A sound, blunt security strategy

As an orator, Barack Obama had few peers on the world stage. Donald Trump, in contrast, is a plain, blunt speaker. His political style, especially his reckless tweets, is unorthodox and often clumsy. But where Mr Obama’s soaring rhetoric offered hope, President Trump is realising American hopes in two key areas, economic and strategic policy, and at breakneck speed.

Mr Trump’s end-of-year national security strategy statement, for example, provided a dose of long overdue realism, warning that the world in general, and Australia’s Asia-Pacific region in particular, is becoming far more dangerous. As Cameron Stewart wrote yesterday, Mr Trump laid bare China’s destabilising behaviour in language Canberra has been too cautious to use. The statement also spelled out the increasing threats posed by Russia, Iran and North Korea, Islamic jihadists and syndicates stepping up international cyber crime.

Mr Trump’s 55-page analysis displays a candour that eluded Mr Obama, whose boast, at the height of his presidency, that thanks to his efforts “the tide of war is receding” was a prime example. The disastrous fallout of Mr Obama’s years of weak-kneed timidity towards Iran is only emerging now. In the US, after a long investigation, Politico magazine has revealed that in his determination to secure his controversial nuclear deal with Iran, the former president’s administration shamefully derailed a US law enforcement drive against Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists funnelling cocaine into the US. As a result, the syndicate collected $US1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking.

Mr Trump, in contrast, has acted decisively to decertify the Iran nuclear deal and warned he may reimpose sanctions against the terrorist-supporting ayatollahs in Tehran. He has also done what Mr Obama and other US presidents before him promised but failed to do — recognise the incontrovertible reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. He has ordered the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Such moves demonstrate an imperviousness to polite opinion that is one of Mr Trump’s signature qualities. He sees and describes the world as it is, and not how he would like it to be.

As Mr Trump approaches the end of his first year as President, the new realism emanating from the White House, that was so clearly evident in his national security strategy statement, is also shaping US economic policy. His $US1.5 trillion in tax cuts is the biggest tax reform achieved by any president since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The reform is designed to underpin a reassertion of US economic might, which is vital, in turn, for reasserting US military strength in the face of increasing challenges, especially from China and Russia.

The cut in the corporate tax rate, from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, is designed to bring home trillions of dollars held in overseas banks by US corporations, providing much-needed impetus for manufacturing industries and creating jobs for middle America. Contrary to erroneous claims that Mr Trump has handed a Christmas present to the rich alone, middle Americans will also benefit from the reduction in the number of personal tax brackets and the elimination of anomalies between federal and state taxes, encouraging families to move to lower-tax states.

As The Australian has argued for months, Mr Trump’s corporate tax cuts pose a singular challenge to the opposition and the Senate crossbench to back the Turnbull government’s company tax cuts. Increasingly prosperous US companies should also be more inclined to invest in Australia.

Mr Trump’s security strategy also advocates closer US-Australia engagement. As Jim Carouso, US charge d’affaires, told The Australian, the blueprint has put paid to claims the US was giving up on Asia and this region. As the US, under Mr Trump, seeks “peace through strength’’, it is also seeking to increase “quadrilateral co-operation with Japan, Australia and India’’. That realistic, co-operative approach amid mounting dangers is warmly welcome.