The World & Donald Trump

📍Leh, Ladakh, India (Issue 193)

The Indus Valley

1_ a meditative sigh

Joe Biden’s debate performance is so infamous that news has reached Leh in the far north of India. Here, at some 3,500 metres above sea level, the Indus River cuts from east to west, following the northern bound of the Great Himalayas. More significantly, the news has infiltrated the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries I’ve been wandering in—gowned monks note, with a meditative sigh, that Biden did badly!

And Donald Trump?

I began cycling with a bemused attitude towards the former president. It’s an attitude shared by many I know. It is de rigueur to claim: Trump is politically flammable, and is painted bright orange to serve as a warning; that he’s sexist and racist; that he’s erratic and unprincipled. He’s unpalatable and consequently unpopular among many of my peers. Voting for Trump is, for many, the equivalent of voting for Brexit—unimaginable! So unthinkable, in fact, that a majority once did.

Evidently, I’m trapped in a bubble. I exist in some sort of cushy liberal information silo.

Travelling popped this breezy, comfy bubble—it nuked it. I’ve cycled through sixteen countries in the last eleven months, and if you don't like Trump, you’d be disappointed by the outpouring of support for him.

Although many believe Trump 47 will lead the world into a deeper layer of hell, many of the local people I speak with on the road don’t think so. It’s not that people like him, but they believe he is the better, more robust option—and many have explained “we need Trump” or variations on this theme.

Those I’ve spoken to support Trump for two reasons:

1. People adore a strong man, especially in traditional (male-dominated) cultures. We want to be led, which is why strong men are favoured. I have little doubt that we’ve evolved, pre-historically, to seek ‘strong’ leadership, competent or not. We are better at assessing ostensible strength than administrative competence. We only have to look at history to see that strong men command respect, even when they do bad things. Unsurprisingly, countries that elect populist (strong man) leaders would support the strongest of them: Trump—that broad-shouldered embodiment of America First militarism, in a red tie.

2. People feel the world was safer under Trump, whether he achieved this feat by historical chance or shrewd political skill. Most want peace more than they want freedom and have enjoyed both since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Conflict destroys economies; it breeds further instability. Under Trump, Putin had not invaded Ukraine, and the Gaza conflict had not begun. Oil prices were lower. Putin wasn’t holidaying with Kim Jong Un — or if he was, it was less significant. From a US standpoint, the Trump years felt especially unstable. Trump broke the MSM or exasperated its decline. People's perceptions of their own country are still based on what the media tells them, and a media in decline was suggestive of a broader social collapse. However, beyond America, not least because of the conflicts mentioned, the world feels exceptionally unstable now—the Trump era feels almost tranquil with the benefit of four years of hindsight bias!

2_ news snippets

Since the debate, it seems inevitable that Trump will win unless Biden is replaced. I suspect Trump will win even against Biden’s replacement (Kamala?).

The debate was widely shared, but the 81-year-old Biden was not impressive. A president must act impromptu, especially when every moment is captured on social media. We live in an unstable time, and if America’s leadership can’t express itself (and not read out ‘say that again’ on a teleprompter), further instability is due.

While there is 24-hour election cycle coverage in the US, there is markedly less US election news outside of America (and Western Europe). News reaches people on socials or via infrequent headlines. The most bruising or entertaining of both rises to the top. The headlines they read are not those of the Wall Street Post or CNN, but the Times of India (for example), in which Trump almost always has a better one-liner. He and his family are celebrities, with headlines (from the same paper) like ‘Donald Trump challenges 'crooked' Biden for golf battle with $1 million charity bet’.

For Biden, it’s all about his ailing health.

Here, I must note that polls do not back up my perspective from the road. A recent Pew Research poll says that

Across the 34 nations polled, a median of 43% have confidence in Biden to do the right thing regarding world affairs, while just 28% have confidence in Trump.

Polls are often wrong. In this case, I think they are seriously mistaken. Perhaps 90% of those I’ve spoken to have confidence in Trump in maintaining the US-led world order — stability many benefit from.

3_ world order

I have not had conversations in China, or in North Korea, Iran or Russia. However, judging by decades of economic growth, these countries have also benefited enormously from Pax Americana (‘American Peace’, the relative peace in the Western hemisphere since the end of WWII).

The rest of the world benefits from the recent stable world order, as demonstrated by the relative lack of global conflict and economic improvement. The Saudis I met supported America with a president who is anti-Iran; the Omanis buy British weapons and appreciated a solid American-dominated West, which acts as a deterrent; I didn’t speak to a Frenchman, but the Italians who voted in Giorgia Meloni support Trump’s agenda. In Ljubljana I was proudly reminded many times that Melania Trump is Slovenian. Of those I met in Serbia, though their politicians are decidedly Russian-leaning, the young I met were not. India leans west and towards the ‘strong’ as demonstrated by Modi’s recent reelection, and here I’ve been told “I love Trump” countless times.

4_ saying and doing

What alarms us most of all? In essence, his warm attitude toward Xi, Putin, and Kim and his alienation of liberal leaders of NATO countries, ‘Can’t he be a little nicer to Germany?’ Unapologetically and in America's interest, he is happy to push Germany et al. to spend more on defence. Most importantly, if I were to strike a deal with somebody — even an enemy — I would not call him a “crazy SOB” as Biden did to Putin or a “Dictator” as Biden did to Xi. Those in powerful positions have the most fragile egos! And if a deal is to be made, it seems improper to create drama.

So, why am I not worried about Trump? I don’t like Trump as a person, and I wouldn’t invite him for tea. But we have to look at what politicians say. After all, they keep surprisingly few secrets because they must realise their agenda. Furthermore, we must examine how they have acted in office if they have held it before.

Politicians are prescient of their actions. In January, Taiwan Xi said, "The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability” — leaving little doubt for us to unpick his intentions. Putin claimed Ukraine before he invaded it, stating in a 2005 essay on Ukrainian history, ‘It would not be an exaggeration to say that … the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.’ Putin disliked a strong, independent Ukraine with a Western bias, and said so.

And for those scared of Trump 47?

I hear many worry that Trump would go full-power totalitarian. ‘He will be better prepared this time,’ I have heard in the press and from friends. Trump, I hope, will be—he was certainly unprepared last time! And he is unashamedly a populist, but he is not transparently belligerent. He makes threats in America’s interests but hasn’t dropped a bomb or fired a bullet. He completed his term in office and is no longer president—this is a good sign for democracy, notwithstanding January 6th. Under him, there were no restrictions on press freedoms or gulags or statues created in his honour. Being isolationist, or through the luck of history, he didn’t invade another country, and nor did anyone else.

So, we must look at what the powerful do and say before predicting how they will act.

Turning to history, we discover surprising transparency: Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1925. Stalin was, at first, and then permanently, a gangster.

And Trump? Trump wrote The Art Of The Deal in 1987. (Or perhaps he hired a ghostwriter). Trump is a businessman, isolationist, unpredictable, with an ability to speak to the ordinary American, at the inevitable neglect of the middle-class centre left, who don’t like him and think he’s dangerous. And yet those same critics are not sitting in the Balkans nor in the Arabian Gulf nor India. They are not confronting the more considerable dangers looming over a world without a strong America, dangers which the rest of the world feels acutely.