During a rally in Waterford, Michigan Trump claimed ‘You know, our doctors get more money if somebody dies from Covid’. Video / Donald Trump via Facebook
A professor has shared a bleak picture of what the world could look like if Donald Trump wins a second term as US President.
Experts are divided over what US election result could bring stability back to America, with fears either result could have dangerous implications for the world.
A Trump win could mean world disorder as the inward-looking President's administration means the end of the United States' stabilising global leadership, the professor fears.
That is the opinion of Eliot A. Cohen, dean of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, who predicts a second Trump term could spark the "chaos" of the world a century ago.
Supporters of President Donald Trump attend a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Photo / Getty Images
Writing in foreignaffairs.com, Cohen - who worked for the Department of State under Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - said a second Trump win would "permanently tarnish the United States' reputation for stability and predictability" and forever change people's perception about the United States.
"Since its inception, the country has been the land of the future, a work in progress, a place of promise no matter its flaws and tribulations," Cohen writes.
"With a second Trump term, the United States might as well be understood as a monument to the past … a vast power in decline whose time has come and gone.
"A second election would signal either that the system is fundamentally flawed or that the United States has undergone some kind of moral collapse.
"The country that had built international institutions, that had affirmed the basic values of liberty and the rule of law, and that had stood by allies would be gone.
"A Trump victory would mark a sea change for the United States' relationship with the rest of the world.
This isn't the first time the professor has spoken out against Trump. After he won in 2016, Cohen wrote about being a "Never Trumper" and a year later wrote about his dislike of the president as a person.
But Cohen's piece has been criticised, with claims that regardless of who wins the election America faces challenges as a super power.
"What needs to be realised is that US global power is failing and that is an empirical process over several years regardless of which one of the two main parties own the White House – or the Congress for that matter," Finian Cunningham writes in RT in response to Cohen's piece.
Former German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel said the US election could have wider implications for the world if there is a bitter legal fight over the result.
"No institution is more fundamental to the West's wider appeal than free and fair elections," he wrote in The Strategist.
"If the former de facto leader of the West can no longer manage to uphold even this principle, the rest of the world may well opt for other political systems."
Cohen wrote: "It would signal to others that Washington has given up its aspirations for global leadership and abandoned any notion of moral purpose on the international stage.
"It would mean a return to a world that has no law other than that of the jungle — a world akin to the chaotic 1920s and 1930s.
"But worse than that, because there would be no United States out there on the periphery, ready to be awakened and ride to the rescue.
"It would usher in a period of disorder and bristling conflict, as countries heed the law of the jungle and scramble to fend for themselves.
"The appeal of authoritarian systems would grow."
Cohen says Trump and his advisers have formed isolationist policies under the slogan "America FIrst" which poorly masks a disdain for international bodies such as the UN.
This is coupled with the Trump notion that "others play Americans for fools" and has stymied the United States' reputation of almost a century, as a "globally engaged power" in world affairs.
Cohen said the methods by which Trump could win – the quirks of its electoral system, plus "voter suppression" and "artful" Republican politicking – was a recipe for instability at home.
And thumping "America First" to the rest of the world would "permanently tarnish the United States' reputation for stability and predictability".
Cohen expected that after winning a second term, Trump would try to do what all second term US presidents attempt, "to secure his place in history".
Cohen predicts this would likely be a Trump display of the art of the deal on an international scale of say, handling China/Taiwan, or an Israeli-Palestinian peace pact.
Meanwhile, at home, politically motivated violence on American streets might escalate, fanned by a victorious Trump and doubt over the validity of his win.
President Donald Trump waves to supporters in Rochester, Minnesota. Photo / Getty Images
Cohen points out that the United States has been at pivotal points in it history before, during the Civil War and the Great Depression.
But it had Abraham Lincoln in the early 1860s and Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s to guide it back on the path forward.
"This time," Cohen writes, "the country would have a leader crippled by his own narcissism, [and] incompetence.
"There is no reason to think that Trump's bombast, self-pity, incoherence, belligerent narcissism, and fecklessness would abate after a second miraculous victory over a more popular Democratic opponent."
