If he wins, Donald Trump says he could bring about the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine between his election and inauguration. Trump’s peacemaking could trigger a series of seismic geopolitical shocks. Even NATO’s survival might be in doubt.
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As Trump’s prospects of electoral success seem to fade, the question becomes whether as president Kamala Harris would carve out a different foreign policy path from the failing Biden Doctrine.
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The theocratic elements of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership unmistakably resonate with Trump’s and Vance’s views. In these key aspects of the policy program, Trump’s efforts to disown Project 2025 must be seen as disingenuous. The implications should not be ignored.
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Longing for a simpler time when neither market capitalism, nor the values of the American individualist, materialist culture, were questioned, and when American preeminence was unchallenged, Trump’s impulse is to withdraw and close the gates. For Australia the repercussions could be profound.
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At some point there must come a crisis. The G7 and their allies and partners will either have to cease their support for Ukraine as the toll and costs become too great, or decide that the defeat of Russia is of such importance to them collectively that they engage militarily in the conflict.
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Over and over, generations of political leaders have fallen for the delusion that death and destruction bring a resolution to political problems, and people from many nations have bravely sacrificed themselves, whatever the casus belli. To remember their sacrifices is right; but to distort that memory to foster more war is abhorrent.
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A second Trump administration might mean domestic chaos, violence, and division for the American Republic. However, the danger is that Biden would be more likely to lead the world into catastrophic war. Sadly, on this score at least, another Trump imperium could be the least worst outcome of the 2024 US presidential election.
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How can the flood of crocodile tears from western governments for the Palestinians, without ever condemning America as the arsenal of Israel’s war on women and children, be explained? What logic explains the weak remonstrations against Israel and the failure to see war crimes in Ukraine and in Gaza as indistinguishable?
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President Biden’s regular paeans to America as “the greatest nation in history” need to be a warning to Australian policy-makers that a second term for him could be worse for Australia than the election of Trump. Biden’s obsession with the challenge of China is not just geopolitics. It’s a fanaticism that makes war conceivable, possibly inevitable.
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Avoiding a Trump presidency requires Biden finding some compromise or accommodation with alienated voters. Instead he has opted for division; his camp are the real patriots, just like Trump calls his followers real Americans. The other side are the implacable enemy, and when the election is over, rather than increased unity, for many the result will be seen as a terrible, maybe existential, defeat.
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The norms, customs, and conventions that have been the foundations of American republicanism are dissolving. Perhaps more precipitously than in the Roman Republic, liberal democracy seems to be passing in America.
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Israel’s right to defend itself is not untrammelled and by implying that it is, political leaders are undermining the authority of international law. Instead, they should be drawing heavily on it to halt the carnage in Gaza and the colonisation of the West Bank.
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The turning point at which the American hegemony began to irretrievably unravel will retrospectively be judged as the reaction of the Biden Administration to the Gaza crisis. Amid the pomp of an Official Visit to Washington did the Australian Prime Minister sense the enormity of the moment? As he paid homage to the hegemon, could he feel the facade crumbling to reveal America’s slipping power?
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A significant number of interlinked think tanks, organisations, and individuals are engaged in extensive preparations for Trump’s return – and for reform of the ‘administrative state’ and every aspect of American government policy. The program of the reactionary forces in America is as radical as that of the interwar fascists.
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Social change creates the space for revolutionary new thoughts. A rejection of liberalism and democracy is evident – even in nations that have been liberal democracies the longest. Trump could prove an ill-disguised Trojan horse for a vanguard of illiberal crusaders in pursuit of a post liberal America.
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As it stands, the leading Republican US presidential hopefuls, and much of their base, are supportive of military action against Mexico. What would it mean if America invaded Mexico in 2025?
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Biden, Trump, or DeSantis; the zealot, the disrupter, or the ideologue. Trump is Trump. Biden’s failing democracy crusade is already fracturing the world into opposing camps. Where would a DeSantis presidency lead?
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Past experience suggests that the postwar outcome in Ukraine could be a destabilised and failing state. Win, lose or stalemate, the postwar environment in Ukraine is likely to pose significant challenges for the EU and NATO.
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Apparently Palestine is a place that lies beyond the norms and standards of international law. In 2022 a UN Special Rapporteur referred to “gross violations of international law… by the occupying Power, Israel” – and called the extended Israeli occupation “an unjustified use of force and an act of aggression… amounting to a war crime under the Rome Statute”. While Israel is effectively a rogue nation, it is the hypocrisy with which the Americans (and others) can abandon the Palestinians that is astounding.
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The tanks might be a sensible tactical move, although that needs to be seen, but it is a poor strategic and geopolitical step. The Ukrainians have little reason to negotiate now. The NATO allies and partners are locked in and Ukraine’s strategic objective has become the objective of the Europeans and North Americans.
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