Piers Akerman: If you don’t back Donald Trump, you’re a problem
DONALD Trump is giving global leaders a long overdue lesson in realpolitik. On the world stage, he is the only Western politician making a difference, Piers Akerman writes.
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DONALD Trump is giving global leaders a long overdue lesson in realpolitik. On the world stage, he is the only Western politician making a difference.
The pundits who sneered their contempt for Trump and proclaimed he was unelectable two years ago are now eating their words and begrudgingly admitting he is only doing what he said he would do. Imagine that, a politician who is keeping his word.
Writing in The Washington Post a year after Trump’s inauguration, Gary Abernathy noted that Trump has remained as “constant as the North star”.
“Has Trump really behaved in some new manner that wasn’t on full display during the campaign?” he wrote.
The outrageous tweets, the bluster, the self-aggrandisement, the insults — Trump the commander in chief is virtually identical to Trump the neophyte candidate.
“But in addition to consistently exhibiting what many see as negative attributes, Trump has also tried to keep his biggest campaign promises on repealing Obamacare, securing the border and cutting taxes, and he stayed true to his word with his pick of Neil M. Gorsuch for the Supreme Court.
Now, his declaration of US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital fulfils another pledge. No one who backed Trump as a candidate, with all his flaws, has been given much reason to abandon him.”
The message is clear, you may not like Trump’s manner, you may be among those who loudly self-righteously proclaim that you would never have him in your home, but if you can’t admit that he has been more right than wrong, and that he has been altogether a better US president than his weak predecessor Barak Obama, and a more effective world leader than any other in the West, you are part of the problem. A denizen of the swamp Trump is determined to drain.
Last weekend I was in Jerusalem as a participant in the International Institute for Strategic Leadership Dialogue and it rapidly became clear that Trump is the principal hope for the continuance of the civilised world.
Over four packed days panel discussions were held on topics encompassing everything from global security and cybercrime to cryptocurrencies, fake news, illegal immigration, Saudi Arabia, the Palestine peace process and Brexit.
Among the other participants from the UK, Australia, Israel and the US were Nobel prize winners, defence and security chiefs and intelligence heads. Albert Dadon, the Melbourne-based backer of the dialogue, now in its 10th year, says podcasts of the panel discussions will be put online later this year.
As with most multilateral conferences, the personal discussions on the sidelines were as informative as the public exchanges.
The bad actors on the global scene are easily identifiable. Russia, the multitudinous terrorist gangs including Hezbollah, Hamas, the rapidly morphing remnants of ISIS and
al-Qaeda, and China.
The threats demonstrate the range of human ingenuity running from the ultra-high tech cybersecurity attacks on Western organisations to low-tech but highly efficient kites carrying incendiary devices which Palestinian terrorists have used to ignite nearly 900 fires, decimating more than 3200ha of Israeli forest and agricultural land and nearly 25 per cent of Israeli nature reserves near the Gaza border.
Iran is offering hyper-malevolent support for terrorism in the Middle East and supporting all manner of criminal activity elsewhere. China is everywhere adding to its “string of pearls” through its innocuous sounding One Belt, One Road program providing infrastructure to nations and installing Chinese bases from the Pacific to Djibouti and ever extending its influence.
Russia, under Putin, despite its weak economy (or because of it) is also embarked on foreign adventures. As former prime minister Tony Abbott (another dialogue participant) pointed out at a subsequent conference in Washington, “under Putin, Russia has invaded the Ukraine, meddled in Syria, coerced Georgia, had numerous domestic critics murdered, and killed opponents of the regime abroad. Putin’s Russia is the only big country in Europe in the past three-quarters of a century to have waged aggressive war against
its neighbours.”
China, said Abbott, is still an economic opportunity but it’s a big strategic competitor too. With the militarisation of the South China Sea; the bullying of the Philippines, Vietnam and even Japan; probing against India; and the ever-present danger to Taiwan, it’s asserting itself all around the region (and I add, now in the Middle East).
The global threat level has never been higher.
Trump is addressing these issues head-on and while you may not embrace his language, his tweets or his manners, if you think that the West should go back to the ineffectual diplomacy of Obama, or the self-justifying bureaucracy of the unelected dictators of the European Union, or the flatulence of the UN, you might as well hoist the white flag.
In Greek mythology, Cassandra foretold the sacking of Troy. She warned the Trojans that the great wooden horse the Greeks had left at the city’s gates concealed warriors and attempted to destroy it. The feasting Trojans, complacent in their recent victory over Greece, stopped her before she could set fire to the structure. The Greeks hiding within were surprised at how easily she had seen through their strategy and were able to destroy Troy.
Those who ignore the clear threats to the West are as blind as the deluded Trojans.
Self-interest drives many who claim the Chinese pose no threat, virtue signalling self-deception motivates those who ignore the Palestinian Authority’s payments to convicted terrorists, and sheer ignorance informs those who say Trump is the greatest threat to world peace.
History is full of examples of people who emerged, generally unloved, at times of great need and gave great leadership. Churchill was widely rejected when he was catapulted into leadership in 1940, and it is fair to say that without his efforts, the US would not have entered the war and many millions more may have been killed before the Allies achieved victory.
The old saying goes “cometh the hour, cometh the man”, and now the best man for the hour is Trump.