US election: Clinton cannot be considered the safe option

Whoever wins the presidential election, it’s likely that the US will cease functioning as a source of global stability.

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton looks on during a campaign rally in Tempe, Arizona. (AFP PHOTO/JEWEL SAMAD)

It almost goes without saying that the US and global sharemarkets will fall sharply if Donald Trump becomes President. But there is a horrible fear starting to creep into well-informed press reports and warnings from share analysts that a Clinton Presidency might be just as bad for markets. Indeed it might be a lot worse.

And, given that the US will be absorbed in deep domestic traumas for some years, Russia now appears set to flex its military muscle in Europe — particularly Eastern Europe.

Russia also announced this week that later this year it would deliver the first batch of four advanced Su-35 fighters to China. History tells us that whenever a leading power looks like falling apart, the risk of war is greatly increased.

I am no fan of Donald Trump but the crisis likely to be created by a Clinton Presidency is now causing speculation in the US that the only way to allow a newly elected President Clinton to escape the legal ramifications of her email mess may be for President Obama on his last day of office to grant the new President Clinton a pardon for her email acts.

The irony is that 16 years ago on his last day in office, Hillary’s husband Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. That action tarnished Bill Clinton for a decade. A pardon for an incoming President would also tarnish President Obama but given the Clinton mess it will be an option he will consider if she wins.

This week the Wall Street Journal pointed out just how dangerous a Clinton Presidency might be:

“A few weeks ago Mrs Clinton was the “safe hands” candidate. If she wins, it now appears hers will be an embattled and investigated presidency from day one. Moderates will flee. Republicans will find it hard to co-operate with her.

“She will be forced back on the hard left of her party.

“The same who already are drawing up “blacklists” of potential appointees suspected of sympathy for the private sector.

“The same who hesitate least about using government power to attack enemies (see Exxon).

“The same who are most comfortable relying on administrative diktat to impose policies the public doesn’t support and never voted for.

“Her party’s most ferocious warriors will run the Clinton administration because they’re the ones willing to be most unhinged in savaging her enemies” (US election 2016: Hillary Clinton becomes the unsafe hand, November 3).

If that’s what happens, then Wall Street and global markets are in for a terrible time. And remember that if we do have a big fall in markets then there is a strong likelihood that the European banking systems will be put under extreme pressures (Bears beat Trump and Brexit drum, November 3).

When Hillary Clinton was the “safe option” few looked that hard at what she was planning — it was all about the horrors of Trump. Now the Wall Street Journal summarises her policies this way:

“Mrs Clinton’s every plan involves only complicating America’s life with more rules, more legal pitfalls for citizens, more mandates for business. The tax code is not complicated enough for her. ObamaCare is just a down payment on fixing health care with more regulation and government mandates”.

And as The Australian’s Cameron Stewart notes from on the ground in the US, Americans are starting focus on what Trump is proposing (US election: Donald Trump’s talking and people are listening, November 3).

As I have pointed out previously, both China and Russia believe they now have military superiority, particularly in the air (Markets blindsided by global power shift, October 11).

Australia is completely unprepared for this new environment.

Paradoxically, one of the great mistakes of Hillary Clinton’s husband in his presidency was to extend NATO into the former Soviet republics and the Latvian states.

This not only breached US-Russia trust but NATO did not have the capacity to defend the widened empire. I discovered this on my visit to Estonia last year where I met young people preparing for what they believed was an inevitable Russian invasion (The West’s giant Russian miscalculation, September 15 2015).

In September, Russian naval ships and helicopters undertook a major military exercise in the Black Sea near Crimea. Russia is also testing the defences of the Latvian states and its Nordic neighbours with provocations. Germany is very apprehensive of Russian power.

In the South China Sea Philippines and Malaysia can see trouble ahead and have moved closer to China.

Since the Second World War, the US has been the world’s economic and military powerhouse. No matter who wins the US election that situation will change.