The big banks and brokerage houses of course understood that two heavily-armed alliances were on potential a collision course but there had been episodes of sabre-rattling for several years, defused each time by diplomacy. Opinion had been influenced by Norman Angell’s best-seller, The Great Illusion, arguing that war had become impossible because global trade and capital flows were too closely interlinked.
What they did not understand was that the circumstances of mid-1914 were unique. For the Berlin war faction, Sarajevo was a “gift from Mars”, to use the term later discovered by historian Fritz Fischer in the archives of the German high command.
A Balkan war locked Germany’s fickle ally Austria-Hungary into the greater fight against Russia, and therefore opened the way for activation of the German Schlieffen Plan on winnable terms. Something had changed.
Without wishing to push this parallel too far, I am surprised by how little discussion there has been in financial circles over the risk – or more accurately, near certainty – that Trump will refuse to concede the election unless crushed by an overwhelming landslide. Nor has there been much debate about the constitutional mechanics once such a situation arises. People are hard-wired to assume that long-standing convention will be upheld.
They would be well-advised to read Will He Go?: Trump and the looming Election Meltdown in 2020 by Amherst law professor Lawrence Douglas. There are inherent design flaws in the constitutional architecture of the Twelfth Amendment and in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 that are about to collide with the aberrant “psychopathology” of this president.
“Our Constitution does not secure the peaceful transition of power, but rather presupposes it,” he says. The democratic succession depends on a shared code of civic virtue.
Many readers might be surprised to learn that the states do not have to abide by the outcome of their own popular vote when they cast their ballots in the electoral college for the president. They may constitutionally appoint their electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct”. It is therefore crucial who controls the state legislature and state supreme court, and how they choose to behave.
Will Donald Trump’s Election Day Operations (EDO) units succeed in throwing enough doubt on the legitimacy of the ballot to pressure the Republican Party to invoke this disused power in the battleground states of Florida, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin?
The core vulnerability is the “blue shift” syndrome. The pattern of recent elections is that the reds (Republicans) do well in the early count, but then slip as the delayed postal ballots come in for the blues. This has led to the spectacle of apparent Republican leaders on election night later seeing their victory snatched away. The problem will be an order of magnitude greater this year because Covid-19 is certain to cause a huge jump in ballot voting.