Rafael Navarro-Valls: "This Biden mandate will be Obama's third"

Rafael Navarro-Valls is professor emeritus and honorary professor at the Faculty of Law of the Complutense University of Madrid, vice-president of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Spain and, in addition, has a profound knowledge of the United States, its political reality and its historical development. He does not bite his tongue and begins to assess all aspects of one of the crucial moments for democracy in the United States. Navarro-Valls went to the microphones of Atalayar in Capital Radio to analyse the legacy of Trump, the future of Biden and all the aspects this entails in social, economic and geostrategic matters.

I imagine that he will be surprised by the way in which the transfer of power between presidents is taking place in the United States.

Yes, relatively surprised because everything has happened in the White House in its long history. Of course, the absence of Trump now, the pandemic, Biden's own approach, all make this a bit odd. On Wednesday the Capitol will look like Forth Knox, thousands of police will surround it and there will even be people who will wonder if Washington is on fire. I hope that Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez will do something to dispel the funeral atmosphere that will be there.

They will certainly liven up the atmosphere. It must be said that this is also a historic event, since only three presidents had missed the inauguration of their successors: John Adams in 1801, his son John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson in 1969. Do you give this a merely formal or symbolic importance?

There are some others who were not present, these three were the result of anger with their successors, but also Woodrow Wilson was absent due to illness in 1921 and Richard Nixon left the capital in 1974 after his resignation and before the investiture of his successor. Having said that, it is indeed quite shocking that Donald Trump has disappeared or is going to Florida, where there is also a very remarkable alarm and security system in place. I have always thought that this election was not won by Biden, but lost by Donald Trump, and now his post-election actions have made Biden a hero and Trump, as in the Greek tragedies, a villain. And the future of this villain is very confusing because there are many areas where there will be problems, I am referring to his political, judicial and family future. I don't think that the impeachment will come in time, but a president with that wound of two impeachments makes it quite difficult to run for the elections of 2024. You will tell me that this already happened to Cleveland, but if you look at history, Cleveland had won with a very high popular vote in all three elections he ran for, while Trump never did.

I wanted to ask you, in view of what happened a fortnight ago on Capitol Hill and how Trump's presidency has unfolded, do you think that democracy in the United States has withstood this severe test?

American democracy has endured as long as you like, it endured the attack of Pearl Harbour, an end to the First World War that was very badly handled by Wilson..., that is to say, the veteranship of the American people to endure things that, from Europe, we think are tremendous, is very great. For this reason, I believe that they will be touched, as time goes by in an incorrect transition, but they will come through it easily.

Seeing that in the impeachment vote there were ten Republicans who voted in favour of beginning the impeachment of the President, what future awaits a Republican Party with significant cracks in its support for Trump?

I have the thesis that Biden is going to meet with four parties instead of two. In the Republican Party there is a traditional wing, led by Mitch McConnell, and then there is a trumpeter wing. On the other hand, don't think that the Democrats are better off, right now they have a man from the centre like Biden, but also Bernie Sanders and several on the left giving the president a hard time. The first blow has stopped him by appointing a very open cabinet, but this will continue. The future of the Republican Party in four years, which is how long Biden will last, will be very much dependent on Biden's failings; now they will give him a few days' peace of mind, but they will return with all their weapons. On the other hand, we should not forget that Trumpism still exists, Trump has gone to Florida and I think he will not raise his head, but there is a British YouGov survey, which has done an extensive survey on this subject, the results of which are synthesised: 68% of the Republicans believe that the attackers on the Capitol should be acquitted, 96% of the Democrats condemn the violence without any nuances, 45% of the Republicans approve of it against 42% who condemn it and out of 360 million Americans, some 50 million are still with Trump and these 20 million are radicalised and fairly militarised militants. This is something that Biden should bear in mind in his attempts to unite the country, as there are some who are not very keen on this union.

Could Trump's defeat be the beginning of the end of one of the problems that the world currently has, such as populism and the demagogy of promising something that cannot be fulfilled so that the people hear what they want to hear?

Indeed, populism is not something that has emerged in North America; in Europe it has been dancing for quite some time. It is still something to be studied; in Spain we also have examples and, although it always lives on in the soul of a people, particularly one of 370 million like the United States, in the end if there is a president who knows how to channel it, it ends up fading and returning to its pristine meaning. Except for those who are not diluted because they are ignorant or violent per se. But I think that populism initially has a very harsh and powerful projection that with the passage of time is mitigated.

Do you think that these next four years of Joe Biden may be a resurgence of all the values that the United States has always had and that unfortunately in these four years many have been lost? In this sense, will these next four years also serve as a prelude to Kamala Harris being the next president of the United States, the first president the United States will have.

Well, I have the thesis that this Biden mandate will be Obama's third. If one looks at the collaborators, the inevitable union that exists after eight years with a very popular president can indeed be a third term. Joe Biden's problem is that he is making it a Jimmy Carter style mandate, which, of all the issues he has to press, does not press any of them hard, and this could make populism rise again. Kamala Harris is a valuable woman, but with a glass ceiling that has yet to be broken. She is a person who only comes out of being on the left, from the radical left, but she is one of those radical lefts who, when they take power, calm down. As you have said, there may be a battle in the race for the White House in 2024 between two women, Ivanka Trump and Kamala Harris, for example, but four years is too long to make a long-term forecast. In politics you have to live very much up to date because events dismantle any thesis you can make, that's my point.

I understand from your words that you believe that Joe Biden will be held hostage to that radicalism of the left wing of American politics embodied in Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders or Ocasio Cortez. 

Indeed, this is beginning to be seen by the very collaborators he is taking on, by the leading role he wishes to give to Kamala Harris, whom he always presents at his side. Joe Biden's great challenge now is himself, if he has the capacity, at 78 years of age, to suddenly become the most powerful man in the world. He is chief executive, head of state and also has to cover 4,500 positions, that is to say, a chain of responsibilities that hold him down and that has no end. He must surround himself with good collaborators, I have always thought that a president without good collaborators is like a turtle with its legs up, it moves around a lot but can't get anywhere. Let's wait a few days and see how the Treasury, Security and the chief of staff work, if they can get their bearings and if Joe Biden doesn't start by surrendering, becoming a hostage of the left of his party. 

For the time being, it has been announced that a decree will be passed that implies a complete change in Trump's policies, such as the environment, with a return to the Paris Agreement and the end of the migratory veto to the Muslim countries; there will therefore be a major change of direction.

If one looks closely at these decrees, returning to the Paris Agreement was a done deal, boosting honour loans for students, uniting the children of immigrants, who are really crying out to heaven for Donald Trump to separate them, sending $2 billion for the anti-COVID-19, are very instantaneous things that the people are waiting for and that can fill these first hundred days. Besides, he has promised that he will vaccinate 100 million Americans within his first hundred days.

In everything that affects us Allies, do you expect Joe Biden to regain that confidence with the Allies in NATO? And, in the Middle East, in something that is indeed positive on Trump's part, will Biden continue the geostrategic shift that has occurred following the recognition and establishment of relations between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel, and more immediately Morocco?

The pre-Biden presidency has been marked by a series of dark clouds; it has the problem of the Middle East that no one has ever solved. I recall an anecdote in which Eisenhower's secretary of state managed to bring an Orthodox and an Israeli together in Jerusalem and, on shaking their hands, told them: "We are going to talk like three good Christians", and the three understood that they were indeed going to talk like three people with common sense.

Let's see if he's got any common sense; as far as the EU is concerned, he will have to reach out, but not at any price, the EU has to pay according to American standards what it owes to get the North Atlantic Pact going. As for immigration, he should be careful in this respect. If he begins to tear down the wall erected by Trump in the south, with immigration he must tread carefully, he cannot suddenly legalise everyone and we shall see how he does. 

Iran's problem is a continuous headache in case it enters or leaves the nuclear pacts. The whole issue of Guantanamo, something so small that neither Obama nor Trump has managed to address it. The Sahara itself, where there has now been a rapprochement of positions with Morocco. The issue of Cuba, if it comes back to Obama's approach, there is a lot of money in Miami that is against that approach. Venezuela with an OAS system that does not admit under any circumstances military advances on these countries. All this is a complicated foreign policy in which, furthermore, the very problem of northern Canada and Mexico can erupt elsewhere, and the pact between the three will be a foreign policy that is moving but affordable.