By Tissa Jayatilaka –

[This article is based on a talk given to the members of the Sri Lanka Foreign Service Association on the 10^th of December, 2024]

I was invited to address you today on the topic of what the second coming of Donald Trump as President of the United States holds for the United States and the wider world outside of its shores. I was also requested to explain to you the Electoral College process by which a president is elected in the United States. This is a process that baffles even those familiar with the United States and the way its institutions function, as it is markedly different from the way in which other democracies elect their presidents and prime ministers.

I shall try my very best to not confuse you in my attempt to explain the manner in which the POTUS, to use the abbreviation for the President of the United States first used by telegraphic code operators in the 1890s, is elected.

I shall focus initially on the second part of my assignment and get it out of the way as soon as possible. That is, I will attempt to explain the U.S. Electoral College process first and then deal with the more fraught and the more alarming first part- – which is to deal with the likely consequences that would stem from the return of Donald Trump to 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, District of Columbia – – the White House.

In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years during the presidential election for the sole purpose of voting for the President and Vice President. How this election should be held is described in Article 11 of the Constitution of the United States which says:

Each state shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States shall be appointed an Elector.

The 23^rd Amendment to the Constitution ratified in 1961, allowed the citizens of the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections as well: The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States which is treated like a state has consistently had three (3) electors.

As stipulated by the Constitution, every state has a number of electors or members of the Electoral College equal to its number of senators and members of the House of Representatives. Each of the 50 states of the United States, regardless of its size and population has two senators. The number of members of the House for each state depends on the population of that state. Hence, smaller the population of a state, smaller will be the number of members of the House it is entitled to. Conversely, the bigger states are entitled to a bigger number of House members. So, if we take Oregon as an example, with its 6 House members and 2 senators, the state has 8 electors, Montana with 2 House members and 2 senators has four electors, while California, with a far bigger population than both Oregon and Montana, has 52 members of the House and 2 senators, which entitles it to 54 electors.

Besides California, Texas, Florida, and New York have the highest number of electoral votes. Except for Nebraska and Maine, 48 of the 50 states in the US and the District of Columbia use a winner-take-all system, awarding all of their electoral votes to the popular vote winner. The Electoral College system also means a candidate can win the election without winning the popular vote, as seen in Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton who won 2.8 million more votes than Trump.

One major criticism of the winner-take-all system is that the candidate who receives a majority of the popular vote in a given state gets all of that state’s electoral votes. Let us take Oregon again as an example. As we noted earlier, Oregon has 8 electors. If a candidate wins Oregon, even by 1 vote, he/she gets all 8 of its Electoral College votes.

Critics of the winner-take-all system think it is undemocratic for a winner of the popular vote of a state, to get all of that state’s Electoral College votes. Bruce Lohof, a valued friend, congenial colleague and former United States Foreign Service Officer, in an article titled What Must the Other Democracies Think? compares US democracy with fellow democracies and observes:

But how is it that in the 21^st century, a Montana Elector represents only 282,000 Montanans while a California Elector represents 720,000 Californians. Worse, how is it that the candidate who receives a majority of Montana’s – – or California’s – – popular vote gets ALL of the state’s Electoral College votes? Shouldn’t voters be represented equally? And shouldn’t candidates who get, say, 55% of the popular vote get 55% of the electoral vote? Why do they get to clear the table, poker style?

On five occasions, including two of the last six elections, candidates have won the Electoral College, and thereby the presidency, despite losing the nationwide popular vote. The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 addresses some of the shortcomings in the Electoral College process but not all of them. There are those Americans who argue for the dismantling of the Electoral College. According to a September 2024 report of the Pew Research Centre, 63 percent of Americans support the abolition of the Electoral College. According to the U.S. National Archives, public opinion polls have shown that Americans favoured abolishing the Electoral College by majorities of 58% in 1967; 81% in 1968; and 75% in 1981.

The United States came close to abolishing the Electoral College when the late Democratic Senator Birch Bayh (Indiana) led an attempt to amend the Constitution in September 1969 in order to do so. The House voted 339 to 70 in support of the measure. However, led by the Southern senators and helped by extremely conservative Midwestern Republicans, the proposal was defeated in a filibuster.

Be the above criticisms and observations as they may, what we know is that during a presidential election, a citizen does not vote, odd as it may sound, directly for the president, but for a slate of electors pledged to vote for one or the other candidate. In the months leading up to the presidential election held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, the political parties in each state typically nominate their own slates of would-be-electors. The state’s popular vote determines which party’s slate would be made the eventual electors.

In total, the Electoral College comprises 538 members (made up of 2 senators for each of the 50 states =100 + 435 members of the House of Representatives from all of the 50 states and 3 from the District of Columbia). A presidential candidate must win a majority of the Electoral votes cast to win – – that is, at least 270 if all the 538 electors vote.

Members of the Electoral College meet and vote in their respective states on the Monday, after the second Wednesday after election day. Then, on 6 January, a joint session of Congress meets at the Capitol to count the votes and declare the outcome of the election, paving the way for the Presidential inauguration on 20 January.

We must bear in mind that the Electoral College is neither a place nor a permanent body. As I stated at the beginning, it is only a process and also as noted above, in each state, political parties designate their slate of potential electors well before the November presidential election. The Electoral College of 2028 will most likely be different from that which elected the President of 2024.

Now, for the second part of my presentation today. What are we to expect from the 47^th President of the United States once he is inaugurated on 20 January, 2025? Crystal ball gazing or trying to forecast anything about the future as I plan to do in the next several minutes is, to say the least, a colossal undertaking, especially so when attempting to predict what an unpredictable man such as Donald Trump would do once he is back in the saddle as President. In addition to all of the foregoing I must confess that I strongly dislike Donald Trump, the man who is more flawed than most of his predecessors. And this fact makes a dispassionate assessment of him and what his second term might be like, an enormous challenge. Subject to these caveats, let me chance my arm. And I take heart from a comment made by the well-known journalist David Brooks in his recent piece in the Atlantic titled How America got so mean in which he says:

America became a place where 74 (sic) million people looked at Trump’s morality and saw Presidential timber.

It has been said that there is no Republican Party any more, only a Trump Party. And this distorts everything. The Republicans have signalled that they will render complete loyalty to the agenda of their leader. Troy Nehls, a sycophantic, Republican congressman from Texas recently said of the President elect:

He’s got a mission statement, and his goals and objectives, we need to embrace it (sic).  All of it. If Donald Trump says jump 3 feet high and scratch your head, we all jump 3 feet high and scratch our heads.

If Nehls’ language is extreme, the sentiment behind it, is not. Many Republicans have vowed nearly unquestioned support for Trump’s policies and decisions. Many invoke what they call Trump’s mandate to justify their unwavering support, the kind of rationale normally reserved for a large electoral victory. Yet Trump did not actually win in a landslide. According to available statistics, Trump won less than 50% of the popular vote, beating Kamala Harris by a mere 1.6 points. That is, the smallest margin of victory in a US Presidential Election since 1888!

Trump’s picks for his Cabinet to-date and to other major positions leave much to be desired. Not only are most of them seriously unqualified but are uncouth and allegedly guilty of criminal conduct. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s former nominee for Attorney General, who consequently withdrew his candidacy, is a good illustration of the foregoing. A Trump loyalist with little legal experience, he has been investigated by the House Ethics Committee over allegations that he may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favours to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct”.

Karl Rove, a veteran conservative political operative, wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal as follows:

Rather than for any particular skill or competency, Mr. Gaetz was selected because he promised he would spite Mr. Trump’s enemies within the Justice Department and hound his opponents outside it. Senator Markwayne Mullin, the junior senator from Oklahoma, essentially said much the same when he said, “I think the President wants a hammer at the Department of Justice (DoJ), and he sees Matt Gaetz as a hammer”. When asked if she would vote for Gaetz, Senator Marsha Blackburn said that she and her fellow Republicans are ready to support “every single one of Trump’s nominees”. Trump’s replacement nominee for Attorney General Pam Bondi, the senior senator from Tennessee has vowed to pursue Trump’s retribution agenda.

The Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE was first announced by Donald Trump about a month or so ago. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, two billionaires and possibly the two highest financial contributors to Trump’s election campaign are to be in charge of the new department. Trump envisions that DOGE “will become, potentially, The Manhattan Project of our time”, the President-elect wrote on his social media platform referring to a top-secret World War 11 programme to develop nuclear weapons.

Though DOGE has Trump’s support and has the word ‘department’ in its name, it is not an official government department that has to be established through an Act of Congress. Instead DOGE, it is believed, will operate as an advisory body, run by two of Trump’s right-hand men with a direct line to the White House. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would “serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees”. Their task is to provide guidance to the White House on spending cuts and compile a list of regulations that they believe are outside the legal authority of certain agencies and ought to be revised or discarded.

Government reforms by way of major cuts appears to be the remit of DOGE. The federal bureaucracy “represents an existential threat to our Republic”, Musk and Ramaswamy have written in the Wall Street Journal.  “Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We will cut costs”. At what cost they will do so is anybody’s guess. And the pair of billionaires have threatened to slash federal regulations, oversee mass layoffs and totally shut down some agencies. We should bear in mind in this context that during his campaign to secure the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Ramaswamy vowed to do away with the Department of Education (DoE) – – something Trump repeated days after winning the election. He released a video announcing that the DoE’s days were numbered. “One other thing I’ll be doing in the administration is closing up the DoE in Washington D.C. and sending all education and education work and needs back in the States”). For his Education Secretary, Trump has picked Linda McMohan, the co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, who served as head of the US Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term.

Speaking at a gala held at Mar – a -Lago in November, Ramaswamy thanked Trump “for making sure that Elon Musk and I are in a position to start mass deportations of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of the District of Columbia bureaucracy”.

Even before it has been officially established, DOGE has been set a deadline of 4 July, 2026, to finish its job. When announcing the new body Trump said:

A smaller government with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250^th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

These are large claims and threats indeed. Whether they could be actually implemented or not remains to be seen.

Let’s take a look at some others of Trump’s picks for top posts. They have dismayed policy circles in Washington – -including Republican lawmakers and former officials who served during his first presidency.

Trump’s proposed inner circle on the foreign-policy front, is made up of notable hawks including Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Representative Mike Waltz as National Security Adviser. Rubio is an unbelievably steadfast supporter of Israel and advocates a hardline approach to China, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela; Waltz is a Green Beret veteran who has been one of Beijing’s fiercest critics. He has consistently supported a tough stance on China.

Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s initial pick for Secretary of Defence, raised howls of protests from even among Republicans. He is a decorated Army veteran but has little or no direct experience in the Pentagon or government. He has referred to Army generals who adhere to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as “woke shit” and said that women should not serve in combat roles. Hegseth has been accused of alcohol abuse, financial mismanagement, and sexual misconduct. It looks almost as if sexual misconduct or allegations thereof is a pre-requisite for higher office in Trump’s second term! Happily, there are unconfirmed reports that indicate Trump now has second thoughts about Hegseth as a nominee for his Secretary of Defence. One of the names in circulation as a possible replacement for Hegseth is Florida Governor Ron de Santis.

Military veteran Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022 and became an independent, is Trump’s nominee to be the Director of National Intelligence, regardless of her lack of direct intelligence experience. John Bolton, one of Trump’s former National Security Advisers, described Gabbard’s nomination as “hilarious” in a post on X. Bolton is on record as saying that Trump cannot tell the difference between the national interest and his personal interest.

Rubio, Hegseth (in case he remains Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defence), Gabbard all require Senate confirmation before they can serve in their respective posts. According to information in the media Senate Republicans are unlikely to give Trump and his nominees a free pass.

Let me now take a close look at the likely main features, discernible at present, of Trump’s foreign policy during his second term. It is expected to be more of the same as during his first term; a trade war with China and hostility to multilateralism.

Steve Holgate, another of my former U.S. Foreign Service Officer-colleagues, is also an intimate friend. He has had experience working with the U.S. Congress and headed a committee staff in the senate of his home state of Oregon. Holgate, a perceptive observer of the passing political scene with whom I exchange views frequently, (which diverge at times) has pointed out, and I agree, that Trump clearly has an isolationist impulse. Trump’s vow to put “America First” and “Make America Great Again” taps into sentiments that date back to the beginnings of the American republic when George Washington and Thomas Jefferson talked of the uses of isolationism, though not as whimsically as Trump now does. What this will mean is hard to say, as he, unlike Washington and Jefferson, is totally mercurial.  He has indicated that he would stop supporting Ukraine. Holgate thinks this would have catastrophic results, for not only would the United States be abandoning a troubled but functioning democracy but it, under Trump’s leadership, may also mean that the United States would be betraying and abandoning U.S. NATO allies, who have really stepped up. Not only will this be harmful in itself but it could, Holgate notes further, persuade China to conclude that the United States would do nothing if China invades Taiwan; and allow Kim (Jong Un) to recalculate the risks of invading the South. Xi has shown that he is more than willing to rattle sabres in order to distract the Chinese from their internal problems, especially on their economic front. Therefore, Xi may find it handy, Holgate opines, to strike Taiwan in order to create a spurious domestic unity. We both (i.e., Holgate and I) agree that Trump has always shown himself sympathetic to dictators and Trump would love to be one. His values are opposed to those that have held American democracy and its alliances together. Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada could not only cause a trade war but would, in turn, weaken the economies of the world including that of the United States. As for Israel, Trump’s impulse is to give it unlimited unconditional support – – unless Netanyahu turns nettlesome and puts Trump off. We know that everything is personal and everything is transactional with Trump.

There are some commentators who feel that it is Hamas who set off the ongoing round of violence, and despite the justified criticism of the force of Israel’s retaliation and the accusations of genocide, the attack by Hamas was also an act of genocide. I have a different take. My sense is that such commentary is akin to a case of bending over backwards to soften the shockingly excessive and totally disproportionate response of Israel to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. Now it may be that the latter attack was designed to keep a pending anti-Iranian agreement creating a coalition of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States from going through and that is why Iran pushed both Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel. But, most of us, including some Israeli citizens themselves and many other anti-Zionist (but not anti-Semitic) activists around the world are of the view that Israel is more to blame as the anti-Israel UN Resolutions (vetoed by the United States) and the findings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) illustrate. The ICJ found Israel responsible for racial segregation and apartheid against the Palestinians, and pointed to a long list of abuses and violations of international law by the Israeli authorities. And on 21 November, 2024, the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (together with a former Hamas commander) citing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The judges on the ICC said that there were reasonable grounds that the three men bore ‘criminal responsibility’ for the alleged war crimes committed ‘from at least 8 October, 2023 until at least 20 May, 2024’.

Bruce Lohof whom I have quoted with approval earlier is of the view that:

Trump will continue the reflexively Israel right-or-wrong addition that has driven US policy in West Asia since Harry Truman was in the White House. I am among those who’ve often thought that the US policy towards Israel surfaces slowly because it has to be translated from the Hebrew. 

Meantime Trump on Monday, 2 December, 2024, in a post on ‘Truth Social’ indicated that he seeks an Israel-Hamas ceasefire before he takes office in January. He has promised that ‘there will be hell to pay’ if captives held in Gaza during Israel’s ongoing war are not released when he becomes President on 20 January, 2025. Whether this is all too familiar Trump bluster or if he is serious in his intent is not yet clear. It also seems contradictory to his ‘America First’ policy.

What of Trump’s likely China policy? Rick Waters, a former State Department specialist on China, who worked for the first  Trump term, in a recent ‘China Power Podcast’ with Bonn Lynn, the Director of the ‘China Power Project’ and Senior Advisor at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) in Washington D.C, is of the view that there is likely to be ‘significant volatility’ in the US-China relationship. Biden, Waters observes, did not re-set the China Policy of Trump when he took over the Presidency in 2020. Waters is of the view that a ‘leader level channel’ between the US and China is crucial when Trump begins his second term. He foresees the establishment of ‘Asian NATO’ in the Indo-Pacific to counter China whereby the QUAD and AUKUS will be strengthened, and Washington-Tokyo-Manila and Washington-Tokyo-Seoul trilateral alliances formed.

The entrenched view held in Washington, according to Brian Wong of The Diplomat in his insightful piece titled How will China react to Donald Trump’s Second Term (13 November, 2024) is that the United States is uniquely confronted by a systemic rival in China, and that swift and assertive responses are needed to prevent the displacement of US hegemony by a state beholden to neither the values nor interests of Washington.

Wong’s view is that Trump’s likely approach to China is best likened to “Russian roulette” given Trump’s penchant for risky gambits and transactional diplomacy. Some commentators feel that Trump, as he did in his first term, will broker “deals” in order to steer the East Asian region away from a hot war – – though through what means and with what effects he will do so are not as clear. Trump’s China advisory and foreign policy team seems set to feature a combination of individuals harbouring deeply ideological grievances towards China (Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Robert O’Brien); or a tendency to view China through the lens of a great power competition that the United States must win (Ric Grennell, Elbridge Colby, and Bill Hagerty); or the belief that trade globalisation has been anathema to the U.S.  interests of the U.S working class and domestic interests in general (Robert Lighthizer, Peter Navarro).

Few amongst these are interested in “cooperating” with China- – which they construe to be an existential risk to the United States, economically, militarily, and geo-strategically. US engagement with China, they would declare unequivocally, has failed.

Trump will have to moderate some of his extreme and self-undermining protectionist measures so as to deliver for the MAGA crowd that voted him into office- -if he is even remotely committed to bringing down prices, the Achilles’ heel of the Biden administration.

Today’s international, political, and geopolitical scene is dominated primarily by the different worldviews of the United States and China. According to Stephen Roach- -the author of ‘Unbalanced: The Co-dependency of America and China’ (2014) and ‘Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives’ (2022)- – ‘Sinophobia’, which began in the United States at the beginning of the 21^st century, is in full swing today based mostly on their competition in the fields of technology and trade. China has responded with ‘Ameriphobia’ demonising the United States for its accusations of Chinese economic espionage, unfair trading practices, and human rights violations.

The U.S has long been intolerant of competing ideologies and alternative systems of government. The claim of ‘American exceptionalism’ seemingly compels the United States to impose American views and values on others. That was true during the Cold War, and it is true again today.

The western bias over ‘losing China’ after the 1949 Revolution warned us of a “Red Peril”. Today we are being warned of a ‘Rising China’, modernising its nuclear and defence programmes. This ‘China bogey’, as the late Jayantha Dhanapala, the former UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs and foremost Sri Lankan diplomat noted a few years ago, will continue to be peddled as part of a larger conspiracy to create a new a Cold War in Asia between a ‘democratic’ India and an ‘autocratic’ China.

To put it briefly, if the prevailing Sinophobic tension in the United States-China relations deteriorates further, it will not do any of us any good. The leaders of the U.S “need to avoid the low road and think more in terms of being the adult in the room.” (Roach:2024). Roach quotes Franklin Roosevelt’s memorable line from his inaugural address in 1933, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and notes that amidst Sinophobic frenzy, that message is well worth remembering. Amen, I say.

The geopolitical rivalry emanating from the fraught U.S.- China power competition is complicated further, by what appears to be, India’s ambiguous role. True, India is a part of the QUAD and I2U2 (a security partnership among India, Israel, United Arab Republic and the United States), but India also has close relations with Russia and Iran. The recent border agreement between India and China is viewed as a diplomatic breakthrough, given the heightened tensions between the two sides after the Galwan Valley clash in 2020. Some observers suggest that the current breakthrough signals a significant change in India’s threat perceptions of China, with some India-China watchers interpreting it as a desire on India’s part to operate independently of its relationship with the United States. It may also be indicative of India’s interest to bolster its economy while continuing to flaunt, what India refers to as, its multialigned foreign policy.

In the emerging scenario in which complex geopolitical developments are at play in Asia and the Indian Ocean Region, Sri Lanka would do well to steer clear of them and adopt what I would term the ‘Penelope strategy’ that we encounter in Homer’s epic poem ‘Odyssey’. This is the non-committal path, that Sri Lanka, given its unalterable geographic location, needs to take if it wishes to avoid harm arising from ‘big’ power conflict in our region.

In 2002, during a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Enrichment Conference held in Washington D.C, Prof. Benjamin Barber of the University of Maryland gave a memorable keynote speech titled Democracy vs. Jihad vs. McWorld. In this speech he urged the United States, which has lived for almost 226 years with the ‘Declaration of Independence’, to now issue a ‘Declaration of Interdependence’. Given, especially the non-traditional security threats all of us face today, such as, resource scarcity, climate change which can lead to environmental degradation, natural disasters, poverty, infectious diseases, drug trafficking and terrorism that affect all of humanity, Prof. Barber’s call is even more urgent today than when he first articulated it. In the 21^st century that we live in, ‘smart weapons’ are much less important than ‘smart ideas’.

The reality of the world of today is interdependence, as Prof. Barber pointed out almost 25 years ago. I would add one other ingredient and say that today we need both interdependence and multilateralism (however anathematic that may be to Mr. Trump and his colleagues-to-be). As the former Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and one of Sri Lanka’s outstanding diplomats (now retired) said a few months ago when he delivered the inaugural Jayantha Dhanapala Memorial Oration, given that all threats or concerns humanity faces ‘are borderless in form and content, negotiating solutions and mitigating measures must, of necessity, be multilateral’. In a multipolar world, and in an order that is in flux we need more multilateralism than ever before, opined Palihakkara.

As a lead-up to this conclusion of his, Palihakkara told us the following:

As one of my dialogue partners from across Palk Straits commented in a lighter vein, the multilateral system needs to respond quicker before the AI-equipped cheap drones can become the poor man’s weapon of mass destruction.

Although stated in a lighter vein, one notes a serious underlying point in the above quote which underscores the direction in which we should head if we are to live in a peaceful world.