In the June 7-8 issue of The Australian Greg Sheridan railed against the ‘’crushing waves of [Chinese] military threat” and satirised the Albanese Government’s “pathological passivity” as reminiscent of Peter Seller’s quietly subversive Chauncey Gardner.

Referring to the “most dangerous strategic environment since 1942”, Sheridan ridicules the “vacant smiling” Albanese for failing to endorse a 3.5, now 5% increase in military spending. He labels Albanese’s “deadbeat” Australia as the “Mr Magoo Nation”. No wonder John Stuart Mill disowned “lazy metaphor” as “the deep slumber of decided opinion”. When Trump’s minions say jump, Albanese is supposed to jump. Albanese had reasonably noted that Australia, as a sovereign state, would decide the type and level of its own spending. Hopefully Albanese can build on his correction to Morrison’s China policy. Hopefully, the same mature common sense will apply across the board to include a smart China policy that positively adapts to the new geopolitics of China’s transitioning in regional and world affairs. Zero-sum hardliners, however, perennially castigate nuanced balance as weakness.

Does Sheridan prefer Trump to Albanese? In The Australian of 31 May, he cited Trump on Trump: “Trump once said the difference between his first and his second term is that in his first term he ruled America, and, in his second, he rules America and the world.” Seemingly downplaying Trump’s “normal excesses” as the cost of doing business, Sheridan trumpets Trump: “Of the 8 billion people on the planet today, Trump has the greatest influence, the greatest raw power. Trump is the most famous man in the world and the most powerful.” “All the world” is indeed Shakespeare’s “stage”. Even so, Trump does not “rule the world”! His aspiration to “rule” is weighed down in the dark ideological content of “Trumpism” that bears scarce relation to the exhilarating Tony Bennett lyric, “If I Ruled the World”. The disregard for sworn constitutional duty, unitary executive theory and practice, the open conformity with Project 2025, the antic populist movement, the indiscriminate hunting down of enemies, the culture wars and the politicisation of court justice all have international as well as domestic ramifications. Trump would make Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria proud. Where is Trump’s “base” in today’s geopolitics? Trumpism is a vexing problem for Australia and the entire state system. The “guardrails” are gone. And once ideology becomes the principal driver of geopolitics, it confounds healthy international relations.

Geopolitics needs to be cleansed of the excesses of Trumpism. If ideology has no limits, it can crash the total mental life of society. The off-the-hip ideology of the “Orange Jesus” runs off the charts. As a lying apostasy of right-wing populism, closed nationalism, and nativism, Trumpism rejoices in its own unpredictability. Trump muses about the “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. Monosyllabic Trumpism dumps science to engage in ecstatic paeans and flatulent tirades about “beautiful things” and “bad persons”. This is not to mention targeting the free-loading “dirty countries” that plundered America’s treasure. “I am your retribution” will not “Make America Great Again!” Retribution cannot serve as the basis for great diplomacy. Trump carries a much bigger “stick” than Theodore Roosevelt, and he does not “speak softly”.When Trump claims responsibility for solving intractable international conflict, there is “no walking back”. There are no 24-hour fixes to today’s intractable conflict. Despite extravagant claims of success as “Peace-Maker-in Chief”, Trump has yet to achieve convincing breakthroughs for peace. The question remains as to how to deal with the consequences of lost US credibility as the leading democracy. Can states negotiate in good faith with the “leader of the Free World” while “derangement” negates common values as well as the essential principles of the Westphalian system?

Truth Social has become the vehicle for US diplomacy based on openly broadcasted executive sentiment. It is the voice for “retribution”, yet its banner claims, “Open and free and honest global conversation without discrimination on the basis of political ideology”. Political ideology typically accepts only one “Truth”. Pravda, translated as “Truth”, exemplified related “double-speak”. President Reagan, at Moscow University, reminded his hosts: “Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority of government has a monopoly on the truth….” Trump is an infallible “single person” who loves “monopoly”. He blithely conflates liberalism with communism. He “rules” by unqualified executive orders. His holy war on Harvard University, not to mention on public institutions such as PBS, the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Centre, suggests that there is no redemption in the House of Trump. While President Eisenhower dithered, Harvard stood up to McCarthy’s “witch-hunts”. Trump is running down some of America’s most important assets. Bad mouthing Harvard for thinking it is so “smart”, Trump apparently claimed that he would “kick Harvard in the ass".

While Trump lays waste to American civil society, he also upends the “West”. “Like-minded” democracies count only if they have “cards”. Western states must now queue, cap in hand, to bargain mano-a-mano in the Oval Office. When it comes to supporting the “Free World” against autocrats, Trump temperamentally bobs and weaves. “Allies” must dramatically increase their military budgets to defeat the very same autocrats that Trump, himself, is reluctant to criticise. Diplomatic norms have been sacrificed to a televised bullying bilateralism featuring a parade of subservient leaders seeking Trump’s favour.

Trump’s shock-and-awe geopolitics may unwittingly support the re-examination of the significance of East-West struggle. No state has achieved communism. As a dying aspiration, it is still regarded as a gigantic threat that inevitably requires enormous military expenditure. Westphalian principles of sovereign equality and national self-determination, which for centuries opposed religious and ideological differences, can be re-asserted against the alleged frenzied life-and-death struggle against communists. Trump punches the air. He dances around the bully pulpit. However, he has no patience with collective engagement. Trump claims it takes “two to tango” but reduces the complexity of geopolitics to exclusive self-interest. He thumbs his nose at the rules-based state system. At a time when the world’s problems are outsized, Trumpism is incapable of fostering innovative and widening circles of co-operative multilateralism. Unqualified protectionism and uncertain tariff wars affect US influence over the terms of international trade. Trump neglects nuclear weapons control. “Drill Baby, Drill” cannot produce a credible leadership approach to international environmental crisis.

Albanese need not cultivate Trump. Australia’s policy should independently re-assert Westphalian principle against deranged ideology. Put 1949 to rest. What if states do have different systems? How can “like-minded” countries identify with American “democracy” and “rule of law” based on Trumpist ideology? At the same time, the “China Threat” has been grossly exaggerated. Rather than obsessing over China’s world view as a complete fraud, identify and selectively relate to the positive opportunities that lie in this view. Trump is not going to make the Chinese “wear small shoes” (chuan xiao xie). China has strongly supported the UN and does not plan to dominate the world. China does not deploy the PLA in “forever wars” beyond its borders. When appropriate why not respond to Xi Jinping’s views that “a strong country need not become a hegemon” (guo jiang bi ba) and that peace is in “the DNA of the Chinese people”. Xi has done more than Trump in defending the liberal trading order. Xi constructively suggests that different civilisations learn from one another while Trump “kick’s Harvard’s ass”, shouts down free speech and locks up his critics.

Sheridan goes too far. Australia is not a blind Mr Magoo. To be pro-Australia is not be anti-US. Influencers who worship Trump, forgiving his “excesses”, need to give more weight to Australia’s independence. Furthermore, “geopolitics” is more than the highly subjective comparison of military budgets. It features the dynamic totality of the local and international political relationships of states seeking security and economic development. Trump’s power and his geopolitics are “raw”. Trump ignores Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. His cut-throat New York business model negates rather than accommodates the state system. States have “cards”! As for Trump as “the greatest raw power in the world”, Sheridan could do more to validate The Australian’s claim to champion “The Contest of Ideas”. He does not consider the aggregate power of sovereign states as greater than the overreach of an aging “Ubermensch” with “normal excesses”. Canberra must adapt to the compensating multilateralism and multipolarity that challenges any claim “to rule the world”. Rugged bilateralism erodes state sovereignty and is bad geopolitics. Multilateralism works every day of the year. Treaties, rooted in pacta sunt servanda, are mostly “kept”. Collective security has worked some of the time, for a long time. Opportunity lies in necessity. Disrespect for state sovereignty may yield an unexpected dividend, namely, more non-alignment, more multilateralism, more multipolarity and greater understanding of China’s new international role. The future could include an attractive mix of positive General Assembly initiatives such as the 1958 resolution on outer space, and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty defending the “global commons”, not to mention the recent negotiations to safeguard the oceans. Today’s geopolitical crisis requires moving beyond conventional strategic “wisdom”, but within a consolidated Westphalian state system. Rather than clinging to Cold War anachronism, Australia will hopefully welcome Chinese participation in the push back against the Trumpist challenge to the rational engagement of sovereign states in a progressively interdependent world.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.

Ronald C. Keith, formerly Professor and Head of Political Science, University of Calgary, Canada, retired in 2015 as Professor of China Studies, Griffith University. His latest book, China Change and “Benevolence”, on the influence of culture and ideology on contemporary Chinese foreign policy, was published by World Scientific Publications in 2023.