人”。这项警告可能也与即将上任的总统必须处理的全球安全问题有关。
美国众多危机
我们在媒体头版看到的关于两位候选人素质的内容，不仅仅是总统选举中常见的尖锐政治言论。这也预示著世界对即将上任的美国总统之期望，即一半的美国公众认为他“精神错乱”，并且几乎没有信心。
我们也看到，美国超卓主义因多重社会经济失败和危机而衰落，不管是联邦和州级的民主党和共和党领导人一直无法管理或应对这些失败和危机，而美国选民希望11月的获胜者能够重点关注这些失败和危机。
以下为一些反映美国福祉状况关键指标—财政状况、医疗服务、住房和贫困。
● 在国家财政方面，美国的国债规模高达35兆美元／152兆令吉，预计每100天就会增加超过1兆美元／4.35兆令吉。新总统上台后需要应对的2024财年预算赤字估计接近2兆美元／8.7兆令吉，这是新冠疫情时代外的最高数字
● 在健康方面，健康监测组织——包括政府自己的卫生机构——已发出警报，称美国的医疗保健系统正陷入危机，医疗成本不断上升，影响了数百万人的医疗保障
● 住房方面也出现了类似的严峻情况。根据《哈佛商业评论》的一篇文章，美国“正在经历严重的住房危机，而且已经持续很长时间了”。抵押贷款利率已达到数十年来的高点；数百万家庭必须将收入的30%以上用于住房；负担不起的住房课题现已成为“全国丑闻”。
● 在贫穷方面，美国也面临前所未有的挑战，贫穷率近期创下史上最大一年增幅。根据2022年美国人口普查数据，12.4%的美国人（约1/9的美国人）生活在贫困中
美国社会和生活各层面的危机严重性与繁荣的股市所传达的情况截然不同——后者由于灾难性下跌而很可能是即将上任的总统必须处理的首要任务。
美式和平的下一步是什么
如果以历史经验为指导，世界各国可以预期特朗普或哈里斯在维护美国外交政策利益上几乎没什么不同。他们采用的策略始终是以下经过尝试和检验过的：
● 关注外部威胁，以分散人们对美国国内危机，以及日益分化的社会和经济
● 与被指责为独裁或反民主、或被视为经济和任何其他领域竞争对手的政权之冲突加剧
● 削弱金砖国家以及可能挑战美国霸权及其构想的国家、区域和国际力量，以及制定以西方构思的规则秩序，并宣传为对世界其他国家至关重要，但实际上却只有少数国家的支持。
与哈里斯和民主党不同，特朗普公开宣称他将采取行动停止乌克兰战争，这可能是关键的区别。如果他兑现这项承诺，可能预示著美国外交政策的新方向。
然而，视特朗普为其利益威胁的机构和深层集团将努力确保美国外交政策不会发生这种变化。
当下，应提醒世界各国的领导人，亨利·基辛格那一句关于美国外交政策的名言：
“做为美国的敌人可能很危险，但成为美国的朋友则是致命的。”
这位学者出身的外交官，被广泛认为是近年来最出色和最有影响力的美国外交官，其言论对美国的盟友而言，犹如一项警告。
在亚洲，澳洲、日本和菲律宾可以预期，无论谁在11月获胜——哈里斯还是特朗普——都将号召他们跟美国一起打一场新旧战争，并用更多资金在军事、政治和经济方面帮助捍卫美式和平。
透过这方式，他们将维护一种过去式、支离破碎的、虚伪的单边世界秩序体系，反对联合国创建的、被美国及其盟友长期抛弃的多边世界秩序，在加沙和黎巴嫩正发生著种族灭绝就是明证。
林德宜《特朗普或哈里斯：谁将成为美国总统？》原文：Trump Or Harris: Who Will Be US President?
As the US presidential race enters the final lap, American voters and also governments and the public across the world are reminded of the choice facing them on who will lead the most powerful nation in the world during the next four years.
On one side, we have a replacement candidate lambasted by many quarters - including supporters of the Democrat party - as lacklustre and incompetent.
Challenger Republican candidate Donald Trump has described Kamala Harris as “stupid”, “weak”, “dumb as a rock” and “lazy”. He has also called her a “third-rate phoney candidate”; “more incompetent than her boss President Joe Biden”; and a “radical left lunatic" in an audio interview with techno billionaire, Elon Musk, that attracted millions of listeners.
More recently, Trump has derided her as “mentally impaired” in a rally at Butler, Pennsylvania where he earlier survived an assassination attempt.
The other side has Harris describing Trump as “increasingly unstable and unhinged” with a “second Trump term …a huge risk for America”.
This damning assessment had earlier come from retired General Mark Milley, former highest ranking military officer. In a forthcoming book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, he noted that Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” in relation to national security risks to the United States. The warning presumably also relates to global security issues that the incoming President has to manage.
The US’s Many Crises
What we are being treated to in the media front pages on the qualities of the two candidates is not just the usual shrill political rhetoric accompanying the presidential election. It is an intimation of what the world can expect from an incoming President that equal halves of the American public see as “unhinged” and have little or no faith in.
What we are seeing too is an American Exceptionalism in decline from multiple socio-economic failings and crises that Democrat and Republican party leaders at federal and state levels have been unable to manage or cope with, and which American voters want the winner in November to focus on.
Consider some key indicators that reflect the state of well being of a nation - financial situation, health services, housing, and poverty.
● On the nation’s finances, the US has a runaway national debt of US$35.trillion which is estimated to increase by over $1 trillion every 100 days. The budget deficit for the new President to deal with is estimated at close to $2 trillion for FY2024, the highest figure outside of the COVID era,
● On health, health monitoring organisations - including the administration’s own health institutes - have sounded the alarm that the medical care system in the US is in crisis with escalating health costs affecting coverage for millions of people
● A similar critical situation has emerged with housing. According to a Harvard Business Review article, the country “is experiencing a serious housing crisis, and has been for a long time.” Mortgage rates have reached a multi-decade high; tens of millions of households have to spend more than 30% of their income on housing; and unaffordable housing is now “a national scandal”.
● On the poverty front, the US is also facing an unprecedented challenge with the poverty rate recording its largest one-year increase in history recently. According to 2022 US census data, 12.4% of Americans or about 1 in 9 Americans live in poverty
The severity of crises in these and other sectors of American society and life provides a sharply different picture to that conveyed by the buoyant stock market - the latter due for a catastrophic fall that may well be the first priority the incoming President has to deal with.
What Next For Pax Americana
If historical experience is a guide, countries around the world can expect Trump or Kamala to be little or no different in their pursuit of American foreign policy interests. Strategies that they will employ will invariably be a mix of the following tried and tested:
● Focus on external threats to distract from the inability to manage homegrown and domestic crises and entrenched divisions in American society and economy
● Intensified conflicts against regimes castigated as authoritarian or anti-democratic, or seen as a rival in the economic and any other sphere
● Undermining BRICS and national, regional and international forces that may challenge US hegemony and the conception and articulation of a western rules-based order propagandised as vital for the rest of the world but that is in reality supported by a small minority of the world’s nations.
There may be one key difference in that unlike Harris and the Democrats, Trump has publicly declared that he will act to bring a stop to the war in Ukraine. Should he live up to this undertaking, it may herald a new direction in US foreign policy.
However, the official and deep state actors who see Trump as a threat to their interests will work to ensure that no such change in US foreign policy can take place.
For now, leaders around the world need to be reminded of Henry Kissinger’s famous distillation of American foreign policy:
“It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”
This statement by a scholar turned diplomat who is widely regarded as the most effective and influential US foreign policy official of recent times carries a warning especially for US allies.
In Asia, Australia, Japan and the Philippines can expect that whoever wins in November - Kamala or Trump - will call on them to fight the US’s old and new wars and to help defend Pax Americana on the military, political and economic fronts with more money, weapons and bodies.
By doing so they will be upholding an archaic, broken down and hypocritical unilateral world order system in opposition to the multilateral one created by the United Nations and long abandoned by the US and its allies as is evident with the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
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