Trump dodged a bullet. Let’s hope the world does, too – and he loses

If, as I fear is likely, Donald Trump wins this week, future historians will mark November 5, 2024, as one of the turning points of the 21st century. We have become so wearily cynical about overblown campaign rhetoric proclaiming every election to be “the most important in our lifetimes” that, as in the fable of the boy who cried wolf, we write off every alarm as alarmist. Our senses become so dulled by incessant overstatement that when the real threat arrives, we are slow to recognise it.

Trump is not a conservative. He is a radical.Credit: AP

The word “fascist” is usually a term of abuse that falls easily from the lips of excitable undergraduates and ratbag agitators. Remarkably, it is now the considered judgment upon Trump of respectable senior generals such as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly. Never before has the presidential candidate of a major party failed to secure the endorsement of a single previous candidate of the same party. Even Dick Cheney – who, as George W. Bush’s vice president, was regarded by the left as a figure so evil that he was caricatured as a James Bond villain – has endorsed Kamala Harris.

Never before have so many alarm bells been rung about a Republican candidate by so many conservatives. The warnings of sober people like Milley and Kelly – not political figures but military officers bred in an ethic of service – cannot be written off as hysterical campaign overstatement. Only a fool – or a Fox News propagandist – would dismiss them.

Yet, ironically, this is part of Trump’s almost mesmeric appeal to his base. The more often that respectable conservatives, or members of the national security establishment, denounce him, the more compelling his pose as the champion of the alienated becomes. In a nation in which suspicion of government runs deep, Trump’s narrative – that he, like his followers, are victims of “the deep state” – resonates. Far from being a conservative, Trump is a radical, a disruptor. His appeal works not just with those who feel themselves marginalised by economic and social change, but it also reaches “tech bro” billionaires such as Elon Musk, who see themselves as disruptors, too.

Whether or not Trump is rightly described as a fascist, a demagogue he certainly is. And if the history of the past century has taught us anything, it is surely to take demagogues seriously. They usually mean what they say. The great paradox of this election is that a notorious and systematic liar can probably be trusted to keep his promises.

So we already have a pretty clear idea of what a second Trump presidency would look like. On day one he would abandon Ukraine – he has virtually said so already. One of the most remarkable moments of the campaign was when, during his debate with Kamala Harris, he was asked who he wanted to win the war. Not once, but twice, he conspicuously declined to say. He has said, repeatedly, that he would end the war in his first 24 hours in office.

There is only one way that can happen: by stopping US military support and forcing Volodymyr Zelensky into a negotiation in which Russia would hold all the cards. And so the most serious violation of international law since World War II would be validated, the aggressor would be rewarded, and Zelensky – whom less than three years ago the world not implausibly compared to Winston Churchill – would be thrown to the wolves.

The message to other dictators could not be clearer: under Trump, America will not defend its allies. Does anyone seriously believe Putin would not read the abandonment of Ukraine as a green light to press Russia’s other territorial objectives in surrounding states to its south and west? Does anyone seriously believe Xi Jinping would not read the same signs and come to the same conclusion about his own claims upon Taiwan?

For a nation as strategically exposed as Australia, a new era of American isolationism is deeply concerning.

Trump’s return to the White House would also seriously affect Australia’s trading interests. (He routinely describes tariffs as “my favourite word in the dictionary”.) It was an insufficiently acknowledged achievement of the Turnbull government that Malcolm Turnbull was able to persuade Trump to exempt Australia from US steel tariffs. (Turnbull – one of whose early mentors was Kerry Packer – is a lifelong expert at handling truculent billionaires.) We should not expect Anthony Albanese – or any future prime minister – to be as successful at Trump management.

A recent poll found 73 per cent of Australians do not want Trump back in the White House. That means nearly half of Liberal voters prefer the alternative, however uninspiring she may be. Yet there is a small but voluble element of the right-wing commentariat barracking for Trump, regardless of the threat he poses to global security and Australia’s interests.

These people ignorantly describe Trump as a conservative. Undermining public confidence in institutions, subverting democratic elections, trashing the constitution, appeasing dictators and disdaining the military are not conservative principles I recognise. Nor are isolationism, economic nationalism or contempt for the rule of law. So, along with other screaming lefties like Dick Cheney, George Bush and John Howard, I will be hoping against hope to see Trump defeated.

On July 13, Donald Trump narrowly missed a bullet. We will find out on Wednesday if the world does.

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at ANU.

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