Peace in Ukraine, the destruction of Hamas, standing up to China: Europe should rejoice at the prospect of the re-election of Donald Trump – it will soon be emulating his policies

by Conrad Black

There continues to be a great deal of apprehension in the conventional media of the Western European countries about the likely return of President Trump. In fact, to the extent that this is likely – and at this remove of nearly seven months it is likely – it should be a matter of rejoicing in Europe.

Trump has made it clear that he will move decisively to resolve the Ukraine War by conceding Russia most of what it has already occupied in exchange for absolute and permanent Russian guarantees, which will be reinforced by a general NATO guarantee, of the legitimate sovereignty of Ukraine within its revised borders.

These would be genuine guarantees and not the worthless promises that Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom made to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, when they decommissioned the nuclear weapons they inherited from the Soviet Union in 1994.

Ukraine would be free to enter the EU when it met its criteria for admission, and while NATO is a matter to be discussed, it is somewhat academic given that Ukraine would benefit from an unconditional guarantee by the entire alliance of the integrity of its borders.

It is equally clear that President Trump would support Israel and the extermination of Hamas as a terrorist operation.

The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has made it clear that if Hamas as a terrorist organization survives, it will have won this war. It is equally logical that if it does not survive it will have lost the war.

The destruction of Hamas as a terrorist force would remove the most hyperactive terrorist operation in the world, would give the ayatollahs of Iran a bloody nose, and would eliminate from discussions for a resolution of the region’s problems the principal stalwart in refusal to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

The thunderous silence of any genuine pro-Hamas activity by the Arab powers is an eloquent affirmation of their hope that Israel will rid them also of this pestilential menace.

Despite the morally palsied relativism with which most European governments have muddied the waters over the Gaza War, a complete Israeli victory is a victory for all civilised countries, including a doubtless ungrateful and partially misguided Europe.

President Trump has also made it clear that he will not tolerate a reunification of China and Taiwan by force. Any attempt by China to impose a blockade of Taiwan would be met by the United States, under a Trump administration, putting the U.S. flag on incoming merchant vessels escorted by the United States Navy.

China will not provoke a direct war with the United States. An outright invasion would require the transfer of 500,000 Chinese soldiers across 140 miles of open water in slow and vulnerable craft where China would be unable to assure air or sea superiority against the combined force of Taiwan and the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

General Eisenhower on D-Day, in the greatest military operation in the history of the world, only had to move a third as many men across a quarter as much open water with absolute air and sea superiority.

A Trump administration would reduce taxes, increase oil production, and American prosperity is historically a bonanza for European manufacturers, even if Trump took steps to equalise trading arrangements, and Europe would benefit from reduced energy costs.

It is incomprehensible, apart from mere snobbery and shortsighted European amusement at the floundering ineptitude of the current president and his incoherent administration, why conventional European opinion is so hostile to a return to office of President Trump. It seems to be just another manifestation of what Malcolm Muggeridge called “the great liberal death wish.”

But an examination of contemporary European public opinion indicates that those who would replicate Trump in policy terms appear likely to take the headship of the principal European nations over the next few years. Of course a great deal can change for any electorate, but there are discernible trends of disillusionment in Europe with the traditional soft Left policy agenda.

In Germany, the CDU is leading the governing SPD by over 10 points and the Alternative für Deutschland party, which has been pilloried as a pariah of extremism, is leading the SPD by several points. With minor further sloughing off of some of its unnecessarily controversial positions, a governing coalition of those parties becomes distinctly possible and would constitute a profound rejection of decades of slow growth, eco-frightened, euro integrationist hand-wringing and appeasement of the Kremlin.

Current French polls have the redoubtable Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, twelve points ahead of the most popular government standard- bearer, Gabriel Attal, a 34-year-old homosexual atheist, who undoubtedly has his attractions but is a bit esoteric even by French standards.

In both France and Germany, the governments will pay a heavy price for overselling euro-integration and buying too heavily into the green terror. Those of modest income will no longer quietly pay for the nostrums of the eco-alarmists, in Europe as in America and Canada.

The British government will probably change at the next election, because the Conservatives have presented the dismal kaleidoscope of five incompetent governments in eight years and the Labour Party that will be elected will be the pre-Blair political ox-cart that never in its history won two consecutive full terms.

A Starmer government would be ambiguous about Europe and from its first day would be headed for the exit on the well-trodden path of non-reelection of Labour prime minsters Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, and Gordon Brown.

Presumably, the Conservative Party will recover its judgment in leader selection, by which, except for a few months with Austen Chamberlain, all fifteen of its party leaders from the Earl of Derby to John Major (1846-1997) have been prime minister.

Instead of Donald Trump being, as he has so often been represented, an exemplar of tasteless American political immaturity, he is probably the forerunner and convener of, in three or four years, a Western G6 composed entirely of people who sound a good deal like he does. It would be a stupefying improvement on what we have now.

First published in the Brussels Signal.