Fight! Fight! Fight! Why Trump’s immediate response now makes the world a more dangerous place

Love him or loath him, Donald Trump’s stakes as a certified bad ass went up immeasurably yesterday following his near-death experience, defiantly resisting the Secret Service and a potentially lethal gunshot to reassure the audience gathered to see him at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

As the chaos subsided and more details became available, leaders from across the political spectrum – both domestically and internationally – moved to denounce the act of politically motivated violence, and one message became abundantly clear to the world, he is not Joe Biden.

Bringing me to the premise of this piece, that being that the immediate response of President Trump now makes our already contested and highly competitive world more dangerous, not less.

Now yes, many will be quick to jump on the bandwagon and lay this accusation at the feet of President Trump, but don’t misinterpret or misconstrue my meaning, I don’t mean that the (presumptive) Republican nominee has made the world unsafe by surviving – I mean his successor, President Joe Biden and his declining cognitive capacity (yes, I am still waiting for my apology, you know who you are) makes the world unsafe.

What do I mean by this?

Trump’s vigorous and defiant response once he regained his composure stands in stark contrast to President Biden’s repeated gaffes and fumbles which do little to inspire confidence or convey strength for that matter, which has seen successive failures on the international stage, enticing revisionist rivals to act.

We have seen President Putin move and prosecute his invasion of Ukraine, in the Middle East Hamas, Iran and its proxies launched a devastating assault on Israel, prompting the explosion of conflict across the region putting global commerce in the firing line and, of course, we have seen repeated escalations closer to home in the Indo-Pacific.

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Equally, we have seen repeated policy failures by the Biden administration from the disastrous execution of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the abject failure of the US-led sanction regime to hobble the Russian economy, the failed weaponisation of the US dollar by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen which has accelerated the economic and strategic expansion of the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, respectively.

Let’s also not forget the mask slip moment by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal, when he said in late-2022, “When it comes to Russia’s war against Ukraine, if we were still in Afghanistan, it would have, I think, made much more complicated the support that we’ve been able to give and that others have been able to give Ukraine to resist and push back against the Russian aggression.”

It is also safe to say that in many ways, these failures are a continuation of President Obama’s administration and its failures on the international stage, whether it was Russia’s invasion of the Crimea in 2014, the rise of ISIS and the collapse of Syria and Libya, and let’s not forget Beijing’s militarisation of islands in the South China Sea which really kicked off in the early-2010s.

So why does all of this make the world more dangerous now, as opposed to Friday?

Well because now, the world and the world’s revisionist leaders have realised that the likely next US president isn’t easily intimidated and he remains composed under pressure, they will also have realised just how divided the United States is domestically at the moment.

What this also means is that revisionist powers in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and others who watch the US election and its outcomes carefully will have no doubt realised that their window to achieve their objectives with minimal response from the US is rapidly closing.

This means we are now increasingly likely to see an acceleration of antagonistic actions towards the post-Second World War order, with particular flashpoints in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific the most likely.

But why these two areas in particular?

Well, because Russia is bogged down and focused on consolidating its few gains in Ukraine and reinforcing ahead of the coming winter and before any additional allied materiel becomes available through either the US or European supply chains.

Meanwhile, in the context of the Middle East, the US is being left to do the majority of the heavy lifting, while juggling domestic politics (as we have seen here), adding further layers of complexity and consideration to an already precarious decision-making process within the halls of power.

Equally, the increasingly stretched capability of the United States as the global security partner of choice (breeding a culture of dependence among many states) with the increasing capability of peer or near-peer adversaries further complicate the decision-making process and the ability of the US to respond to multiple disparate brushfires.

The Indo-Pacific, specifically Taiwan and the South China Sea, equally presents a similar conundrum to the United States system as it stands, albeit without the added complexity of contested domestic political considerations that need to be factored into the decision-making calculus.

Beijing’s growing capacity and ability to focus its force in the Indo-Pacific, coupled with a considered strategy of reinforcing and limiting the effects of weaknesses (mainly vulnerabilities to accessing industrial inputs, agricultural goods and energy) through the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the event of conflict.

This combination of factors, coupled with the perceived weakness within the US administration ultimately now makes the world more dangerous, as these revisionist powers calculate it is better to move now, lest they face a US president incapable of making such a decision under pressure or for that matter, the same who escalates the situation in an effort to look strong at home and abroad.

Either way, we’re in for an interesting couple of months in the run-up to November as both America and the world grapple with our new reality.

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