By Maryamu Aminu
Do you have election fatigue? I wouldn’t blame you. Nigeria has just emerged from a hard fought presidential election that brought in a new government and whole new agenda and political arguments. But welcome to the age of globalization and interconnectivity. Nowa days, we not only get to experience the ups and downs of our own election cycles, we get to experience that of other countries as well. And let’s not just put it down to increased access to media. What happens in other countries, particularly the developed countries matters to us, or should matter to us because their leaders get together and take strong positions that have implications for all of us.
But crucially, we must understand that the ideological brands that are elected have tremendous impact on global politics. For example, during the Bush years in the United States, the world experienced foreign policy from a neo-conservative ideology that sought to address the global challenge of terrorism through the exercise of its military preponderance i.e. wars and regime change. That U.S. policy and narrative of defeat without debate took hold in the media and the populace. This likely helped to sweep in a wave of conservative leaders in other countries like Canada which elected Steven Harper, France which elected Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany which elected Angela Merkel, all from conservative parties.
Even though these governments were more cautious about going to war in the Middle East as the U.S. government adamantly decided on, they did not do much to oppose Bush. Interestingly, the UK maintained its left-leaning but earlier elected government of Tony Blair, which worked in lock step with the Bush Administration on its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Counterintuitively, the Bush years were also characterized by what he described as “Compassionate Conservatism,” which led to a major comeback of foreign assistance that had been in serious decline since the Reagan years. Hence, we saw the allocation and increase of funds to fight global AIDS TB and Malaria to the tune of billions and billions of new dollars. We saw similar ramp ups in investments in agriculture, clean water and basic education and millions of people in most African countries benefitted from these programs.
However, fed up with the wars and the toll it had taken on their national economies and public services, in 2008, the American people elected democrat Barack Obama to get them out of it. Arguably, the knock on effect has been, the election of the left-leaning Francois Hollande in France, and the shrinking of Angela Merkel’s Conservative Party’s majority in Germany. Britain on the other hand reversed its election of the leftist Labour party, a clear rejection of Labour’s foreign policy stance and party in-fighting, and recently returned David Cameron’s Conservative party to the power, albeit with a much smaller parliamentary majority. And just last week. Canada threw out Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, electing the young Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party with an overwhelming majority.
If you are a political animal and watching the campaign for the U.S. presidential elections, which are in the primaries stage, you may have found yourself completely riveted by the Republican primary which has been dominated by right-wing real-estate mogul, Donald Trump’s hair and insults. Tump’s brand is more of the bullying neo-conservative approach that seeks to take an aggressive approach to everything. Trump’s brand is defined by his opposition to everything- he’s anti-immigrant, anti-China, anti-government. This ‘circus’ has almost completely eclipsed the democratic primary, where Hillary Clinton, who appears to have the confidence of enough of the electorate, may emerge as the candidate who could become the first female president in the history of the United States, something which deserves significant attention.
My point is simple, even as we find ourselves entertained by the theatrics of the election campaigns, we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by what it really means. With global tensions rising between the U.S. and Russia, the increasingly fragile state of the Middle East, we must remember that who the American people elect to lead them matters, because war is no laughing matter.
