LATIKA M BOURKE: The mistakes we made in trying to understand Donald Trump

In just six frantic weeks, the emboldened second coming of Trump to the world stage has quickly sparked equal parts alarm and proselytising.

Proselytising because many argue that the 45th and 47th President’s wrecking ball approach to complex global problems is still ultimately aimed at using whatever means necessary to restore America to its rightful place as the reigning peacekeeper in the world order.

After all, Pax-Americana is the only America most of us have known.

But this has been one of two fundamental mistakes made in trying to navigate the second Trump Administration.

The first error has been to assume that America First is merely another bout of the United States’ isolationist streak back in vogue and that this particular episode can be dealt with, and eventually dismissed, in the same way as before, remembering that the world eventually coped with the first Trump Administration.

But this is fundamentally wrong because Mr Trump is not retreating from the world stage but is instead occupying and wrecking it, aiming to rebuild it to fortify American economic supremacy and even expand its physical territory.

It can no longer be taken as a joke or an exaggerated negotiating tactic when Mr Trump says he wants to take control of mineral-rich Greenland, currently administered by NATO ally Denmark.

“One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” he told the Joint Session of Congress.

He also expresses a desire to annex Canada and tries to decommission its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by ridiculing him as a US “governor”.

This week, the US President showed he was not bluffing as he went through with imposing 25 per cent tariffs on his neighbours.

“I would just say this to people in Canada or Mexico, if they’re going to build car plants, the people that are doing them are better off building here, because we have the market, we’re the market where they sell the most,” Mr Trump said, as the tariffs came into force.

Like a python, he is using America’s size and strength to overwhelm, subdue and gradually constrict his smaller prey.

Mr Trump “wants to see a collapse of the Canadian economy because that would make it easier to annex us,” Trudeau observed.

This subjugation of weaker powers is not isolationism but raw expansionism. A neo-imperialism that constitutes not just a disturbance of the post-war world order that America helped build but signals its potential destruction.

MAGA’s America views its allies not as partners and friends but as prey and parasites who have been leeching off America’s goodwill and security protection for decades while gorging in China’s rivers of gold.

In this respect, America’s goodness has been its ultimate weakness, and MAGA determines that only by aping the bullying and coercive tactics of its superpower rival can it restore its “greatness”.

So we must no longer be confused; Trump’s America is not isolationist, but destructionist, torching the remains of the fragile world order to carve out a new model that shores up American only – and at times Trumpian only – might, aided and abetted by a cast of Republican sycophants and poltroons.

The second misunderstanding in interpreting Trump’s methods and MAGA’s agenda was crystallised last Friday when two of the world’s most powerful men took it upon themselves to tear into Ukraine’s wartime leader, Volodomyr Zelensky.

Until this point, there had been an underlying assumption that the Trump Administration wanted to end the wars in the interests of global security.

Mr Trump’s stated foreign policy goal of “peace through strength” could be viewed through this prism — MAGA’s version of the United States’ decades-long demonstrated desire to be a force that promotes freedom, liberties, democracy and human rights, even when some of those attempts have involved misguided or outright mistaken ventures.

The desire to cut and run from Ukraine has also been justified through this lens — Russia is the thunderstorm and China the climate change — and America needs to prioritise its resources for the existential battle for all our sake.

This has been the accepted wisdom because of the way the first Trump Administration approached China and worked with its allies for common goals, such as banning Huawei from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing countries’ telecoms networks.

But it has become clear that this was the strategy of that Administration’s allied-focussed China hawks, specifically former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisers John Bolton, Robert O’Brien, and former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger – all of whom have not been welcomed back into the White House.

By contrast, Mr Trump’s security team this time are complete loyalists and have eagerly lined up to contribute to the de-legitimising of Zelensky.

And not one of them has had a single word to say, either personally or through their departments, about the lap of Australia — a treaty ally and AUKUS and Quad partner — currently being completed by Chinese warships.

Their silence sends a very loud message that China matters to America when it challenges American interests and America’s security, and that programs like AUKUS and the Quad can be used and deployed to shore up those interests, but if the threat is experienced at the other end of the equation, you might be on your own.

As for Gaza, peace is tantamount to commercial opportunities for Mr Trump.

And then there is the admiration that Mr Trump has for authoritarians Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

“Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Mr Trump complained at the end of his showdown with Mr Zelensky.

“He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia.”

Mr Trump’s shared trauma with Putin and the subsequent positions taken to favour Russia prompted the mild-mannered former British foreign office minister and Conservative MP Graham Stuart to posit: “We have to consider the possibility that President Trump is a Russian asset.”

“If so, Trump’s acquisition is the crowning achievement of Putin’s FSB career — and Europe is on its own.”

Europe is on its own and knows it.

On Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen changed the bloc’s rules to allow member states to raise €800 billion in debt to spend on defence over the next four years.

The UK has also begun accelerating its increase in defence spending and is working with the French to assemble a Coalition of the Willing to keep the peace in Ukraine after any ceasefire.

“I want to believe that the United States will remain by our side, but we must be prepared in case that is not the case,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address on Wednesday.

“I never thought I would have to say something like this … but it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” Germany’s next Chancellor Friedrich Merz said after his election win last month.

“I am very curious to see how we are heading toward the NATO summit at the end of June — whether we will still be talking about NATO in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.”

This is no longer about Trump using electric-shock threats to jolt Europe out of its somnambulance to pay more and strengthen and preserve NATO. Rather, the message received by European leaders is that Mr Trump is busting the transatlantic alliance, not saving it.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that the US was “rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations” in a way that “largely aligns with our vision”.

A looming test of Mr Trump’s commitment to NATO will be whether or not he provides the security guarantee for Ukraine that France and Britain have requested.

The alternative is that Mr Trump, in his haste to restore economic ties with Russia, forces Ukraine to accept a ceasefire, setting the conditions for the Kremlin to regroup, rearm and reinvade.

It’s notable that Mr Trump is in such a hurry but has never once publicly called for Mr Putin to end his illegal invasion, and there are no harsh words for the Russian leader because insults would be counter-productive, argues the White House.

By contrast, Mr Trump falsely accuses Mr Zelensky of being a dictator and of starting the war and as a result of the Ukrainian President’s perceived insolence in the Oval Office has cut off vital intelligence and military aid enabling the Russians to kill more Ukrainians – deaths Trump at one time said he wanted to stop within 24 hours of being in office.

As Mr Trudeau observed, as Mr Trump hit start on this trade war with Canada, he was, simultaneously talking about working positively with Russia, or “appeasing Vladimir Putin — a lying, murderous dictator.”

“Make that make sense,” Mr Trudeau said.

There is an explanation. Both Xi and Putin have made themselves presidents for life. Mr Trump frequently speaks about wanting a third term and refers to himself as a king. Does he envy or want to emulate them?

President Trump has been hailed as a disruptor, but there is increasing evidence he is a destroyer, hell-bent on making America Great while junking all that made it good.

It remains an open question as to whether what we are watching is an empire faltering or falling.