Capsule Two || The best UPSC International Relations Weekly capsules || Shri T P Sreenivasan || SIA

00:11 - I’m sure you are all familiar with the events that took place on the 6th of January 2021 We will describe the events and then examine what are the implications of what happened on the 6th, It was indeed a historic moment for the US.

00:33 - It was the biggest challenge to the democracy of United States that happened. But of course this was not unexpected.

00:42 - Because right from the beginning, soon after the elections, and it became clear, that the present President (of the USA) Mr Donald Trump is not likely to be elected.

00:57 - He started saying that there is a lot of irregularity in the election process. And, therefore he will not accept the results. Even though the race was close in the beginning, And on a few occasions, Mr Trump was leading, but at the end, Mr Joe Biden had a landslide victory. As you know, the American Election system is very different from the system that we know. There is direct election of the President not through the Parliament as it happens in our case… In the US, for the Senate and the House of Representatives, the two houses of the (US) Parliament, elections are held separately. for the Senate as well as for the House of Representatives. A part of the Senate is elected at the time of the Presidential elections. But these are not interconnected. You don’t have to have a majority in Parliament to be the President. The president has to get a majority of the electoral votes and also of course the popular vote.

The two ways of counting that is all the votes that is that a candidate gets is counted but that is not enough. to win the elections. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but Donald Trump won the electoral vote. The electoral vote as you may know is based on the number of electoral votes in each state that one candidate gets. Depending on the size of the states, the number of seats are alloted.

And if you win a majority in a particular state, you get all the electoral votes of that state. So what happens is, there are some states which are considered battleground states as it were. Because there it is not clear who has the majority, whether the democrats or the republicans.

03:35 - So, every time when a election is held, it is predictable to know who will win New York, who will win California, etc…

03:46 - Because these are clearly unchangeable most of the time.

03:51 - But some of the small states where people keep swinging, that’s why these are called the swing states…

04:00 - where you get the electoral votes in the swing states they are the ones who normally win. So, in this case, Mr Biden got about 5 million votes more than President Trump and he also got the required majority of the electoral votes. So, it was very clear that Mr Biden had won.

04:30 - When he won the required number of electoral votes, normally what happens is, the other candidate simply accept defeat. and will congratulate the newly elected President. And a process of Transfer of Power takes place. Normally, the two of them, the outgoing President and the incoming President spend time together, talk to each other about the responsibilities and things are handed over. And in America unlike in India, there is a specific period of time between the election and when the President takes over.

Normally, the election is in November, and the handing over takes place on the 20th of January. These are all prescribed.

05:30 - But President Donald Trump since you all know that he is very unpredictable, and he was not willing to accept the defeat. and he started raising legal issues. This time the elections were held some what differently from the previous years, because of the COVID.

05:54 - Because of the coronavirus. A large number of people were allowed to vote, by postal ballots and also early voting.

06:06 - So what Mr Trump alleged was that in the process of this change of vote and larger number of ballots by post somebody has cheated the elections.

06:21 - And therefore, he claimed that he his victory has been stolen by the democrats. And since Mr Trump also got a large number of votes of the popular votes something like 73 million, the race was close. So, he claimed that all these are been counted wrongly. . All the votes are not been counted. there has been lot of irregularities, and therefore, he said, “I will fight till to the finish”. So, initially he took up these issues at the various state levels.

You know, in America, unlike in India, the elections are conducted state by state, there is no Central Election Commission. These are held in the states concerned, and the majority is declared by the Governor of the State. So, there is an election process in each state, and wherever the race is close, Mr Trump and his friends and supporters raised the issue of the majority in each of these states. And each of these states, they considered, recounted where necessary and took a long time and finally declared that Mr Biden was the next President.

and Kamala Harris would be the next Vice President. So at that point of time, instead of declaring or accepting defeat, President Trump exhorted his supporters many of them extremists and people who are willing to do anything for President Trump He told them that we must now be ready to fight. When he said we should be ready to fight, he meant fight, physical fight! And everybody hoped that he will not do that, and at the appropriate time he will withdraw.

But even today (11 Jan 2021) when there are only ten more days for him to continue as President, he has not conceded, he has not accepted the defeat. So, at each stage of the preparation and declaration of the elections, he tried to block the declaration. And constitutionally, the U. S. Congress that is a joint session of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, were supposed to meet on 6th of January, this was prescribed date.

And receive reports from all the states verify that these are accurate. and then finally make a declaration. So, 6th January is very crucial in every election. So having failed to get his point accepted by at the various other levels, Mr Trump said he will prevent the meeting of the US Congress and thus disrupt the process. So if the Congress can not meet, how can the results be declared? Even when all these were happening and he was saying all these, people just did not believe that he will do anything of that kind.

But sure enough on the 6th when the Congress was about to meet thousands of his supporters went to what is called the Capitol Hill. You know what is Capitol Hill. It is the center of the Parliament. Both the Senate and the Congress have separate halls in Parliament in the Capitol Hill and sometimes, they have joint sessions. So joint session is supposed to be presided over by the Vice President and the Vice President of course was President Trump’s closest official So, four years, Mr Mike Pence was the closest supporter and associate of the President.

So, first, the President tried to persuade the Vice President (to say) NO to all these meetings.

11:08 - To say, if there is disturbance, he will not hold the meeting. And therefore, the results cannot be held. So President Trump put pressure on Mr Pence. But Mr Pence being a a fair, fairly decent gentleman he said that he had to fulfill his constitutional responsibility which is to ascertain the voting pattern in various states and then declare the elections. Then these thousands of people, many of them armed, with guns and various other, you know, bombs and various things and they came for battle.

And they even managed to get in to the Congress House. And obviously, the law enforcement authorities did not expect that. And they did not have enough forces to block them. So before the law enforcement authorities could get closer, a section of the demonstrators, they were supposed to be demonstrators. In fact, many people went there to demonstrate.

12:25 - Not to disrupt, not to attack. But a section of these people were ready to attack.

12:32 - And President Trump kept on telling them to go and attack on Twitter and Facebook and various other forms And social media, in fact, had to close them because the President was asking for a rebellion, ‘insurrection’ is the word. So they got in to the Parliament building and threatened to even kill the Congressmen and the Senators but quickly they were removed to safety while these people, you know, wildly clothed and looking very disturbing triggers, you must have all seen it on television they went as much as in to the Speaker’s chamber, and wherever they could get.

And, it took them a lot of time to clear them out of the Congress. Meanwhile, three people had died because of various health problems, one lady was shot by the police and a police officer was killed. So, by rough estimate, about five people got killed. We don’t know the exact figures but according to the police, five people have been killed before these people were cleared out of the Parliament House. At that point, Mr Pence, the Vice President, if he wanted to cooperate with the President, he could have said “this is too much of disturbance, and now it is late night, so I am not going to do anything” and he could have gone home.

But he did not do that. He decided to stay and then complete the process with the protection of the Armed Forces. And it took him the whole night, the whole process ended only by, about 4 am of the 7th of January 2021. Then, clearly, of course the victory was that of Biden and Kamala Harris.

14:45 - At this point, there was so much of criticism of what President Trump have done not only in the US but also all around the world, all of them wondered what was happening to American democracy, and there was lot of criticism and in America itself, and outside. And somehow Mr Trump realized that his days are over.

15:14 - Then he made this statement saying that “Though I do not accept the election results” and he kept repeating that “this was stolen from me, I am the winner of the Presidency but in the circumstances in which all these happened I’ll be agreeable to have a peaceful transfer of power on the 20th (Jan 2021) which meant that from January 7th to January 20th, the 13 days, it was uncertain as to what he would do. Even now, people don’t know what he will do.

Because he continues to be president till the afternoon of 20th January. The morning, the news President will be sworn in, the Vice President will be sworn in. And they are supposed to go to the White house and meet the outgoing President and say goodbye. Till then, the authority is with the President. Though he is called a lame duck President, in the sense that, he can not take new orders, he cannot declare war, he cannot change policy, but he is supposed to maintain the law and order and keep the machinery going.

And during this whole period from Nov 3rd to Jan 20th, there is a transition process. Mr Biden has already appointed his Secretary of State, and other cabinet members, he has appointed various senior officials…

17:00 - In fact, he has to appoint altogether political appointees about 5000 to 6000 appointments he has to make at the highest levels. and that process is continuing. Initially, the White House, i. e. the President did not cooperate he did not even sign the Bill approving the expenditure for the country, at a time when coronavirus has been aggravated the vaccine is to be distributed So at the time of great crisis because even today each day, the number of deaths in the United States is going up.

17:46 - Each day higher than before. And there is complete panic in certain states where the hospitals are overflowing. It is true that a vaccine has been developed or several vaccines have been developed. But there is lot of work reaching it to the people. and yet no money, because the treasury was not allowed to be operated. But fortunately on 27th December 2020 he signed that Bill and in my previous lecture, I talked about it. Because it was in that Bill that the support for the Tibetans’ Bill was also included.

and a new budget was provided for the Tibetans which was actually a a policy change And similarly now, the outgoing President has taken another policy decision which he should not have done. He is to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. United States, like India, believes only in ‘One China’. And Taiwan relationship was only commercial. But for the first time in history, the American President i. e the outgoing President has declared that we will have the diplomatic relations with Taiwan and also in the sense virtually declaring war against China because China believes that Taiwan is part of China.

19:21 - And by declaring that we will have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it is a very major development. But unless this is finalised, this is cleared by the new President, it may not be effective and therefore, that is why we don’t hear much about it but such a declaration has been made. So, anything can happen between now (11 Jan 2021) and the 20th and this is what is the anxiety about the election process. What is that he can do? He can open a nuclear war if he wants.

He can do since he so derailed, his mind is so disturbed He could do various things, he has sacked several people, many people have abandoned him, So, now what’s going on in the US is everybody is wondering what to do with this gentleman till the 20th. and he should not be allowed to do the kind of things he did on the 6th. He is of course keeping quiet. But the process is on. There are two ways in which you can remove a (US) President by force.

The easiest way is what is called as the amendment 25th Amendment to the American Constitution which was enacted after the murder of the assassination of Kennedy. Because when Kennedy was assasinated people thought suppose he had not died and he was badly injured but incapable of looking after his job then what would you do with him? and therefore a new Act was passed by the Congress saying that, in such a case, when a President is incapable of handling his job he can be removed by the Vice President with the support of 50% of the Cabinet.

So, if the Vice President calls a meeting of the Cabinet and says that “I feel the President Trump is gone off his mind, and therefore, whatever he does we cannot accept, and so we physically remove him. For that you need a Vice President’s authority as well as half of the Cabinet. That is one option. The other option is to, you all know, other way to remove a President is to impeach him. Impeach him means, at first the House of Representatives has to vote for impeachment, and if it is passed it goes to the Senate.

And if Senate also passes it, the President leaves. But in the history of the US, no impeachment has been effective. Because if the President has the majority in the Congress, then it won’t go over.

22:28 - But in the case of Trump, there was an impeachment by the Congress (House of Representatives) but he had a majority in the Senate and therefore, it did not pass. So, the idea was that either to do the 25th Amendment for which you need the initiative of the Vice President or the Congress initiates a impeachment process. So, for the sake of these ten days mind you they are planning to take one of these actions. and we hear that the Vice President is not willing to use the 25th Amendment.

He says let not use it, let us keep it till if he goes mad or something, and then we may have to do it quickly. Otherwise you go via the impeachment process. Therefor, today, i. e. Monday (11th Jan 2021) a Bill will be presented to the US Congress and if it passes, it goes to the Senate. But unfortunately the Senate is not in session. The Senate will be in session only on the 19th Jan. So, till 19th they have to wait for the Senate to consider the impeachment process.

23:43 - And the 20th is the Presidential you know installation of the new President. But according to the law, the impeachment process can go on even after the new President has been sworn in So they say that may be are not able to remove him before the 20th but even after the 20th he can be declared disabled and then he cannot become President again. Because now President Trump since thinks that he can come back in 2024 and win the elections. Because he had 73 million supporters.

And so, this is this very strange situation in the US today. So you need to follow this, minute by minute, as to what is happening. Because what happens in these 10 days is going to be crucial for the United States.

24:40 - Because he can do anything which will harm the reputation of the United States. But so far nothing has happened and in my view the U. S. election process has overcome the problem.

25:00 - If the Vice President had surrendered or the Parliament could not adopt the resolution then there would have been a total chaos. But even though the law enforcement authorities were not able to control what has happened the attack but now things are normal and it is only a matter of completing these ten days.

25:28 - So, if nothing happens, if the impeachment process does not go forward and the Amendment 25 is not used, the President will cease to be President in the afternoon of 21st and if he doesn’t leave,… he will be escorted out, virtually dragged out of the White House. That would be a great disgrace to an American President. The whole world has condemned the action One of the first ones to criticise, it was our own Prime Minister who is supposed to be a friend of President Trump but that is all it is a matter of two Heads of Government doing business, I don’t think there was any emotional attachment between the two, and therefore our Prime Minister openly said that what had happened was unacceptable and the President should accept the verdict of the elections.

And similarly, most other countries have also said that.

26:39 - I believe UK and France are the only two countries have not said anything much. China is of course ridiculing the system of elections in the United States and they are enjoying the fact that a man like Trump whom they hated was being defeated and beaten by the by the people. So, things will be alright once the new President takes over and he will declare his uh policies much of it is already known. He has taken action on the Paris Agreement, he has appointed a Special Representative for climate change but the first priority is Coronavirus.

27:28 - And he has set up a machinery, a mechanism but still he is not been able to control the deaths and hospitalizations in many states So his first priority will be to reach the vaccine to all the people.

27:46 - And that will take time. The priority has to be established. First, they will be given to health workers, then, it will be given to aged people perhaps and that line is being established and we are hoping that by the end of January things may be under control in the US. But as you all know, there is a second wave of infections which started in the UK. UK is now under complete lockdown. Germany, Austria, Italy Sweden, all these countries are in deep trouble.

28:22 - Lots of deaths are taking place therefore this is not the time that you can engage in this luxury of these political battles. But that is really what has happened. One more thing, two things additional. One case, you must have heard of a gentleman, an Indian an Indian-origin American from Kerala, he was found with an Indian flag in the in this particular demonstration. I know him personally. He is a very nice decent gentleman. He is not the one who will go and attack.

But he believed that the But he believes even now that Trump had won the elections and therefore he decided to join the protest. That is fine. But what he did was, he carried not only an American flag but also an Indian flag as he walked in to this and he also handed Indian flag to various other Indians, all of them waved this flag and so on. And this was caught on camera. Because in America, it doesn’t mean anything. Anybody can fly any flag in America.

Ordinary people can fly their flags wherever they want. In the villages, if you go, you will see, in many places, people have raised the national flag on top of their houses. No restriction as such. And other nationalities who have become American citizens, they also come and wave their flags, so nobody cares. But the fact that this was caught on camera and shown on Indian media there was a big uproar here that the Indian National Flag was used in this protest.

And people were very angry but this gentleman was quite willing to explain his position, so he went to the, you must have seen him on many Indian channels and he said two things. He said,“First of all, I thought this was a peaceful protest. ” But that is not true, he should have known, as an intelligent man he knew this was not a peaceful protest. and he did not go in to the US Congress. He was outside. When he saw there was violence, he left. So he said, “I went there thinking that thinking that this is a peaceful protest.

unfortunately turned violent and it should not have turned violent, and that is why I have come back. “ But why the Indian Flag? He said,“Because I wanted to show to the world that people of Indian-origin American citizens are also supporting, some of them are supporting Mr Trump”. This is true. 27% of the Indian-Americans voted for President Trump. and many of them probably were there in that demonstration.

31:08 - But in our situation, our national flag cannot be used in such occasions. So, he was using the national flag of India simply as an identification of the Indian-Americans who are supportive of President Trump. But actually he has not violated any law. There is no law in the United States that a foreign flag cannot be flown. So they are not going to arrest him. Because there were so many flags of Vietnam, Cambodia, Greece and Italy were all flown. But we have taken this very seriously and even a case has been filed by a private party in Delhi and may be my friend may not be able to come back to India very easily because of this.

So it was an unnecessary complication in which we have got involved. We should have also ignored it but a lot of sentiment about the about the national flag. That’s a side story. Otherwise India is not involved.

32:12 - This is an internal process in the United States and we don’t need to be concerned about that. But like the rest of the world we are concerned about what is going to uh happen and I’m seeing news on the CNN that the House of Representatives have already started the process of impeachment because the Vice President is not agreeing to using amendment uh the 25th Amednment.

32:43 - So this is it, but in a way I would say that uh American democracy has not been affected by all this because the results are legitimate results in an election. But this is not the first time, that in American history, that fighting has taken place after elections. I do not know the exact dates but there are several times this has happened. And as you know, Abraham Lincoln himself fought a war, a civil war in order to preserve democracy on account of the system of slavery.

33:17 - So violence in exercising democratic rights or democratic privileges is not new in the United States. So but many people are saying how can this happen in the US. This happens in Third-World countries. This happens in poor countries under-developed countries, etc. That is not true. It has happened everywhere. In our country it has happened. We have seen legislators fighting inside the Parliament throwing chairs at each other. We have seen it in other countries, in Japan we have see it, in Taiwan we have seen it.

So this is nothing exceptional. But we are shocked when you see it happening in the oldest democracy in the world. But as long as it comes back in to the process, no process is disturbed, there is not reason for anxiety. So, this is what I wanted to tell you today for your And of course by the time you take your examination, situation may have changed new situation have developed. But this is a historical process about which you should know what the reasons were, what exactly happened, what are the consequences, and it is not over yet Next week also you will have to follow and you must have in your notebook or whatever record we must have the reasons for it, the results of it, and the implications for it.

Whether it is at the Preliminary stage or the Mains stage or interview, these developments can come up because this one of the most significant events of history not only this year may be for several years to come.

35:02 - Thank you very much. See you next week. with a new subject and a new discussion. Thank you very much. Bye-Bye. .