Ben Judah
Trumpism is here to stay. So get used to it
Welcome to Trump’s World. You better get to know it. This is really happening. Trump Think-Tank, Trump Staffers – they’re all on their way. The billionaire looks set to clinch the Republican nomination. There are already Trump governors: Maine’s Paul LePage has now joined New Jersey’s Chris Christie – and three former governors from Arizona, Alaska and Minnesota. Not to mention two Trump congressmen.
Pay attention. Even if the Republican donor class can snatch the nomination back from him – Trumpism is here to stay.
This is no flash in the pan. And if the Donald loses – don’t rule out a Trump 2.0 in 2021. Or a Trump clone running with his blessing. So, what is Trump’s view of the world? One that rips up the Republican rulebook. The Donald is Putin-friendly, ambiguous on Israel, a trade protectionist, furious at America’s freeloading allies, seethingly anti-Chinese, and above all antiMexican. Not to mention of course that this is a man who cares little about democracy promotion or human rights, and would play at war as roughly as Russia – rather than with the usual United Nations rules of engagement in mind.
The Donald is ready to make America new friends. The Trump Embassy would be courting – not castigating – Russia. Putin is someone Trump thinks he would “get along with him very well for the good of our country”. America, it sounds like, would go for Trump reset with Russia: “I don’t think you’d be having the kind of problems that you’re having right now,” he said recently. American-Russian proxy war in Syria? It’s over with Trump in charge: “let him bomb,” says the Donald.
Neither, according to the man himself, would Russian dissidents or other irritants get in the way of a Trump-Putin bromance. The Kremlin’s killings of opposition journalists? “Our country does plenty of killings too,” says the Donald, who joked he too has been tempted to shoot the odd troublesome journalist. And as for Putin – “it’s never been proven that he’s killed anybody”.
Trump has no truck with America’s old friends. The Europeans? He sees them as a bunch of freeloaders, with Germany the freeloader-in-chief. “Here’s this big monstrous country,” he says, “Germany, and they hardly speak up. They accept [Putin’s] oil and gas and lots of other things and here we are fighting like hell [in Ukraine.” The same goes for America’s Asian protectorates: “We have 28,000 people separating South Korea from this maniac in North Korea. We get nothing… We get nothing. They’re making a fortune.”
This is Trump’s bottom line: America’s military alliances – from NATO to Tokyo – aren’t worth the Pentagon’s megabudgets. “If somebody attacks Japan,” says the Donald, “we have to immediately start World War III. OK? If we get attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us. Somehow,