“THIS RACE IS OVER.” That email from the Trump office on Tuesday night after the former president “Trumped” Republican rival Nikki Haley in New Hampshire summed up everything going forward: Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate. While Haley says she will continue fighting, a Biden-Trump rematch looks likely with the real possibility of Trump 2.0 back in the White House. And as German defence minister Boris Pistorius pointed out that would be a “catastrophe” for Europe.
Others went even further. Writing on X, Katarina Barley, a senior German Social Democrat member of the European Parliament, bluntly stated that Trump is a man who “makes no secret of his contempt for democracy. Europe needs to focus on itself.”
Going by his first term, Trump’s go-it-alone strategy may have little time for the 27-member bloc. This is more dangerous for Europe because it involves Ukraine. Trump’s claim that he would solve the Ukrainian problem in 24-hours is widely seen as a carte blanche for President Putin to do what he likes. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted that the prospect of a Trump presidency “makes me really quite stressed.” He even invited Trump to Kiev to present his views on the war.
The idea that Trump will dump Nato, Europe, and Ukraine if he were president is no surprise. He has made his contempt for international alliances and the continent quite clear. What was new was his reaction to the situation in the Middle East. He said it was clear that the US needed to withdraw all its troops from the region. Ramming the Biden administration’s inability to get anything done he said, “Here we go again with the Middle East. We spent $9 trillion, killed millions of people including our side, their side, millions of people, $9 trillion, and what we got? Nothing. You got death, you got blood, you got nothing.”
Trump seems openly contemptuous of Israeli PM Netanyahu, not least his embrace of Biden. He described Israeli defence minister Yoev Gallant as a “jerk” while praising the Hezbollah group as “very smart”.
“Trump is a phenomenon that is unlike anything that we have seen before,” said senior diplomat Talmiz Ahmad. “This is a man that cannot be explained by conventional diplomatic norms. One is not even sure he has a policy when it comes to foreign affairs which is what makes Trump so hard to explain because he can literally do anything.”
Ahmad also believes that referring to Trump’s past remarks is next to useless when it comes to understanding what he may be like should he win in 2024. He believes a better guide to understanding the man and his ideology will be is to see where Trump thinks he can get a win.
“Trump’s first focus area will be on securing the border where he will possibly announce some drastic action. On the foreign policy front, his focus area will most probably be China. Trump will talk tough with China but privately will seek to get a deal which he will tout as better. This is the same playbook he used with Iran in his first term when he exited the JCPOA but continued to seek negotiations with Tehran for a new deal,” he said.
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