A Donald Trump presidency would probably be better for Australia than a Kamala Harris presidency. There’s a simple reason for this. America would almost certainly be stronger internationally and project a more credible deterrence under Trump than it would under Harris.
Renowned British historian Niall Ferguson recently told John Anderson that Trump carried more deterrence in his little finger than Harris would hold in her entire cabinet. That might be somewhat overstating things – an unusual occurrence of Scottish exaggeration – but it’s hard to argue with Ferguson’s general point.
Trump will want to spend more on defence than Harris will. The US defence budget is way behind where it needs to be. But, more importantly, America’s adversaries will find Trump just as unpredictable as everyone else does. And he’s unpredictable in a way that can help US strategic interests.
Henry Kissinger famously told the Soviets that Richard Nixon was a madman and that he could overreact or escalate at very short notice. Nixon was anything but a madman. But it seemed an effective image.
Ronald Reagan came into office with the reputation of a fierce and militaristic Cold War hawk. In fact Reagan, the greatest of the modern presidents, projected magnificent moral clarity in the Cold War conflict but was extremely careful and parsimonious, as it were, in the use of American force.
This paradox is at the heart of the conservative appeal in national security. The more you desire peace, the more you should prepare for war.
There was a moment in Reagan’s presidency where he satirised himself by saying we are about to launch missiles against Russia, without realising that TV cameras and mikes were switched on. It was clearly and instantly communicated to the Russians that this was not a real statement. And of course the left-of-centre media went bananas against Reagan. Yet somehow or other, through the strange osmosis of popular media even back in those pre-internet days, it reinforced the message, to the Russians and everyone else that you better not mess with Reagan.
While of course it is almost an obscenity to compare the crude and at times repulsive Trump to Reagan, nonetheless there was certainly something of this military caution, buttressed by the threat of horrendously tough action if the president deemed it necessary, in Trump’s first term.
During this election, Trump has campaigned against the endless wars that he says the Democrats have got America involved in. Trump needs to be a bit careful here. If he gives Americans, and the world, the idea that it’s never worth America’s while to take military action unless its own sovereign territory is directly attacked, he could very well undermine his own greatest strategic strength.
But of course everyone knows that Trump can change direction on a dime. If a foreign power humiliates the Trump White House, Trump would almost certainly react very aggressively.
After this dramatic but low-content fantasy island campaign we’ve just had, it’s tempting to say that we have no idea how either Trump or Harris would actually govern. I might have said that myself. But on reflection they both have highly indicative records.
Trump was president for four years. Harris was Vice-President for four years. And as she herself says, there’s nothing that Joe Biden did as president that she would have done differently.
Nothing stands more starkly to Trump’s discredit than the way he egged on the mob on January 6. But before that his record as president was very defensible. He did pay for defence. He had a good economy. He made a strong effort to control US borders. The Abraham Accords were magnificent. The employment rates for blacks and Hispanics were at historic highs. And he was very good for Australia.
And although, in my view grotesquely, he often spoke flatteringly of China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Xi and Putin found Trump extremely difficult to deal with.
Trump revolutionised US debate and policy on China and Biden mostly stuck with Trump’s China policy. Trump imposed more sanctions on Russia than any president had done; he strongarmed Western Europe into spending more on defence, a very bad development for Russia; and he pursued policies that created energy independence for the US, which put Washington in a position of greater leverage in all its key strategic relationships.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. I think Trump a gravely unsatisfactory political leader. His chaotic methods and his constant negotiations, while they are effective when he’s on his game, dangerously personalise strategic fundamentals. They also involve Trump frequently telling lies and reversing himself. Whereas for the whole of my life I had the idea that the word of an American president meant a great deal.
Harris’s record is truly awful. She has generally been the most left-wing senator and Democrat politician of them all. She didn’t make a big impression as veep because she never made a big impression on anything. She was fully caught up in the toxic identity politics of the California liberal left.
Biden seems to have chosen her because he promised to choose an African-American woman and because he judged that her mediocrity and general ineffectiveness meant she would never be a credible alternative to him. When he was elected, despite what he implied in some interviews, Biden always planned to stay for two terms. Having a weak Vice-President helped that.
Before his disastrous debate performance made his candidacy completely unviable, one of the main arguments among Democrats for keeping Biden in office was that replacing him would mean going to Harris and she had nothing to offer.
Harris’s career has been built on patronage and has always rested comfortably on the left. She has made a few stylistic gestures to Republican-inspired patriotism – such as having the Democratic convention chant “USA! USA!” But she still offers vast new spending and will go along with the left of her party. She’ll be Biden but worse.
Biden appointed many staffers, academics and NGO leaders to senior positions in his administration. They were mostly centrist or centre left.
Harris doesn’t like any of them because she was condemned to obscurity as Vice-President, given a few assignments she fluffed and then more or less hidden in protective custody. She will appoint fellow leftists plus Obama administration holdovers, leftovers and retreads.
There’s nothing in any of that to give any confidence to Australia. If Trump imposes the maximum tariffs he’s talking about, that would be highly disruptive. But Trump showed in his first term a great propensity finally to compromise. He can’t appoint extremists to his cabinet because they won’t be confirmed by the Senate. The Republicans at best will have a tiny majority, 51 or 52 to 49 or 48, in the Senate, whereas you need 60 votes to confirm a cabinet appointee.
America will survive under either president. Talk of civil war is nonsense. The very latest shift seems to favour Harris coming back against an earlier very narrow Trump lead. No one at this stage can predict the result. But of two wildly unsatisfactory candidates, Trump would likely be better for Australia.
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