In bed with madmen

The international order as we know it is breaking down. Australian leaders have some choices to make.

Without attempting to summarise the chaotic opening weeks of Trump’s second presidency, we can already see that the international order as we know it – the one centred around the United Stated – is breaking down. The responsibility for cleaning up the mess, or at least stemming the flow, will eventually fall on everyone, including Australia. Our island continent won’t be uniquely protected or even insulated from the Trump madness, regardless how many times our leaders pay fealty to our close relationship with our great and powerful ally.

For those touting Australia’s long-standing alliance with America: Trump evidently places no value in existing alliances. Every action he's taken in relation to “friendly” fellow nations has so far undermined them, by threatening, demeaning, attacking or lying about them. Australia would be foolish in the extreme to think that Trump won’t be trying the same tactics against us soon.

He has launched trade wars and tirades against Mexico, China and Canada, advocating for the latter to become America’s 51st state. He has touted taking control of Greenland and Panama; angered Brazil and Colombia over unlawful deportations; dangled the possibility of abandoning NATO over Europe; threatened to cut off payments to South Africa over its unfair treatment of white people (!); and undermined Egyptian and Jordanian sovereignty by threatening to send all of Gaza’s remaining residents into their territories when the US “takes over” Gaza. And this is just the start of his foreign policy aggressions.

His combination of brinkmanship and radical reversals is lauded by his fans as some kind of 4-D chess game, from a man whose life is dedicated to “the deal”. For literally everyone else, it’s a threat – an unhinged bully angrily overturning the board, only to complain about being unfairly treated. Every small win elicited by this behaviour isn’t a victory for Trump and America; it’s a concession by his formerly close allies that America is no longer a reasonable negotiating partner. Now it's one that needs to be appeased, avoided, and certainly not relied upon. What is an ally that can’t be trusted to act in your mutual best interests, or deliver anything without extracting an unreasonable price? Defence and trade relationships are no longer secure, nor are diplomatic support or intelligence capabilities. No pact is safe, no standard is set.

Daniel Drezner wrote cogently about Trump’s “madman” approach to international relations in Foreign Policy. Perhaps needless to say, his conclusion was that the benefits of unpredictability soon wear off, because trust is paramount in any relationship. “What is the likelihood," he asked, "that any foreign-policy leader will believe Trump when he gives his word about anything?"

Trump doesn’t acknowledge the purpose of alliances, whether they be bilateral or multilateral, partisan or non-partisan, old or new. He doesn’t even seem to possess the language to enunciate it. Everything’s deal-coded: a bad deal, unfair, costing us a lot of money. Ultimately he doesn’t recognise them at all, if they aren’t delivering personal benefit.

He is pulling the US out of the World Health Organisation, the Paris Climate Agreement, and reportedly the UN Human Rights Council; has paused and potentially cancelled all foreign aid funding (except military aid to Israel) including funding for UN relief efforts in Gaza; and also cut spending on the National Institutes of Health and all of its associated international health research and prevention programs, and the EPA. Other academic research is similarly under threat. The upheavals are flowing through domestic and international spheres alike, equally radical and dangerous.

The line pursued by Trump and his core supporters is that all of these institutions and arrangements need to be re-assessed and pulled apart; government has become too bloated, too regulated, too expensive, too woke etc. If they’re important, they’ll survive. If not, bye bye. Bad deals can be improved by force.

There’s an understandable logic to this, in fact it’s irrefutable – if you have no idea how governments actually work, or you don’t care. Trump and Musk don’t know, and don’t care. Soon enough, though, they’ll find out.

In recent days, Timothy Snyder, Ralph Nader, Lisa Needham, Ezra Klein and Margaret Sullivan have each written persuasively about the nature of the threat to American democracy, the extent of illegality and unusual immorality it involves, and how civil servants and institutions, opposition politicians and citizens should respond. Rather than paraphrase or bastardise their work, I’d urge you to read them yourselves, because they have lessons for Australia.

Trump is highly skilled at winning public attention, and at shaking things up (and down). He is persuasive, charismatic and has the backing of his party. He has political capital to burn, and he’s burning it. He’s bold in a manner unlike we’ve ever seen from a US president, and unafraid to move fast and break things, including the law. He’s not bound to anyone, or any institution.

It's very easy to break things, and he's getting better at that. But the work of proper government is entirely different. Executive orders aren't governing, they're dictating, and Trump has done everything so far via executive order because he has neither the patience nor competence to introduce proper legislation – to do things legally. His actions so far amount to a giant house of cards. Neither he nor Musk can lawfully shut down USAID, or take control of federal payments systems, or unilaterally close departments without congressional approval. “Efficiency” isn’t just cutting services. They can't just fire people because of "woke" and expect to avoid the courts, nor can Musk legally offer unlimited redundancies to civil servants using government money. We’re in the “fuck around” stage, just prior to the “find out” one.

Readers should note that Musk’s similarly cavalier blitzkrieg-style approach to reforming Twitter/X left it in tatters, a far-right shadow of itself, and worth 25% of its former value. Fortunately, advertisers and users could easily leave that platform; the same can’t said for the entire American population, and an equivalent impact on the federal administration would bring unimaginable social chaos. (The New York Times and Wired have reported Musk associates as young as 19 digging around unsupervised in the code and software infrastructure that maintains the entire federal payments system, handling annual payments of $6 trillion including the social security system and similarly critical services. Good luck, everyone!)

The business community is getting a rapid reminder of Trump's modus operandi, and they're already losing patience: planning and confidence are impossible when its tariffs one day, and not the next; government contracts one day, cancelled the next; migrant workers one day, not showing up to work the next. This pattern will never end under Trump.

There is already a sense that the scale of the corruption he's introducing to the US body politic is almost unfathomable. The future is either one of collapsed safety nets and institutions, or an administration mired in legal battles, smear and hate, in-fighting and radical incompetence, isolated from its former allies.

People are right to be freaking out about everything Trumpy, and there's no estimating the long term wreckage he's creating and lives he's already destroying. However, to conclude on a different and somewhat skeptical note, his administration isn't a cunning behemoth; his nation isn't all-powerful anymore; and the guy has never built anything of lasting value, never strengthened any alliances, never managed to do much at all apart from attract headlines. He's transactional at best; erratic, weird and bored by government at worst. Already he looks like all he wants to do is give press conferences, and pretty soon he’ll start to resent that Musk is getting the headlines. What look like his strengths at the moment may soon become his intractable weaknesses.

Governments need actual competence to manage unforeseen, real-world events, and when bad things happen, Trump's weaknesses will be starker than ever. A stock market crash or financial collapse in an uncertain economy; another health crisis in a collapsing healthcare sector; inflation or cost-of-living crises while social security disappears; a massive natural disaster and accompanying insurance crisis. Each of these things (let alone an actual black swan event) isn't just possible, it's likely. My somewhat optimistic opinion is that a lot of people are about to realise just how much they rely on government. The collapse of government services and functions, which seem to be the aim of Trump and his flying monkeys, will eventually result in the collapse of faith in Trump.

There is a fundamental question that Australian political leaders must confront: how close to this regime can we afford to be? Put another way, what do you do when you’re in bed with madmen?

Our leaders can work with the rest of the world to shore up international institutions, alliances and laws, or they can support Trump's America. Can they do both? Arguably not. They can coordinate closely with other allies and hedge against the Trump craziness, or not. They can work towards an independent foreign policy, or try to second-guess the mad king. They can invest in $368 billion of nuclear submarines with a partner who has no loyalty to contracts or allies, or be careful and sensible. A character like Trump only succeeds when people go along with him. That means us too. Measured resistance is required.