Having written articles about the rise of Donald Trump over the last decade I have learned that the grotesque reality of his politics often exceeds the imagination of most people. Consider for a moment what readers would have made of an article written five years ago predicting that Trump would soon threaten to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal and refuse to rule out the use of military force to achieve those ends. Such an article, I suggest, would have evoked derision and, at the very least, raised eyebrows at the editorial desk.
But those threats are now considered to be part of the new normal. They are excused by “sneaking regarders” as some form of “shock and awe” negotiation tactic, not to be taken too seriously. We are told that disruption is a legitimate means to achieve negotiating ends. His bark is worse than his bite, they say.
Imagine for a moment what it was like for Volodymyr Zelenskiy to encounter Trump’s envoy faced with signing a written contract demanding surrender of half of your country’s mineral resources of all kinds (not just rare earth deposits) as the price of continuing to resist the brutal war of aggression launched by Putin.
Imagine how it must feel to be publicly described as a dictator when you are trying to save your country from political enslavement by the Kremlin.
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The US government doesn’t itself do mining; what is intended is that large US corporations would be granted the right to exploit Ukraine’s natural resources for profit. The freedom of Ukrainians is held hostage to ransom in the form of enrichment of American big business.
It isn’t the first time he suggested such smash-and-grab piracy; in the run-up to the 2016 election he outlined his plans for Iraq. He said that he would go in there and “establish a perimeter” around Iraqi oilfields and “take the oil”. That never happened.
[ Zelenskiy plans to travel to US to meet Trump on minerals deal, sources sayOpens in new window ]
The notion that the Iraqi people might need their own natural resources to rebuild their country after the depredations of Saddam Hussein and Isis simply never occurred to Trump, a would-be master of international kleptocracy. The same applies to Ukraine; if by a miracle Ukraine survives as a democracy it will need all its resources – human and material – to undo the colossal damage that Putin’s war of aggression has inflicted.
And Zelenskiy was faced with a demand for such a ransom without any regard as to whether he could politically survive putting his signature to such an agreement – let alone without any American guarantees as to Ukraine’s postwar security.
The “dictator” label was applied to him on the utterly specious and fabricated ground that Ukraine should have held elections in the midst of war, under a rain of missiles, partial occupation, and mass displacement, and at a time when martial law excluded elections.
Trump’s useful idiot, Nigel Farage, helpfully suggested that Britain had held an election while the second World War was still in progress, blithely ignoring the fact that the long postponed 1945 election only took place in the aftermath of VE day and in the absence of any military threat to the United Kingdom.
The emergence of Trump has highlighted the utter moral vacuity of Farage. It has also given Liz Truss the chance to show her repugnant true colours. It has flushed out Trump-ite commentators in right-wing British media.
“Nasty” is a favourite adjective of Trump frequently applied to anyone who contradicts him. It was also a word which some reasonable UK Tories used to describe the image which their own hard right had created for the entire Conservative party.
The emergence of Reform as a very real existential challenge to the Tory party carries with it the potential of a renewed and reinvigorated Brexit mentality. Parts played recently on conservative US political stages by Truss and Farage should remind younger British voters of the calamitous consequences for them and for Britain of these authors of the massive blunder of Brexit.
Trump’s hardly concealed hatred for the EU – which he sees primarily as a commercial rival of the US – has not really had a chance to manifest itself yet. But his characterisation of the EU VAT regime as some form of discrimination against America entirely misses the point: the indirect tax regime in the EU is the only means of ensuring any border-free commerce between sovereign nation states.
If Trump really wants to mirror the EU’s Common External Tariff he should appreciate that America’s international wealth and financial dominance will atrophy behind tariff walls. Far from being America’s Golden Age, which he said started on his inauguration day, the Trump-Vance era will be one of economic disillusionment.
Some Trump supporters suggest that he could stay in the White House if Vance ran him as vice-president and promptly resigned. Unthinkable? His pal Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev got away with it.
