Trump: a danger to Western security?

They call it “post-truth politics”. In the UK, the Brexiters were accused of peddling fear and falsehoods to win votes, said Roger Cohen in The New York Times. Maybe they took their lead from Donald Trump. Like his “pal” Vladimir Putin, the blue-collar billionaire traffics in lies, and in his snarling speech to the Republican convention last week, he delivered a typically misleading, doom-laden message: America is lawless and falling apart; the ruling elite is made up of liars and crooks; and only a tough Washington outsider can stop the tide of menace – from Isis to immigrants – and make America great again. “We have been here before. Fascism was a backlash against dysfunctional democracies. It invited belief in the leadership of the strongman against enemies within and without. Its currency was untruth.” Conditions in the US today are not the same as those in the 1930s – but as in the UK, there is a thirst in the US for “disruption at any cost”, and the authoritarian Trump is the “change” candidate.

There’s something darkly ironic about Trump’s positioning, said Adam Quinn on The Conversation. The billionaire property developer claims to be on the side of forgotten working people, yet has no realistic solutions to their woes; he says he will restore law and order, yet has urged his supporters to beat up protesters at his rallies. And he claims that he would put “America First”, yet threatens to renege on the treaty that has, for decades, helped guarantee US security and stability. Speaking to The New York Times this week, Trump stated that he would not abide by Nato’s Article 5 – that an attack on one member is to be regarded as an attack on all – unless the country in question had “fulfilled their obligations to us”. Too many Nato members, he suggested, are freeloading on US generosity.

Of course we want our allies to spend more on defence, said The Washington Post. But to suggest that as a consequence of some failing to do so, the US would not react to Russian aggression in, say, Latvia, is not in our strategic interests. The return on our investment in Nato is peace, a “‘dividend’ that produces economic and security gains for the American people”. Trump’s remarks were ill-advised in more ways than one, said Marc Thiessen in Newsweek. Several key swing states, Ohio included, have large populations of Eastern European origin. And these people – who tend to be his working-class target voters – won’t like their home countries, which have sent troops in disproportionate numbers to Afghanistan and Iraq, being accused of not pulling their weight. He may regret his Nato comments in November.