Broad presidential military powers remain despite the electoral setback
BBC News international editor Jeremy Bowen described Donald Trump’s midterm defeat as a rout handed to him by a big majority of American voters. Because Trump deals in superlatives, Bowen wrote, there was political karma in the sheer size of the defeat. He argued that losing both chambers of the US Congress limits the president’s capacity to dictate, maneuver and disrupt at home, while warning not to expect Trump to go gentle into the political twilight of his career. In Bowen’s assessment, the election might not quiet Trump: the president might be tempted to blot out the rout by taking actions abroad, making moves he can boast about as the decisive and victorious moves of a strong president.
Bowen said Trump’s actions and oscillations were difficult to predict and noted that the president had turned policy U-turns into weapons. Some things, though, are constants, he wrote: Trump shows contempt for those he regards as losers and is determined never to be seen as one. Trump also continued to insist that the election was only lost because he was not on the ballot paper, a claim Bowen said the president maintained despite all the evidence.
BBC’s election coverage also carried reaction from the night: the network reported that Trump accepted that Democrats did a “good job” in the election, that Democrats pushed deep into Trump heartland on what it called a historic night, and that angry Republicans blamed Trump for the midterms defeat, with “This is a disaster” among the quoted reaction.
Iran formed the first major foreign-policy test in Bowen’s analysis. In the weeks leading up to the midterms, the deployment of US forces and statements from Trump that Bowen described as often belligerent ramped up talk that the US was getting ready to go back to war with Iran. On the eve of the elections, the US carried out a limited bombing raid on an Iranian island in the Gulf.
Before he was hospitalized with a stroke, Democratic US Senator Chris Murphy attended a classified briefing about potential military options for renewed war with Iran. Without going into detail, Murphy condemned the plans as “insane” and warned they would trigger a “devastating escalation.”
BBC said there had been speculation that the Americans have plans to bomb civilian infrastructure. Bowen wrote that such a strike would not only likely constitute a war crime, but might also be answered by devastating Iranian strikes on equivalent targets on US allies in the Gulf. The potential list of targets could start with the United Arab Emirates, which, Bowen wrote, is as close to Israel as it is to the US.
Iran’s government in Tehran was also watching the US political shift. BBC reported that Tehran had not concealed its satisfaction that the consequences of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz had become a domestic political issue in the US. Bowen wrote that Tehran was aware of the damage caused to Trump and the Republicans by the sustained rise in the prices of everything from petrol and diesel to agricultural fertilisers, which he linked to the war and its attacks on shipping in the Strait.
In a warning posted on social media, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, said: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.” He added: “If the US govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare.”
Bowen also examined Benjamin Netanyahu, who was maneuvering hard to form a new government as Israel’s acting prime minister after the country’s election the previous week. Netanyahu had repeated his desire to bring down the Islamic regime in Tehran, while reports in Israel and the US said he was pushing Trump to return to war. Netanyahu does not have the seats to form a new government with his outgoing coalition, Bowen wrote. But if a major war restarted and was sustained, and if Israelis came under direct fire, he could have new options of forming a unity government that he would use his considerable political skills to dominate.
The other major conflict to which Trump might turn his attention, Bowen wrote, was the Russia-Ukraine war, which has now lasted longer than the First World War. Before the elections, Trump dropped sanctions against Moscow to buy Russian diesel, and Bowen said Trump might decide to prolong and deepen sanctions relief in the hope of somehow easing the economic pressure on American consumers.
Bowen wrote that Trump had not been noticeably concerned about the deadly pressures on Ukrainian civilians targeted by Russian ballistic missiles, which were getting through in greater numbers because Ukraine’s appeals for more US-made interceptors, funded by European allies, had not been answered in the way Ukraine needs and wants. The Kremlin spokesman said Russia hoped the election results would not impact what it called Trump’s “peace-making efforts.”
Bowen wrote that Trump has consistently tried to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into making territorial concessions to Russia to produce an agreement that would amount to capitulation for Kyiv, a deal Trump would add to his improbable list of wars solved and stopped. Smarting from electoral defeat, Trump might attempt to redouble pressure on Zelensky to accept the concessions he has repeatedly rejected, Bowen said.
Bowen wrote that it is safe to say Trump will continue building monuments to himself in Washington DC. Beyond that, he cautioned that predictions of Trump’s next moves at home and abroad risk being wrong, while calling it certain that the president will not sit in a presidential rocking-chair and wait out his time in the White House. Throughout his time as president, Trump has relished his power and been determined to use it, Bowen wrote, and there is every chance he wants to show that if he can no longer shake America, he can shake the world. In Bowen’s assessment, the loss of Congress limits Trump’s capacity at home, while abroad it is likely to be different.