{"id":56117,"date":"2020-05-25T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T20:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=56117"},"modified":"2020-05-24T12:23:19","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T02:23:19","slug":"turnbull-on-trump-dystopia-and-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/turnbull-on-trump-dystopia-and-deals\/","title":{"rendered":"Turnbull on Trump: dystopia and deals"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Australia has a split policy ticket on Donald Trump\u2014quietly horrified at his multilateral impact, yet quite satisfied with the bilateral relationship.<\/p>\n

Multilateral smash-up contrasts with relative bilateral smoothness.<\/p>\n

Canberra clings to the Trump administration while opposing the US president on trade and the \u2018rules-based\u2019 international system.<\/p>\n

Weighting policy differently in bilateral versus multilateral dealings is standard diplomacy. But the personality of the \u2018leader of the free world\u2019 has dramatised the barbed-wire straddle, the tensions between Australia\u2019s alliance and global interests.<\/p>\n

Pause to consider the phrase, \u2018leader of the free world\u2019. Not long ago it was a statement of fact. Now the quote marks are ironic, denoting the title of a strange reality-TV show. That\u2019s a tragedy for us as much as the US.<\/p>\n

With Trump, the personal is<\/em> policy. And what dreadful policy that personality has delivered on the world stage.<\/p>\n

Emphasise that, on a strictly bilateral view, Trump has turned out fine for Australia. It\u2019s only when you widen the lens that much multilateral smoke and ruin comes into focus.<\/p>\n

Canberra has performed the bilateral\u2013multilateral straddle with quiet skill\u2014and a sharp eye for the personality of a New York billionaire. Fortunately, the Australian prime minister on watch when Trump arrived had experience with billionaires. As Malcolm Turnbull observes:<\/p>\n

For all of Trump\u2019s so-called madness, in my own dealings with him I found him no less rational than many other billionaires I have dealt with over the years. For all of our differences, as two businessmen, we spoke the same language.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Trump chapter in Turnbull\u2019s memoir<\/a> launches with this quote<\/a>: \u2018Don\u2019t worry Malcolm. The American people will never elect a lunatic to sit in this office.\u2019<\/p>\n

The speaker is Barack Obama, talking to the Oz PM in the Oval Office at the start of the 2016 election year. By November, Turnbull writes, the world was stunned because \u2018the unthinkable had happened. And lunatic or not, Trump had won.\u2019<\/p>\n

The psychological analysis the Canberra system offered was that Trump was \u2018a narcissist who\u2019d respond well to flattery\u2019.\u00a0 Turnbull says he dismissed this approach as mistaken. Based on the billionaires he\u2019s known (Kerry Packer, Conrad Black, Jimmy Goldsmith, Bob Maxwell), \u2018sucking up to them is precisely the wrong way to go\u2019.<\/p>\n

Turnbull applies the same word to Trump as he does to China<\/a>: \u2018bully\u2019. Like any predator, Trump \u2018could sense fear and weakness from miles away\u2019. Deference and flattery didn\u2019t earn respect or gratitude. Japan\u2019s Abe Shinzo tried flattery, he writes, and in return \u2018Trump was pretty tough on Abe\u2019.<\/p>\n

Instead, Turnbull says he was \u2018frank and forthright\u2019 in their two big bilateral arm wrestles. The forthright stuff was all in private. In public, Australia has followed the quiet policy: if Canberra can\u2019t say something nice about Trump, it switches to generalities about how wonderful the US is.<\/p>\n

The first fight was getting Trump to honour the agreement for the US to accept refugees Australia had sent to Nauru and Manus Island. The refugees caused a notorious<\/a> Trump\u2013Turnbull phone conversation<\/a> on 28 January 2017, a week after the president\u2019s inauguration. Trump berated Turnbull (\u2018This is the worst deal ever.\u2019)<\/p>\n

The deal held, and soon Trump was joking about the Oz PM\u2019s negotiating skills. \u2018The subject of an incandescent row a few months before was now something to make light of. It was just another deal\u2019, Turnbull recalls.<\/p>\n

The second protracted fight was to exempt Australian steel and aluminium from US tariffs and quotas. About 15 of the 23 pages of the Trump chapter track through this \u2018contentious issue\u2019. Turnbull says Trump was \u2018thoughtful and good-humoured\u2019 and ultimately exempted Australia.<\/p>\n

Canberra tailored its arguments and pleas to reach a US president who is more of a talker than a reader and has a zero-sum view of trade: I win, you lose.<\/p>\n

Thus, when writing to Trump about the tariff\/quota tussle, Turnbull\u2019s letter had to be \u2018short and punchy and written not just to be read, but to be read aloud\u2014more like a script\u2019.<\/p>\n

In dealing with Trump, Turnbull says he worked to protect Australia\u2019s particular interests and, \u2018as far as I could, influence him to act in a way that advanced our wider interests\u2019. Dwelling on the bilateral, Turnbull\u2019s references to Trump\u2019s multilateral impacts tend to be sharp asides rather than a sustained discussion.<\/p>\n

On a continued US role in \u2018our region\u2019, Turnbull has a hopeful formulation, saying that, despite \u2018some dramatic flourishes\u2019, Trump \u2018has not let us down\u2019. Then Turnbull reaches beyond Trump to a broader hope about the US: \u2018The \u201cindispensible nation\u201d is nowhere more so than in our region.\u2019<\/p>\n

The discussion of Trump\u2019s views, though, is at odds with the notion of the US continuing to play that indispensible role. And the separate chapter on saving the Trans-Pacific Partnership after Trump jumped ship comments that the remaining TPP nations felt \u2018a little liberated that we could do it ourselves: the United States wasn\u2019t as essential as everyone had thought\u2019.<\/p>\n

Turnbull calls Trump a \u2018natural isolationist\u2019 with a \u2018thoroughly dystopian\u2019 perspective on East Asia and the Middle East. He writes that Trump\u2019s \u2018wilful and intemperate nature\u2019 and \u2018deliberate unpredictability\u2019 generate fear rather than respect for the US:<\/p>\n

America may be stronger in economic and military terms, but its influence is diminished. In fact, under Trump, America seeks less influence, not least by rejecting many of the global institutions created by the USA after the Second World War. Most consequential of all, I fear, will be his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The world will struggle to meet the challenge of global warming without American leadership. And wherever Trump creates a leadership vacuum, others will fill it, often with values very different to our own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia has a split policy ticket on Donald Trump\u2014quietly horrified at his multilateral impact, yet quite satisfied with the bilateral relationship. Multilateral smash-up contrasts with relative bilateral smoothness. 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