Anyone watching the Australian diplomats at the Republican national convention would have quickly seen the backslapping, the warm handshakes with the republican tree people and the Australian understanding that, more likely than not, Donald Trump will be elected president in November. Our diplomats, and those with whom they have intercourse, can read the signs as well as, if not better than anyone else. Australia doesn’t have a vote at the election, and must get on, as best as it can, with the person and the players chosen by the American electoral system.
One did not see our Ambassador, Kevin Rudd, dancing attendance on the man with the pierced ear. There is not much point, and it was noteworthy that few of the representatives of other countries were focusing on him either. Their efforts were focused on the professionals who will be taking charge after the transition, on renewing old understandings and on anticipating where the other side will want to go. It’s not a matter of introductions – because most of the players have known each other through previous administrations, and they have maintained cordial relationships while the players have been taking time off in the think tanks, the institutions and in politics.
As in Australia, some of the older players will return expecting that they will be in positions of power, that they will be able to exact a hard bargain for their return to public service. Some may be surprised that neither Trump, nor his court has any particular need for that service. First, the party is peculiarly Trump’s now, and the allocation of patronage or significant policy positions will owe a lot less to the need to get factional balances, or payoffs to players to whom political debts are owed. Trump, moreover, carries grudges, and many who have criticised him since 2021, or who have failed some test of loyalty during Trump’s travails in the civil and criminal courts, or over the January 6 revolt, will find no forgiveness, even if they were welcomed back into the fold during the campaign. For such people, the politics of getting, and holding on to power in Washington will be far more intense and pre-occupying than the renewal of relationships with countries such as Australia.
Australia usually has no influence over American cabinet appointments, but with Trump, there will be even less than usual. This is not a measure of any alleged Trumpian antipathy to Rudd, or to Australia: indeed, Trump generally has goodwill for Australia, and his advisers are familiar with the detail of defence, intelligence, economic and cultural relationships.
Australia is a detail beneath Trump’s grand vision.
That said Trump does not think much about Australia, or about individual chess pawns on the board when he is contemplating strategic action, or the relationship with China. Those mere boring details are matters for his officials and he is not very much interested in either its planning or its execution. In just the same way, Trump does not have much of a foreign policy agenda, going beyond slogans. He has indicated that JD Vance, his vice-presidential candidate will take a lead on international matters, perhaps particularly over the trade war with China. Trump’s policy on Ukraine (and Russian aggression) is a mystery. He may keep the cheque book open for the continued massacre, by proxy, of Palestinians, but has not suggested that he plans any use of American troops. It may actually be possible that Trump could end up without being engaged in any foreign wars, and to have significantly reduced the number of American troops deployed in Korea, Japan, and Europe.
One can take it he will carry on with bluster and threats against China, if in a manner focused more on the suggestion that China is stealing American jobs and American manufacturing industry. That seems more likely to get him political support for what is more a domestic economic plan than an unlikely military adventure defending Taiwan or tiny islands in the South China Sea. There is a significant military and intelligence constituency, supported by Australian hawks, which thinks that war in inevitable because American cannot afford a major rival in the area. Some of those thinking this are spoiling for war sooner rather than later on the grounds that Chinese relative power is only increasing.
More likely is that Trump will continue with policies of isolationism, and increased unwillingness to become engaged in foreign wars. Military exercises with countries like Australia and NATO countries may continue, but a growing resistance to interventions, or playing the world’s policeman may mark his administration. Nations begging for an American umbrella would be likely to be told, like NATO nations, that they should first massively increase their defence spending.
Trump may want to make America great again. But it is not clear that he has a long-range plan to build and develop American power well into the next century. Most of his predecessors have found it impossible to shape events even during their own terms. Nor have any recent ones been able to see through a term without finding himself a significant new enemy, one destined to defeat American power. I doubt that Trump will end up as a “good” president, but he may get some credit for self-discipline about reaching for the gun, the aircraft or the button.
AUKUS will see out Trump, if only because nothing happens. Don’t bet on our ever seeing a nuclear-powered submarine.
There are no overt signs that a Trump Administration would seek to withdraw from AUKUS agreements, but it is by no means clear that he will push either the submarine deal or the technological alliance forward with anything like the zeal of AUKUS’s architects, including Anthony Albanese. Although Australia believes that its submarine transactions, first with the US and later in a joint venture with Britain, are secure in a Trump Administration, Trump has several times indicated that the supply of American nuclear-power submarines can occur only when the US has met its own requirements. That simply cannot occur on the timelines Australia has been promised. Nor is it likely that the US is much impressed by the place in the AUKUS alliance of the UK, a nation fast going down the economic gurgler and in little position, now or over the next 30 years to make any decisive impact in the western Pacific. Nor does Trump, or many of those about him, have any sentimental view of Britain, either as an historical ally (at least since 1812), a nation with a similar language and culture, or any longer as a nation of “people like us”. The big risk to AUKUS, from the point of view of those who think it will add significantly to Australian power, or to its capacity to defend itself, is that it will wither on the vine, expiring with a whimper rather than a bang.
It is too early yet to completely scratch the Democrats as runners in the presidential race or in efforts to hold some legislative power. But they have been much diminished by events, and now seem unlikely. I expect that most people actually likely to vote at the election had already made up their mind before the first debate. But even Biden supporters, and insider Democrats were shocked at how badly and at the impression of being an old, tired man, no longer entirely with it. He may have demonstrated greater command of detail in engagements since, but there have been other signs of deterioration, including confusion with names and forgetfulness.
This sits alongside a settled view, particularly among younger voters that Biden is far too old to continue in power. Same goes for Trump of course, especially when he is in full rant. But it’s Biden who now wears the label of being past it. His initial refusal to even contemplate standing aside for a Democrat with a better chance of winning only amplified the sense of Biden’s putting his fortunes, and his pride, ahead of his party. What seemed also clear was that Biden is so busy arguing, unconvincingly, his own physical and intellectual fitness for office that he is unable to make the issue Trump’s moral fitness for the job.
But the assassination attempt, however inept, seems to have had a decisive effect. Somehow it seems to have raised Trump above the fray, having him appear serene and potent, almost presidential in his style. There’s been a marked dial-down on the whingeing and ranting, a good deal more suggesting that he is embarked on a crusade. He has galvanised his support base but stripped the Biden camp of momentum and a sense of purpose. It may be just bad luck that Biden soon came down with Covid, but that added to the sense of a campaign gone adrift. It is now more likely that Biden will listen to the view of his colleagues that he can no longer win the election, although some alternatives, particularly Kamala Harris have at least a chance.
Although the Democrat convention is still a month away, that window of opportunity is closing fast. A new candidate needs time to open up new fronts of debate and show that she has the measure of Trump’s weaknesses and unfitness for office. No one will win by simply picking up the existing campaign. Just as important she has to mobilise traditional Democrat supporters around the protection of programs and roles of government on which they depend. She must persuade voters that they must get out to vote because otherwise a revolutionary withdrawal of national government from the public square will impoverish them all, beyond any capacity of such programs and policies being restored by a later election.
Democrats could win by persuading voters that Trump means business on a new and dangerous social and political agenda.
If only the Democrats could respond to the Republican agenda simply by quoting it back to its own constituents. The Republicans are not framing a campaign in traditional terms, with a promise here, extra spending there, war on waste in the welfare sector and so on. They are shaping what they are explicitly saying is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape federal government in the way that the founding (white) forefathers intended. A smaller government with more humble aspirations. A government wanting to restore moral personal values, including over abortion, contraception and the ten commandments. A government committed to wiping out woke, including secular concepts such as transexual rights, anti-discrimination laws, environmentalism and modern “socialist human rights (as opposed to the individualistic Bill of Rights.) A land where public health must take second place to the right to refuse vaccines.
A land in which billionaires will pay much reduced tax, but too impoverished to afford decent schools, universal health care or provision for the aged and infirm. A land where bureaucrats have less power, and police have more. A land which refuses to control its guns. And a land in which about half the population must receive heavy financial support because their education, industriousness and employment cannot feed families, sustain good health, and provide clean water. An atomising country where politics no longer turns on a sense of community or the concept of the common good, but the demonisation of immigrants and entrenching the poverty of the poor. What a triumph of American politics, and JD Vance, that those who suffer most from such theories are among those most enthusiastic for it.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
Contributions to Pearls and Irritations
Your contribution will fund quality independent comment and analysis in Pearls and Irritations
Contribute
