In the hours that followed Donald Trump’s resounding triumph in the US presidential elections, leaders of countries throughout the world began succumbing to an enhanced version of the “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a condition which afflicts people who are driven frantic when they see such a dreadful person getting anointed as the “most powerful man in the world.” Caught off-balance by what has happened, not only progressives in the United States – who are howling in anguish and, in some cases, promising to move to somewhere safer where they hope Hitler redivivus and his enforcers will be unable to clap them in fetters and send them to a concentration camp – but movers and shakers in Latin America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa are asking themselves what the return of the great disruptor could mean for them.
Just how much the feeling that, after a period of relative calm, the coming years would be uncommonly hectic thanks in large measure to Trump has influenced recent events in Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Qatar, China, Iran, South Korea, France and many other countries is, for now, impossible to say, but there can be little doubt that it has had a strong impact. Some find the notion that, with Trump behind the steering-wheel, change is about to go into overdrive invigorating; others take it for granted that his second term in office, which is due to kick off on January 20, is bound to have catastrophic consequences for almost everyone. As the uncertainty that has gripped so many is itself destabilising, the gloomy forecasts pessimists who loathe “the orange man” are making could well be on target,
Though Trump is an unpredictable politician who enjoys doing the unexpected, many assume he will twist Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s arm in order to make him sign a disastrous peace treaty with Vladimir Putin. They may be wrong: an egoist like Trump cannot take kindly to talk about him being the docile sockpuppet of a foreign dictator lording it over a country whose economy is less than half the size of California’s. However, there are many Ukrainians who fear he could do just that, as do European politicians who, for three-quarters of a century, have taken it for granted that Washington would continue to pay for their defence, thereby allowing them to spend far more on welfare and other electorally attractive programmes.
From the point of view of high-placed technocrats and business tycoons, the prospects facing the international economy are as alarming as those facing Ukraine. They are aware that if Trump decides to make good his much-repeated threat to wage an all-out trade war against China (and, unless they fall into line by policing their borders properly, Canada and Mexico, plus a slightly less punitive one against Europe and other countries), hard times will be coming for hundreds of millions of people liable to join fringe political movements on the right or the left. With the outlook rapidly darkening, governments in Europe, among them those of the United Kingdom, Germany and, needless to say, France (where a couple of days ago parliamentarians gave the prime minister his marching orders) are getting increasingly jittery. They all know that, if living standards keep falling, the political establishment will find itself in deep trouble. They also know that, unless they beef up their armed forces, individuals who have yet to learn that wars never solve anything will be tempted to take advantage of their weakness.
The Middle East was already in turmoil long before Trump won back the keys to the White House and seems doomed to remain that way for generations to come, but his resurrection has clearly affected the behaviour of the gangster-like figures who dominate most of it. Unlike many members of the wishy-washy Biden and Harris administration, Trump is a staunch supporter of Israel, the only democracy in the neighbourhood, and recently warned the holy warriors in Gaza that unless all the hostages they are still holding are released before January 20, there would be “hell to pay.” Just what he has in mind is anyone’s guess, but in addition to providing Israel with more lethal weapons, the US could use its economic and diplomatic clout to make Arab countries hand over the Hamas and Hezbollah operatives living in them. Less than a week after the US elections from which Trump emerged victorious, Qatar finally agreed to stop giving refuge to Hamas leaders, saying that it did so because they refused to put an end to the fighting in Gaza. That can be taken as a sign of things to come.
In Syria, the sudden capture of Aleppo by Islamist fanatics owed much to the battering Israel meted out to Iran’s proxy militia Hezbollah which, along with Russian forces, had greatly helped the dictator Bashar al-Assad cling to power in Damascus. When last in office, Trump took considerable pride in the routing by US-led troops of the ferocious Islamic State “caliphate,” so the reappearance of Jihadists linked to al-Qaeda must have upset him. Will he order the men and women under his command to take them out? Perhaps not – he says he is against having the US participate in never-ending wars – but he could decide that it would be best for him to act fast to bestow a sort of peace on a region that has long been prey to political and sectarian violence. As for the bloodthirsty and explicitly genocidal Iranian clerics, they have already been cowed by Israel and have good reason to fear that Trump could help the “Zionist entity” deprive them of their nuclear installations before they manage to put together any atom bombs.
While most world leaders reacted cautiously towards Trump’s triumphal return, some gave it a warm welcome. Among these, Javier Milei was by a wide margin the most jubilant. If the reception he received in Mar-a-Lago is anything to go by, he has become a member of Trump’s inner circle and has already influenced the incoming administration’s policies. Were he a US citizen, pundits would assume he was in the running for a top job in the new government, but for now he will continue to concentrate on putting Argentina to rights. Will Trump and his billionaire friend Elon Musk help him? While they could do much on the financial front, Trump’s protectionist instincts would make it very difficult for Milei to reach a trade deal Argentine businessmen could live with.
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