Only Donald Trump can save the free world now

With the West in a desperate search for leadership, the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House next year might be just the fillip it needs. 

US president Joe Biden’s three-year tenure in the White House has largely been characterised by his penchant for capitulation, from overseeing the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan to his constant dithering over the Ukraine conflict, reports The Telegraph. His failure to provide Kyiv with the military kit it requires to make a decisive breakthrough in the conflict, informed, in part, by his fear of provoking the Kremlin, has been a key factor in creating the current stalemate. 

Now Biden is wavering in his support for Israel after the horrendous October 7 attacks, questioning whether Jerusalem’s tactics are alienating world opinion. He should be pushing world leaders to give the Israelis the backing they deserve in their hour of need. 

Europe, too, is suffering a leadership crisis, particularly on security issues like Ukraine, so much so that senior European diplomats are said to be lobbying Rishi Sunak to find his inner Winston Churchill, and assume the mantle Boris Johnson adopted so convincingly in leading Western support for Kyiv. 

Sunak may have many qualities, but providing strong and effective wartime leadership, alas, is not one of them. Consequently, with no one prepared to make the obvious argument that Nato’s future security is inextricably linked to Ukraine achieving success on the battlefield, key powers such as Germany, France and the US find themselves struggling to sustain their backing for Kyiv. 

Enter Donald Trump, or so a recent US opinion poll would have us believe. A survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal predicts that the former US president would win next year in a race against Biden, with Trump currently enjoying 47 per cent support compared with Biden’s 43 per cent. The poll also shows that Trump has a clear lead in key swing states such as Florida, Georgia and Arizona. 

The prospect of Trump returning to the White House has prompted paroxysms among political elites on both sides of the Atlantic,who are still licking their wounds from the bruising encounters they suffered during his previous term in office. 

Trump is no Churchill: the billionaire businessman is too vain and erratic to stand comparison with Britain’s great wartime statesman. Nevertheless, it is just possible that, given Trump’s track record in handling several important security challenges, a political comeback by the former president might just succeed in galvanising the West into adopting a more robust stance against aggressors like Russia and Iran. 

Trump’s recent interventions on Ukraine have, admittedly, not helped Kyiv’s cause. He opposed the Biden administration’s aid programme, arguing that the money would be better spent helping American parents to feed their children. One of Trump’s cardinal bugbears is, after all, an aversion to spending American taxpayers’ dollars overseas, not at home. 

There is, though, some merit to his claim that, if he were still in office, Vladimir Putin would not have dared to launch his invasion of Ukraine. As Trump demonstrated in his dealings with North Korea and Iran, he is not afraid to use American military might as a deterrent when the need arises. 

Indeed, while avoiding the lengthy and costly military interventions that have bedevilled previous Republican administrations, Trump authorised decisive military action on numerous occasions. 

Unlike Barack Obama, who reneged on his threat to respond if Syria’s Assad regime resorted to the use of chemical weapons, Trump launched missile strikes against Syria in 2017 and 2018 after the regime deployed the weapons. Another significant intervention was Trump’s decision to revise the rules of engagement used by coalition forces in the military campaign to destroy Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which ultimately resulted in the destruction of the movement’s so-called caliphate in Raqqa. 

Trump’s decision in 2020 to authorise the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard terrorist responsible for expanding Tehran’s malign influence in the Middle East, was another masterstroke, as was his role in negotiating the Abraham Accords, which led to several Arab nations normalising relations with Israel. 

In Europe, meanwhile, Trump is primarily remembered for his constant hectoring of its leaders for not paying their fair share towards the continent’s defence, a criticism that remains as valid today as it did then. With several European countries, like Germany and France, seemingly more interested in cutting a deal with Moscow than giving Ukraine the military support it requires to defeat Russia, Trump’s return to global politics might help them to better understand where their true interests lie. 

Trump might not be the most appealing character in American politics, but he is not someone who is easily ignored. He might be just the person to give the West the jolt it needs to wake up to the very real threats it faces.