Don’t expect to hear Trump going on about the Indo-Pacific. His designs on Canada and Greenland signal a shift in prime strategic focus to access to mineral and other resources in the Arctic. And with it a willingness to collude with strong players to divide up the resources.
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Electoral success for new, rising parties in a democracy is now a threat to democracy. While securing only around a third of the vote by parties who have traditionally dominated is enough to give them an unquestioned right to govern.
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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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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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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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Prime Minister Albanese has announced new commitments to the United States which have the potential to give American institutions and agencies access to the inside workings of Australian intelligence, research, and business in ways that will not be, and could not be, reciprocated.
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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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From the moment it was sworn in, the Albanese government has been swept up in a series of defence arrangements with the Americans with far-reaching implications for Australia’s ability to act independently and in its own interests. The nation’s intelligence function is the latest casualty.
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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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America’s space policy reveals its hegemonic obsession and exposes the future quandaries for Australia. How will Australia confront the inevitable question of whether to support a peaceful or a militarised exploration of space?
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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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A group with the potential to capture the state appears to be forming in the US – coalescing around a set of illiberal and authoritarian ideas. Australian observers, commentators, and policy-makers need to watch this movement closely.
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Arguably, the Americans have brilliantly played successive Australian governments by casting the shiny lure of nuclear submarines out somewhere in the distant future and reeling in control of Australia’s defence policy.
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