Trump’s isolationist policy threatens to diminish America

Paul Kelly rightly points out that President Donald Trump has a profound contempt for historical norms that have long guided US global policy (“Trump’s strongman tactics serve to diminish America”, 5/3).

In particular, Trump fails to acknowledge or abide by the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, signed by the United States, United Kingdom, Russia and Ukraine, whereby Ukraine agreed to give up its large stockpile of nuclear weapons in exchange for sovereignty and defence guarantees by US, Britain and Russia.

Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine twice, and the US under Trump looks like walking away. As Kelly says, Trump lacks any moral or strategic view of a democracy under threat from an autocratic power.

Trump says he wants America to be great again. Yet he is making decisions that are turning a great nation into a smaller one. China and Russia will fill the global void left by America under an isolationist Trump, and American allies will learn not to trust America.

At home, Americans will suffer a reduction in living standards behind the Trump tariff walls. America will indeed become smaller under Trump.

David Muir, Indooroopilly, Qld

So American aid was a loan, repayable now? When Volodymyr Zelensky resists this extortion, as any Ukrainian president must, he’s somehow blocking the peace process.

What peace process? Vladimir Putin won’t talk to Zelensky and Donald Trump has no peace plan. Unilateral pressure on Ukraine to make peace can only mean peace at any (Ukrainian) price.

Brett Hunt, Rosanna, Vic

For those who believe the answer to the Ukraine war is to appease the aggressor, they might wish to consider what Putin’s next step might be following his success in killing so many innocent Ukrainians and helping himself to hundreds of square kilometres of their sovereign land.

It certainly won’t be sitting on his backside enjoying the good fortune bestowed upon him by his mate in the White House.

K. MacDermott, Binalong, NSW

Give Donald Trump a break. In any vital discussion over international conflicts, it should be the message that matters, not how it’s delivered.

Unfortunately, the world appears to be in meltdown over the delivery of Trump’s clear message to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

America is the Western world’s tough cop on the beat. All of us will be dependent upon its military support if China, Russia or Iran mobilise against the West.

But it seems the world is outraged and demands wet lettuce diplomacy rather than peace through strength. If we want to embolden our enemies, by all means support the status quo and support weak leadership.

Lynda Morrison, Bicton, WA

With world volatility being the new, and only, game in town, our federal government has shown its ineptitude by not having chased a meeting, rather than a forgettable phone call, with the US President.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should have swallowed his party pride and sent Donald Trump’s sometime golfing buddy, Joe Hockey, on a mission to the White House. A “don’t come home till you’ve eliminated the tariff threat, Joe” expedition. Things in US politics now move at Trump-speed, not Biden-speed, and if we’re not even on the bus, how can we remind its driver of Australia’s steadfast loyalty, standing beside America in every war it has been involved with through all of the 20th century, and beyond?

Rosemary O’Brien, Ashfield, NSW

One of the very few immutable laws in economics is that in a tariff trade war both countries lose.

Both governments pocket the wealth taken from consumers and businesses by tariffs.

Donald Trump seems to hope the tariffs will force American manufacturers with operations in Mexico to relocate back to the US. But it’s more likely that businesses will be so wary of an unstable America, with rules changing by edict, that they might just find markets outside America to sell their goods.

Surely, the big business leaders among the Republicans will wake up as soon as the shock and awe fade away and a reality check sets in before we have another world recession.Ian Brake, Mackay, Qld