Wooley: Donald Trump’s disruptive tactics a lesson learned
Donald Trump’s disruptive tactics around the world should make Australia sit up and take action, Charles Wooley writes.
Opinion
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After little more than one month what a weird spell has Trump cast on the whole world.
If, like me, you saw only the last minutes of the debacle in the Oval Office you should go online and spin back to see the first half-hour.
There was nothing remarkable. Though you might wonder – was it brave or foolhardy for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, with limited English, to participate in such heavy diplomatic negotiations on live television and in front of the White House Press Corps?
A more prudent course of action would have been to follow normal diplomatic protocols and thrash out the differences behind closed doors and then emerge as smiling pals to deliver the good news, shake hands and sign the mining agreements with Trump’s big thick black pen.
Six years ago, Zelensky was a stand-up comedian and comic actor who is now thrust into the global spotlight. English is his third language after Russian but clearly he doesn’t yet speak Trump.
Earlier that day a group of sympathetic US senators had met with the Ukrainian president and warned him not to be emotional or confrontational with the US President.
There were also suggestions that he should wear a suit.
But Zelensky preferred to dress like Elon Musk.
We might imagine that President Trump’s more moderate advisers might have cautioned him against a lengthy public negotiation before a concluded agreement. World peace was hanging in the balance.
Perhaps the Donald has sacked his experienced and reasonable advisers. But even if he hasn’t fired them we know by now that Trump doesn’t take advice.
Why would you, when you already know everything? Except what AUKUS stands for.
Australia panicked about that but to be fair there are thousands of confounding acronyms at all levels of government and Trump knows the only one that matters, POTUS. Which stands for Boss of the World and King of Kings. And comes with a famous literary subtitle from the poet Percy Shelley writing about an ancient Egyptian tyrant:
“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair”.
Well, be assured Mr President, they are all despairing.
In the Oval Office the diplomatic balancing act was going well. All was cordial until at last came what is now being called the “ten minutes that changed the world”.
This is only an opinion column. All I really know from some journalistic travel is that eastern Europeans are not at all like us and certainly not like our present Australian leader.
They don’t grovel.
They are some of the toughest people I have ever met. Admirable but uncompromising almost to the point of being unreasonable.
Despite horrendous odds, even bank clerks and computer nerds of all sexes are in the frontline trenches killing Russians.
Before the unpleasantness with Russia, Zelensky, the actor, had distinguished himself by playing Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian dubbed version of the movie.
Clearly he is a bear not to be poked.
The poker was JD Vance, the first Vice-President in a long time not prepared to accept the usual insignificance of the office. “Standby equipment” is how Jimmy Carter’s vice-president Walter Mondale once defined the role.
Unfortunately, the ambitious JD was not prepared to be a mere standby. All was going well when he suddenly intervened and accused Zelensky of being “ungrateful” for Trump’s support.
Clearly the evil spell was actually cast by the Sorcerer’s Apprentice who once compared his boss with Hitler.
(Back then, in a bad way I assumed, but now with the embrace of Putin I’m not so sure).
JD’s intervention activated the president who is an old guy and might have been drifting off during all the boring detail.
The idea that he might have failed to notice an insult galvanised him and now we all know the ensuing disaster.
How will it end?
World War III?
Or another of Trump’s mercurial mind-changes?
Let’s hope some remaining wiser minds prevail and it becomes another case of, “Did I really say that? I don’t remember.”
Joe Biden has done Trump the immense service of legitimising forgetfulness as part of the presidential armoury.
Trump might yet get his way.
He has shocked the leaders of Europe out of their slumber. Ukraine is to a point Europe’s problem more than it is America’s, as Trump has indicated.
With the threat of the empire withdrawing its legions European politicians are now saying, “The West needs new leadership.”
Their forebears were complicit in the rise of Hitler by deliberately looking the other way when he took Czechoslovakia, in March 1939, without a shot being fired.
Striking a Churchillian pose, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned that Europe is “at a crossroads in history” and that they need to re-arm and support Ukraine and help turn it into a “steel porcupine”.
Maybe there is still some of the right stuff in the Old Dart.
We will see.
And now, given the risk of Trumpian isolationism, should Australia become a “steel echidna”?
All week long we watched as a Chinese task force patrolled down the east coast completing a live-fire drill in the Tasman Sea and then steaming off westwards in an apparent circumnavigation of our poorly defended continent. My strategic informant tells me that the Chinese flotilla probably has more firepower that our navy could have immediately mustered.
The PLA (we know that acronym) might have an accompanying nuclear submarine and almost certainly nuclear weapons.
But so what? We sold them the coking coal and the iron ore. And we export uranium to China.
But to be fair to the Chinese they have every right to be in international waters around Australia.
We do the same in the South China Sea.
Perhaps in some cases it is too easy to characterise our Prime Minister as weak.
As I unkindly implied a bit earlier.
This time Albo hasn’t presented the CCP (another acronym I’m sure we all know) with wine and lobsters but nor has he got on the megaphone to all Chinese shipping, despite the present pre-election campaign.
The Opposition made much of the PM not having prior warning of the Chinese excursion.
Albo is made to look like a spectator and not even a commentator with that multi-purpose recurring phrase, “I’m not here to provide a running commentary on … ”
But my strategic informer tells me the ADF would have known all about the Chinese exploit even before they passed the acrynomal PNG. Through AUKUS and the “Five Eyes” intelligence network our American friends share highly confidential information with our military. Their global eavesdropping technology affords close monitoring of rival fleets. If there is an accompanying submarine it will be known. Likewise, if there are nuclear weapons.
But in the nature of these matters you never let your military rivals know that you know, otherwise they will work out ways of stopping you knowing.
Such indiscretion would annoy our present allies. The Opposition should’ve known that.
It is all a dangerous game and an expensive grand folly, given that Australian and Chinese prosperity derives from our mutual trade relationship.
Perhaps in a realigning world we should attempt to get on better. If we cannot, we should at least learn from the terrible indiscretion of Trump and Zelensky.
If you are going to have a barney, have it in private.
Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist
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