Simon's Blog

The one thing that is certain, I don’t have a vote in the forthcoming United States of America presidential election.  This doesn’t mean however that I don’t have an interest in the outcome.   Unlike what many of ‘the Donald’s’ supporters might believe America is great already.  From outside the US all the rest of us see is a massively successful country, something to look up to, envy and perhaps fear.  The post world war 2 world has been built on perhaps two presumptions beyond all else: Nuclear war is unwinnable and that the current incumbent the West Wing gets that.   However, as things stand I am not sure that would be the case should Donald Trump gets to move his office from New York to Washington.  It might sound great in his head for the President of the USA to be unpredictable, it might work in business negotiations, although I doubt it as a long term strategy because any negotiation has to be built on a level of trust, but it is certainly not a workable strategy for the leader of the world’s most powerful military which includes the destructive power of nuclear weapons.  If you can’t trust what the US is going to do next then all that will result in is that the advisories of the US will arm themselves even more or become more unpredictable themselves.  How that makes the world a safer place I am not sure?

Another worrying thing from outside the the US is that he just doesn’t get the complexities of the world.  Take for example the Crimea.  He has asked “I mean, do you want to go back, do you want to have World War III to get it [Crimea] back? “   The answer to that question is of course not.  However, life is not that simple and not too far away to the north there are three NATO countries that look a lot like Crimea or Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia where there are large Russian populations.   What would Donald Trump’s reaction be should one of these countries start to have problems with their much bigger neighbour?  They are NATO members but are they worth starting World War 3 over?  If not then which countries are worth the sacrifice?  Poland? Norway? Canada?  The only way that NATO works is that their advisories believe that an attack on one country is an attack on all and so would be treated as such.

You see what the President of the USA says matters.  This also applies to either of the main candidates running for the office.   I am not sure Donald Trump gets this yet.  Perhaps he will.  Perhaps he will realise that the world is far more complicated than 140 characters on Twitter and that everything he does, says, every mannerism will be examined in minute detail to find clues as to what he might do.  One wrong step doesn’t mean you have to hide behind chapter 9 bankruptcy for a while but rather we are all ducking for cover.

I am sure that should any supporter of Donald Trump reading this may well disagree with what I have said about Mr Trump.  I am pretty sure they will feel angry that some person, who is not an American  citizen thinks they have the right to suggest that Donald Trump is in any way unfit for office.  On one level they are right but we live in an American world and what America does really really matters to the rest of us.  The Donald Trump supporter might think that America isn’t great at the moment but no one other than his supporters believe that.   Even America’s worst enemies accept this and try and attack them in such a way as to not to bring the full force of American power down on their head.   Living in an interconnected world means that the most powerful country has to be aware that what it does matters and with greater the power comes the greater reasonability.  I am just not sure that Donald Trump is the right man to have that responsibility.