Donald Trump is an egomaniacal narcissist, conspiracy theorist, ethically challenged businessman, misogynist, phenomenal blowhard and former Democrat – found guilty by a court of sexual abuse, twice impeached as President of the United States, and unwilling, unable or both to accept that he lost the 2020 American presidential election, of which the disgusting attack on the Capitol in 2021 was the most visible manifestation. Now he seeks a second term. How could America possibly be safe once back in his hands? Not to mention the rest of us?
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is 81.
At 77 years old himself, Trump is no spring chicken. But the President’s shakiness and the arithmetic makes one pause. Biden will be 82 on November 20 (assuming he makes it to then), less than a month after the presidential election. By the time of the next contest in 2028, he will if still alive be 86. Can we be sure that Biden would make it through four more years in the White House? What would happen if he didn’t? Are the United States and the world ready for President Harris?
And, of course, neither Trump nor Biden may make it onto the ballot paper at all. As James Johnson wrote on this site last week, Trump is well-placed to sweep the Republican primaries. But the lawfare being waged against him could somehow take him out. Or Biden might suddenly withdraw – or be withdrawn – as his party’s presidential candidate.
These uncertainties should encourage British observers of the contest to think very carefully about what it might produce – a task made no easier by the partisanship of coverage, both in the United States and, increasingly, here. It helps from the start to know what one wants. might there be more to the coming contest than a choice between a bullshitter and a corpse? Is one’s test what’s best for America? Or what’s best for Britain – and, wearing our conservative hat, the centre-right?
There is a straightforward case for believing that Trump’s cynical assault on the integrity of the 2020 election, in the greatest democracy in the world, was so heinous an offence that he must be punished for it by the country’s voters this year. Open and shut case. End of.
Then again, a cold, hard take based on the national interest would not be so uncompromising. Biden seems to me to be a fairly conventional foreign policy president – re-engaging with international institutions, backing Ukraine (up to a point), backing Israel in the Middle East while distancing itself from Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to Gaza and, in practice, offering continuity Trump policies over China.
The contrary view is that Biden has shown beyond doubt that, come what may, America won’t risk meaningful military action abroad on his watch – the policy exemplar being the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Essentially, the argument runs, the President has signalled weakness especially through his futile efforts to re-engage diplomatically with Iran.
Then there are his instincts about Northern Ireland, and the Democrats’ electoral interests. “I think that the United Kingdom should be working closer with Ireland in this effort in this endeavor,” he said in his speech to the Dail during his visit to Ireland last year. This scarcely-concealed exercise in Brit-bashing can be written off as just so much electoral posturing.
But Sinn Fein is on the electoral march in Ireland. Its mainstream parties are trying to head it off. Hence Ireland’s exploitative case before the European Court of Rights about the Government’s legacy legislation. A new Biden administration giving diplomatic cover to a Sinn Fein administration in Ireland would be a serious problem. Or in Northern Ireland, come to think of it.
Trump, by contrast, is pro-Britain. Well, pro-Scotland, anyway. Well, pro the bits of the latter he can play golf in. Such is the cynical view. But there may be more to it than that. Trump restored a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office after it was removed during Barack Obama’s time. Biden has now had it taken away again. Does the farrago tell us anything worth knowing?
And though Trump may not be all that engaged with Britain, he certainly kept an eye on Brexit, which he backed enthusiastically. That would matter if he returned to office. Talk of a comprehensive trade deal between America and Britain may always have been overblown. But Trump would smile on whereas Biden has not.
The more telling case for Trump in that in a perilous world, in which China, Russia and Iran seem to be drawing closer together, he would project strength, and be prepared to wield it if necessary.
Look at the record. Obama wasn’t prepared to launch missile strikes against Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Trump did. Essentially, his foreign policy was to speak loudly, withdraw troops – but wield a big stick if he thought it necessary. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during an American-led operation, and ISIS was rolled back under the Trump presidency. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, and so responsible for clandestine operations, was killed by a drone strike.
If you want a tougher approach to Iran, then Trump is your man: as President, he withdrew from the nuclear deal with it and tightened sanctions. If re-elected in 2020, he might have withdrawn from Afghanistan more slowly – though that may be wishful thinking by his sympathisers here, since agreements reached in his time paved the way for Biden’s actions.
Obviously, Trump would once again disengage from international agreements and arrangements where Biden re-engaged with them. But his presidency could do diplomacy when it wanted to – for example, in the form of the Abraham Accords, the normalisation agreements between Israel and, variously, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Then there was the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), the deal that replaced NAFTA. It can also be argued that his predecessors failed to act against North Korea, leaving him with few options.
Peace through strength abroad might be the precondition for the kind of boom that America saw during the pre-Covid period under Trump’s presidency. But there are some daunting question marks. What if a second Trump presidency helps to collapse support for Ukraine, and force a settlement to the war on Putin’s terms? What signal would that send to eastern Europe and the Baltic states?
Trump has a point, and then some, about Europe’s reluctance to spend its money on its own defence. But what were he, in a second term, to loosen America’s commitment to NATO? Or settle on a Trump-to-Russia policy – a kind of equivalent of Nixon-to-China, in which he sought to detach Putin from his developing alliance with Beijing?
“A Trump presidency could be just what the world needs,” Boris Johnson wrote last week in the Daily Mail. I wouldn’t go quite that far. But weighing up whose victory would be better for us isn’t easy. Either way, British liberals may not want to understand why America might vote for a man like Trump, but British Conservatives should make the effort.