By Matthew Parish
Donald J. Trump will be the 47th President, after winning the November 5, 2024 general election by a substantial margin. I never doubted it, although all my American friends told me he would never win. I never expressed my opinion that he was certain to win, because it was so politically incorrect to do so. But I was right and they were all wrong. And the reason is that in his first term he was actually pretty good at two things: the economy; and foreign policy. American voters mostly don’t vote based on foreign policy but they do vote based on the economy and under the Biden years the feeling of economic wellbeing had been declining. So Biden and his Vice President, Harris, were removed from office by the electorate. I am not an American and let it be; the Americans have made their choice. It was a democratic choice and as I believe that history repeats itself, I make the comparison with an unsuccessful single term of a very fine man, Jimmy Carter, being terminated by the American electorate with a substantial majority in favour of a man with then seemingly radical ideas, Ronald Reagan. Carter also fell at the foreign policy hurdle, like Biden.
Andrew Carnegie famously observed that as he became older, he judged people ever less by what they said and ever more by what they did; this observation is particularly astute when it comes to politicians, a breed who are notorious for not sticking to what they say. That is why I think it is premature to think of the second Presidential term of Donald J. Trump as unsavoury; we don’t actually know what he is going to do yet but we do know some things from his first term. Firstly he, like all politicians, doesn’t stick to his promises (he never built the wall with Mexico); secondly that he likes economic growth, and thirdly that he doesn’t like war. Therefore he is likely to make concerted efforts, in the first days of his Presidency, or even beforehand, to bring this dreadful, bloody confrontation in Ukraine to a conclusion, particularly as it has reached a violent stalemate. Do not believe what you read in the newspapers; the Russians are not making significant tactical advances with great speed. Instead they are fighting with the Ukrainians, one small village or settlement at a time. And huge numbers of people are dying. The respective sides have stated their entirely inconsistent war aims; and the way you end wars like this is that a third party with overwhelming force intervenes and imposes a solution, much as happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo and a variety of other European and non-European wars.
Trump’s initial instinct - because he understands the psychology of strongmen - will be to telephone Vladimir Putin and for all we know he is about to do it - and tell him that the war is over and let’s make a deal along the existing front line. It won’t be a peace agreement because Ukraine will never agree to cede territory to Russia and Russia is demanding more than it can reasonably take by its existing military capacity. (Russia demands the cities of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which is totally unrealistic; Russia withdrew from Kherson in November 2022 because she could not maintain logistics supply lines that far west.) Instead it will be an armistice agreement in the nature of North Korea, that never materialises into a peace agreement. In other words, it is an agreement to stop the fighting. Vladimir Putin, who as Trump knows is a man who never sticks to his word unless it is convenient to him, will say “yes”. Then Putin will just keep on fighting, ordering his troops to die on the front line, until he sees some action from Trump and Trump understands this so Trump will take some decisive action.
There is only one form of decisive action to end the war in Ukraine: US-led NATO troops entering Ukraine, because Russian troops will not fire on US troops. Just like in the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea, where tens of thousands of US troops have been stationed for some sixty years or so as a deterrent to to the resumption of hostilities, the current front line in Ukraine will be lined by US troops because Trump and Putin understand one-another in a way that Biden did not understand Putin and was constantly fearful of escalation. The way you cause a dictator like Putin to de-escalate is to provide an overwhelming show of force, and Trump’s significant margin of victory in the US General Election today gives him the mandate to do precisely that whereas Biden’s precarious political position made him always hesitant to take the necessary measures to bring Putin to heel.
I speak to nothing about President-elect Trump’s domestic policies. They do not directly affect me as I do not live in the United States but I have sworn to uphold the United States Constitution some years ago and I respect American democracy. However I think there is an optimistic scenario in which a Trump Presidency brings the appalling and barbaric waste of life in the ongoing stalemate conflict in Ukraine to a close, and to a close soon.
Then this conflict can move from the battlefield to the lawyers, the journalists and the social media. That is not an ideal peace, and it may not be just, but it stops the killing. In my experience of conflicts, the most important thing is to stop the killing. Anyone who has experienced front line killing is surely of the same view.