Wooley: Trump’s scorn for democracy is a worry for allies and for us
The former president is playing to the heartland of his support base by telling them what they want to hear - which is very concerning not just for those in the US, writes Charles Wooley.
Opinion
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Obviously many Americans (hopefully a majority of them) are alarmed by Donald Trump, but do they have any idea how much Donald Trump terrifies the rest of the democratic world?
We can only hope the Russians and the Chinese are as scared of Trump as we are.
Let’s start in Taiwan. “Taiwan should pay us for its defence. You know. We’re no different from an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything,” he said recently, making the point that for him distance is a defining factor in geopolitics and military strategy. “Taiwan is 9500 miles away (from the US). It’s 68 miles away from China,” Trump ominously declared. He rarely follows through, hitting the ball out of bounds and leaving it to the audience to find it.
With Taiwan being 9500 miles from America, we could be thinking that’s exactly the same distance America is from Australia. Trump hasn’t yet made a deprecating statement about our defence reliance on the US, but it’s early days yet.
Let’s hope no one tells him we spend more money on the NDIS than we do on the ADF.
Regarding Europe, Trump said that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that fail to fulfil financial obligations to the alliance.
Apart from his foolish egging on of Putin, the idea of Europeans paying for their nations’ defence is not unreasonable. The trouble is Trump sounds like an old-style New York gangster running a protection racket. Isn’t the Don really saying: “Nice little country you guys have got here. Pity if something bad should happen to it.”
But in closer questioning the mercurial Trump was asked if, as president, he would give traditional US military backing to NATO countries attacked by Russia and he indicated he would, with reservations.
“Yeah. But you know, the United States should pay only its fair share, not everybody else’s fair share.”
Again and again, he plays the distance card, central to an inherent isolationist theme in American history, which he clearly favours.
And he is not alone. Many Americans have long wondered why American troops have to die in far-flung foreign wars. Which suits Trump who is not a global strategist; he is a New York businessman and real estate developer. For him international politics is all about “location, location, location”.
He often notes how America’s oceanic remove from the fortunes of less happy countries should create a vast moat of indifferent self-interest. Trump being Trump never puts it so succinctly but that’s what he means when he says: “We have an ocean in between some problems … we have a nice big, beautiful ocean.”
And for a huge number of struggling heartland Americans in what are disparagingly called “the flyover states” isolationism resonates. In Butler, Ohio, and in Boise, Idaho, and a thousand other towns we have never heard of, parents mourn children who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As in Ancient Rome, the American Republic’s modern wars have always been fought by the poor and the disadvantaged. Young working-class kids join the military reserve to make some extra money and then find themselves on the first transports out. They go to fight wars in countries they have never heard of.
I last met such American troops in Afghanistan, before the ignominious retreat. They were clean shaven, polite and patriotic. “I’m here to serve the United States and do what my President requires.”
They had no idea how badly it would end.
Happily, I missed Vietnam but that was pretty much the message from our young conscripts: “I’m just doing my bit.”
That ended badly too.
In total, so far 600,000 Americans have died in foreign wars in the 20th and 21st centuries. A fact that suits Trump, the old reality television showman who knows how to work an audience.
He knows in the heartland of his support base there is no appetite to fight overseas nor to pay for other people’s wars and so he tells them what they want to hear.
“The American people deserve to know what their money has gone to. Are the Ukrainians any closer to victory than they were six months ago?”
When elected he says he will end that war “in a phone call”. The assumption is that Trump will give Russia the Ukrainian territory it now holds and shut the door on any talk of Ukraine joining NATO.
Such positions on Ukraine and Taiwan reflect a callous sense of realpolitik. It is a new world game so different from America’s longstanding international position declared in June 1984 by Ronald Reagan: “Isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.”
By contrast, Trump’s isolationist speech is, in his own words, “a big, beautiful ocean away” from the traditional American foreign policy espoused by Reagan.
The world has changed. Reagan purported to champion the democratic ideal and now a man who doesn’t really seem to care for democracy is once again at the threshold of the Oval Office.
“Vote for me, you’re not going to do it ever again.” Unbelievably Trump told American Christian voters last week if he is elected they won’t “have to vote again” in four years because he will have “fixed it so good”.
Bad grammar aside, this is alarming in both its stupidity and in its scorn for democracy.
Can the man who so blithely utters such contempt for democratic process, once again become president of Australia’s closest ally? If he does, we better find some new big friends.
Or grow up quickly.
Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist
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