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Has Trump learnt from his mistakes? He must break free from Beltway dogma

Take two (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Take two (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)


November 9, 2024   6 mins

Beyond his likely majority in both the Senate and the House, Trump’s real advantage over Trump’s last term is his last term. More experienced in the halls of power, and with a sharper sense of his own vision for America, the 47th President will not make the same mistakes as the 45th. That could have especially dramatic consequences abroad — Trump now knows who to appoint and how to operate in foreign capitals. No less important, the President-elect’s domestic agenda, encompassing everything from tariffs to manufacturing, should also progress more successfully under an older and wiser Trump. Combined with the vast cultural implications of his victory, Trump could remake those aspects of American public life most shaped by government.

Especially in the conduct of foreign policy, Trump 1.0 was happy to hire respected officials suggested by the establishment — but who nonetheless turned out to be totally wrong for him. One was General Mattis, his first Secretary of Defence. Mattis was a true warrior who in 1991 led the Marines to Baghdad in record time. But he also happened to be a Democrat, who fiercely resisted all of Trump’s policies and even tried to appoint Hillary’s candidate for the Pentagon as his own deputy. Trump had to replace him, at great political cost.

Another mistaken appointment was Rex Tillerson. Trump’s first Secretary of State, he came recommended by such establishment luminaries as Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates. Tillerson had spent his life in the tough and supremely realistic oil business. But as soon as he moved into his seventh floor office, he became enslaved by State Department dogma. One was that the US needed French and German approval for any plan to rebuild Nato, already depleted after years of under-funding. That inevitably ensured that nothing would be done: Berlin did not want to spend anything and Paris had nothing to spend.

The end result was Trump’s highly publicised quarrel with Angela Merkel, who patiently pointed out that war was utterly improbable in Europe, so that buying guns and ammunition would just be a waste of money. It goes without saying that elite opinion on both sides of the Atlantic backed the learned chancellor’s flawless logic, as against Trump’s boorish ranting. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we all now know that the President was right — and the policy elite wrong. A better Secretary of State could have advanced Trump’s policy much more effectively by activating Germany’s own military experts, bitterly aware of the sad state of their country’s military. They might also have lobbied the German press, setting the stage for a very different meeting with Merkel.

Beyond the question of appointments, the foreign policy challenges of his first term should have taught him two things. One: present the Europeans with ultimatums rather than just requests. Two: ignore State Department dogma on anything important. That second point is obvious enough after Trump’s first presidency. Consider, for instance, the plan Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner came up with to bring peace to the Middle East. Their idea was simple: they would ask their friends in Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to open diplomatic relations with Israel.

Coming from a young businessman with no Middle East policy credentials, Kushner’s proposals were immediately dismissed as childish by Tillerson and his minders at the State Department. As they patiently explained, no Arab state could possibly agree to open diplomatic relations with Israel until the Palestine problem was solved, and any attempt to pursue such an absurd project could only end in refusals that were humiliating both for Trump and his country. But in the end, almost all accepted Kushner’s proposal. Only Saudi Arabia delayed, and even Riyadh immediately allowed Israeli airliners headed east to overfly its vast territories, at huge savings in time and fuel.

Given all this, Trump 2.0 will undoubtedly be guided in his foreign policy by his own closest supporters — rather than by any specious bureaucratic dogmas. That certainly applies to the Ukraine war, which cannot end unless Putin agrees to end it. Diplomatically, Trump will start with a significant advantage: unlike Biden, he never insulted Putin, and this would allow Putin to accept a compromise peace without being criticised as weak. I expect intense action soon after Trump’s inauguration.

“Trump 2.0 will undoubtedly be guided in his foreign policy by his own closest supporters — rather than by any specious bureaucratic dogmas.”

Not that conciliation can work with Iran. Knowing that his own Democratic party had a long tradition of military interventions, from Truman in Korea to LBJ in Vietnam, President Obama was determined to prevent war with Iran. His method was to embrace the Ayatollah’s regime, by offering it economic favours that greatly increased Tehran’s oil revenues. And this policy persisted even after it became obvious that the money was not being spent on the needs of Iran’s population, but was instead being funnelled to its nuclear programme and to proxy militias across the region.

When Trump assumed office in 2016, strict controls on Iran’s oil revenues sharply reduced the regime’s military expansion. But when Biden replaced Trump, Obama’s Iran policy was resumed; his exceptionally conciliatory Iran coordinator was back in action; and Tehran’s greatly increased oil revenues funded the multi-front war currently underway across the Middle East.

As it happens, one of Biden’s last moves was to send B-52 heavy bombers to the Middle East, in an attempt to deter any more Iranian ballistic missile attacks, fearing that Israel would react by destroying Iran’s export terminal on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. Though Trump will certainly act immediately to squeeze Iranian revenues, if that is not enough those B-52s might well come in handy, notwithstanding the fact that Trump is an instinctive anti-interventionist.

Nor has Trump only learned foreign policy lessons since leaving the White House in 2021. He is also much better prepared to deal with his own party. Never a Republican until he ran for president, Trump now appreciates that today’s GOP is very different from the old cliche of country clubs, free trade and low taxes. Apart from anything else, the Republican establishment has stopped resisting state power across the economy and society. By 2023, after all, there were some 22 million civil servants at all levels of government, and even that understates the number of Americans who now live off the state, funded by grants from all manner of NGOs.

Whenever the Democratic Party controls a bureaucracy — from counties to the federal government — it expands it by granting public money to “nonprofits” that promise to improve public education, promote renewable energy or help the poor, among other good things — while being Democratic Party operatives. These NGOs also pay generous salaries to their executives: long before Michelle Obama became a “centimillionaire” after her eight White House years, she received a handsome paycheck from a hospital nonprofit in Chicago.

That’s how the Democratic Party pays for its manpower. Under Trump 2.0, the President’s officials will work hard to ensure that the Republicans in the House and Senate are rigorous in their scrutiny of every part of the federal budget, resisting the temptation to swap favours with the Democrats at the taxpayer’s expense.

No less important, this second Trump presidency will finally grapple with the question of domestic manufacturing. Under Trump 1.0, after all, the Republicans continued to demand free trade with China, which Trump opposed, and now opposes even more, because it enriches America’s chief geopolitical antagonist. Combined with the likely slashing of red tape — a phenomenon that afflicts every industry from Hawaii to Maine — this could yet spark a domestic manufacturing boom. That is surely needed: while the Japanese are able to build cheap and attractive kei cars with engines under 660cc, US manufacturers are forced to sell cars that can safely be driven at high speeds, even to customers who simply want to go shopping nearby. Not that deregulation will be limited to the American automotive sector. The oil and gas industry will doubtless benefit even more, while the aviation sector urgently needs aggressive anti-monopoly action to break up the somnolent Boeing and uncreative Lockheed.

In the end, though, Americans ultimately elected Trump to stop illegal migration. I am therefore confident that, by inauguration day in January, the administration will have presented a robust plan for the border. For starters, the right of asylum will be limited to those who really need protection from political or racial persecution, and who account for less than 1% of those who entered the US under Biden. The practice of airlifting thousands of monocultural illegal immigrants to small towns — notably the 1,500 Mauritanians who abruptly arrived in Lockland, Ohio — will end immediately. Why? Because illegal immigrants will immediately be sent back across the border as soon as they arrive. This was done effectively enough under Trump 1.0, and much has been learned since.

Beyond the policy arena, meanwhile, many Americans might plausibly suggest that no amount of legislation can capture the real meaning of Trump’s victory: the country’s verdict on everything from political prosecutions and critical race theory to its biased media and the unashamed moral bankruptcy of its entertainment industry. What’s clear enough, at any rate, is that Americans crave something different, and as he enters the White House for the second time, Donald Trump can offer just that.


Professor Edward Luttwak is a strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.

ELuttwak

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Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago

Interesting insights into the incompetence and group think in the bureaucracy.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Jimbo, your Trump worship is embarrassing. What you call groupthink is the wisdom of an educated crowd. Where do you think the intellectual framework for Trump comes from? It doesn’t. There is no framework other than what he reads on the Breitbart comments section.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago

The same group think that brings us the Ukraine war, net zero, covid lockdowns etc. No thanks. Trump wouldn’t exist if these clowns knew what they were doing.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
1 month ago

You and your ilk have created Trump. Look upon thy works and weep.

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
1 month ago

And the results from this, “educated crowd.”?

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 month ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

..exactly Alan. They are credentialled but they are uneducated.

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
1 month ago

Groupthink can exist anywhere, amongst all levels of intelligence and all sides of the political spectrum.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago

Just interested to know what you think was behind Trump’s win?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
29 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

NPCs don’t think. They just repeat what they’ve been told to say by their media.

Claire D
Claire D
29 days ago

Champagne Socialist get handed their derriere on a platter.

So much for the adults back in the room

David L
David L
26 days ago

Educated, but incredibly stupid and ignorant.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
12 hours ago

“The wisdom of an educated crowd.” Bwahahahaha!!!

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

They weren’t incompetent, apart from having the wrong agenda, and not doing the job they were paid to do.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

They get everyone around the table to make the appropriate decisions. Unfortunately they always miss to invite certain professionals.
And of course the citizens aren’t asked either.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
29 days ago
Reply to  Bret Larson

“… certain professionals.”

You mean professionals, knowledgeable about relevant disciplines, rather than political ideology?

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
1 month ago

One thing that is being overlooked right now is Lina Kahn in the FTC. It would be a mistake not to retain her. She is the one Biden appointee who has gained nearly universal respect from populists across the political spectrum. Funny enough, Vance, Gatez, and Hawley are close allies of her.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Agree 100%. She was for sure gone if Harris was elected. Reed Hoffman isn’t a fan.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Despite his bulk, I don’t think Reid Hoffman pulls as much weight as you think he does. Had Kamala Harris won, Lina Khan would have stayed.
JD Vance’s support for Lina Khan is just one of the reasons I am not a fan of his. He, Matt Gaetz, Josh Hawley and other Khanservatives are rousing a rabble to no good purpose. Industrial policy, including antitrust, needs to be carefully thought out, and this group doesn’t do careful thinking.
Lina Khan’s term at the FTC ended a month ago. It’s hard to throw FTC commissioners out. Donald Trump would be a fool to re-appoint her for another term, and it would be a slap in the face of Republican senators to ask them to confirm her. Donald Trump is no fool. She’s gone.

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Agree but focus on monopoly risks ignor8ng kleptocracy as public/private “partnerships” explode in the next decade. AI demands large scale, quality datasets that only the state can provide (in the UK Blair has already done a deal with Oracle for access to NHS records as an example). The US needs to rearm – behind Musk’s efficiency drive sits the US’s ability to dominate space militarily, whilst Vance/Thiel bring in Palentir. Moves to digital money likewise – XRP and Circle (UK) as gatekeepers/enablers. We need to remain alert on multiple fronts

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
1 month ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

Let’s keep the monolithic pharmaceutical machine to supply incompetent governments with misleading, blanket solutions to individual illnesses, all backed up by arrogant specialists, with little responsibility, and a large bureaucracy.

And yet, all the while, they couldn’t see the wood for the trees, and administered jabs to the many candidates for the Darwin Prize, while outside this delusion, individuals could see through the idiocy that the highly educated appear to fall for.

Mark Rinkel
Mark Rinkel
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

She should be the first to go. Her cases against business have been thrown out. She epitomizes the overreach of the regulatory state. Their suit against Amazon is silly. Do they dominate? Absolutely. Why do they dominate? Because they consumers choose to use their service since it is superior. Other big retailers have pivoted to online ordering and delivery because of Amazon. Yesterday my order was delivered by an electric van.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter need to follow Tim Wu out the door of government and have it slammed shut behind them. These neo-Brandeis, hipster antitrusters along with their fellows Barry Lynn and Zephyr Teachout are very bright and persuasive but fundamentally wrong.

Why? They believe in Louis Brandeis’s “curse of bigness” (the title Tim Wu borrowed for one of his books). In other words,, big is bad, in and of itself. So their remedy for any market with big companies is for the government to step in and “break ’em up”. Not just those who got big by skullduggery, but those who got big by being fierce competitors too.

That approach doesn’t even work in theory, and in practice, it’s been terrible. The government lawsuit against IBM that started in the 1960s and ended in the 1980s was a horrific waste of time and money that Robert Bork called the Justice Department’s Vietnam. The government battles with Microsoft were almost as bad. Battles that were never won, and should not have been fought.

True, some on the right have joined Lina Khan and other zealots on the left but that doesn’t make them right. Governments do not know enough about the economy to control it better than natural market forces. They cannot. That’s been proven time and time again. Command and control economies always underperform market economies.

The better solution when monopolies and oligopolies appear is to focus on cooperation rather than competition. Use a limited industrial policy that focuses on forcing big companies to interoperate with new competitors and disclose interfaces so that a new entrant can specialize and steal a slice of the market. Break up markets, not companies.

In cars, for example, that would mean making Tesla let a competitor replace the battery in a Tesla car. Create a market for batteries (a smaller market where a new company with advanced battery technology can get a foothold) alongside the market for complete cars, with its very high barriers to entry.

Right now, when you buy a Tesla, you don’t really own the car–you’re too limited in what you can do with it. That kind of power keeps new companies out and makes markets more stagnant and less innovative than they could be. Breaking up the car market into markets for motors, inverters, bodies, chasses, electrical power supplies, and driver interfaces will open up a path to the market for new technologies.

Lina Khan focuses on the abstract and ignores the practical. She wrote one well-received law review article about Amazon that she researched in the library rather than getting a feel for how markets work. She knows nothing about business. So I will be glad to see Lina Khan go back to Columbia Law School to rejoin Tim Wu. Let them and Barry Lynn, Matt Stoller, and David Dayen continue to speak out with their Open Markets group–their voices are valuable and should be heard. Even scholars in ivory towers contribute to the debate.

But let others take over the reins to guide the economy who will give the horses pulling it only the slightest touch to keep them on course, not fight them and tear at their mouths by sawing on the reins. Or to use a different analogy, like a gifted helmsman, who knows that any use of the rudder will increase resistance and hold the boat back, and so steers with the lightest possible touch.

Max More
Max More
1 month ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

Well said, Carlos. Neo-Brandeis is exactly right. Vance is badly wrong in favoring Khan. Throw out that authoritarian regulator.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
29 days ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

We need to stamp out rampant legalism. Laws and lawyers ripping into human endeavour across the whole range of enterprise.

Max More
Max More
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Trump should resist Vance on this and eject Kahn immediately. She is an enemy of enterprise. She keeps losing in court, thank goodness.

j watson
j watson
29 days ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

The Vance line on anti-trust interventions one of the things that made me think a bit more to this guy than initial impressions. Whether his Boss has a similar instinct I very much doubt. So long as the captain’s of industry doff their cap to the main ‘Don’ he most definitely won’t have an anti-monopoly policy and quite possibly almost the reverse. There is much dark hidden PAC money behind the Trump project that certainly does not want anti-trust policy drive (At least Elon is out in the open).
Back to Vance – he gets side-lined and having his own perspective on some fundamental problems in US capitalism likely to just hasten that. Nonetheless one to watch for 2028 for sure.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
29 days ago
Reply to  j watson

There is much dark hidden PAC money behind the Trump project
Such as?

j watson
j watson
27 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Try to find open disclosure behind the PACs that supported him. What are they hiding?

michael harris
michael harris
29 days ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Lina Khan (she/her presumably) is not a ‘thing’.

j watson
j watson
1 month ago

Probably the biggest threat to this agenda is Trump himself. His ability to maintain focus, to not get side-tracked into antagonisms and score-settling. He only has 4yrs and by mid terms lame duck territory beckons. So he has to be laser focused early. As an elderly septuagenarian who likes the Golf course will he simply lack the energy to get beyond rhetoric to the task of real government? There has to be these doubts. Good appointments to key roles can of course mitigate his own deficiencies but he doesn’t like others star to burn too brightly does he. There is a reason so many who’ve worked with him before had major character concerns and he has a darkness to his thinking that could jeopardise the whole project.
On Foreign Policy – what is positive is he instinctively hates appearing weak and thus in dealings with Putin, Xi and other Autocrats he may well strike better deals than his critics concern. On Economic policy – an inevitable clash coming between the free traders and the tariff advocates. Trump avid watcher of Wall St, he’s a New Yorker! So he’ll go with what he senses market prefers. But with US economy already close to full capacity he may run into immediate inflationary pressures and after a period of initial euphoria the 122% debt to GDP ratio may well curtail some of his plans – the enforced deportation of c10m ‘illegal’ migrants comes with a large tab he may start to blanche at.

Saul D
Saul D
1 month ago
Reply to  j watson

Since Trump only has four years left, his appointees will be fighting to make an impression thinking of the succession. It’s very likely Vance will be starting his presidential campaign in two years time, needing funding and supporters prior to the launch, so I would anticipate a very active, and visible, political program from the off.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
1 month ago
Reply to  Saul D

Trump has already delegated responsibility to people with ‘bees in their bonnet’, so I expect the momentum is already there.

j watson
j watson
29 days ago
Reply to  Saul D

But you assume SD that Trump will be fine with all that and his ego unaffected by others thinking beyond him. No stars are allowed in his orbit. There were many good people who worked for him during first term, but look what happened to almost all of them.
Watch for Trump to start pushing for Don Jr as successor. The Mafia Don doesn’t go with the Consigliere.

Saul D
Saul D
29 days ago
Reply to  j watson

I’m impressed with your knowledge of Trump’s inner psychology. You must have had a lot of long conversations with him to be able to diagnose like that. Unfortunately I don’t have your mind-reading skills, so I’m left weighing likelihoods based on politics, precedent and public statements.

Martin M
Martin M
29 days ago
Reply to  Saul D

Trump is hardly reticent about sharing his inner thoughts with the World.

j watson
j watson
27 days ago
Reply to  Saul D

There is quite a weight of memoirs from distinguished people who have worked/interviewed/observed him. He’s not kept his behaviour or viewpoints well hidden has he. That would take a bit more instinctive humility.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
29 days ago
Reply to  j watson

If Donald Trump was grooming Donald Trump, Jr as his successor we would see the son doing things in Washington DC. Like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner did in his first term. (Like Bronny James did with his dad LeBron James in Los Angeles in the NBA.)

We don’t see that. Donald Trump, Jr does not have the ability or the interest to take over leadership of the Republican party. Even Eric Trump’s wife Lara is more involved than Donald Trump, Jr.

j watson
j watson
27 days ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

I certainly agree he doesn’t have the ability. But as Trump’s cognitive ability declines he’ll be like the Mafia Don thinking only family can be his successor.

Martin M
Martin M
29 days ago
Reply to  j watson

The most incredible decline is that of Rudy Giuliani. He went from being “America’s Mayor” to being a Gollum-like figure.

Martin M
Martin M
29 days ago
Reply to  Saul D

My money is actually on Trump not getting four years, and Vance becoming President sometime during that period, either due to Trump’s death, or some 25th Amendment process.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
1 month ago
Reply to  j watson

Does Donald seriously strike you as a man short of energy and ambition? He is on a mission and if his health holds up, he will go on to the end.

And yes some of that will be on the golf course.
Hate the game myself, but it’s a great place to chat, build relationships, stay fit, and ponder strategy. You don’t have to sit at a desk all day to be a great leader, in fact, it’s generally the worst place to be.

Tony Price
Tony Price
1 month ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

He doesn’t seem to be short on energy and ambition, but also he seems to be on an obvious mental decline which will not outlast the term.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
1 month ago
Reply to  Tony Price

What do you see as evidence of the “obvious mental decline” which will keep him from finishing his term? It hasn’t been obvious to me. If it had been, like Joe Biden’s was, I wouldn’t have voted for Donald Trump, and would say shame on those who hid it.

j watson
j watson
29 days ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Yes I don’t think his campaign energy translates as well to governing. His attention span v limited and too easily distracted by X and other social media. He performed well during a campaign as he has an instinct for the audiences he performed to and his lines were simple.
Governing is much harder. The volume and complexity of decision-making that has to come to the POTUS almost overwhelming. And whilst he can delegate for some things he doesn’t cede autonomy to anyone bar perhaps family. What chances do you think of decent longevity in the key posts reporting to him given the pattern in his first term? And longevity needed to be effective. They’ve only 4yrs and stability key to driving real change.
He’ll have an initial surge and then get worn down by it. Despite knowing the lessons of his first term if the leader isn’t super sharp the whole operation starts to struggle. He’ll got backwards like Biden. As he becomes more of a lame duck he’ll also get increasingly distracted with score settling and politicking to get Don Jr into succession position. He certainly won’t be fixating on lasting change for the left behinds. Enjoy the euphoria now. The reality isn’t going to be what he promised.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
29 days ago
Reply to  j watson

Governing is much harder. The volume and complexity of decision-making that has to come to the POTUS almost overwhelming.
Governments do far too much – and most of what they do is quite unnecessary even when it’s not entirely counterproductive.

j watson
j watson
28 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

But all his promises involve being quite interventionist and herein lies the contradiction. The irony is those who voted for him voted for change not an unbridled free market with some ‘Invisible hand’ creating more Billionaire owning monopolies and further inequality.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
29 days ago
Reply to  j watson

As an elderly septuagenarian who likes the Golf course will he simply lack the energy to get beyond rhetoric to the task of real government?
Don’t know whether you’ve ever noticed this, but the more time politicians spend on the golf course and the less meddling, the better life is for the vast majority of people.

Chris Whybrow
Chris Whybrow
1 month ago

I think Luttwak assumes Trump is more intelligent than he really is. Certainly the GOP establishment isn’t a shining beacon of competence either, but Trump’s age doesn’t seem to have granted him wisdom, judging by all those rambling speeches.

Eric Mader
Eric Mader
1 month ago
Reply to  Chris Whybrow

Stump speeches are not policy decisions. As for the latter, his first term’s policy initiatives were smarter and more pragmatic than the hubristic insanity we’ve gotten from the Dems and their “Washington elite consensus.”

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
1 month ago
Reply to  Chris Whybrow

Apologies to Peggy Noonan, but speeches mean nothing. No political speech has ever mattered. They may as well not have been given.

What defines a presidency is what a president does, not what he says. And Donald Trump, like all very successful businessmen, is a first-class doer.

Look at all Donald Trump did in his first term. He will do even better in his second.

James Kirk
James Kirk
29 days ago
Reply to  Chris Whybrow

POTUS don’t sit on a throne making up and issuing directives. That’s for the cameras. The figure head is at the prow, the flag at the top of the mast. The navigation and steering comes from aft. Good luck deciphering Harris unburdening herself.

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
1 month ago

Margaret Thatcher’s premiership would make a good template for Trump 2. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at the start of the 2016 Trump presidency said: “Margaret Thatcher, much more than Ronald Reagan, is the real model for the Trump presidency”. [https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/mrs-thatcher-and-the-good-life] More than thirty years since she fell from power, her record as an interrupter and repulser of that progressive leviathan is unequalled in any major Western nation – a counter-revolutionary template.I can’t guess what would she have made of him….or he of her memory but there are parallels to these two political leaders. Neither would – in the face of unprecedented media hostility – back down. And people notice this. The great majority of politicians think it politic to dance a kind of tango with the media but, in terms of inspiring fierce loyalty, uncompromising wins.
She died before the Western liberal establishment had begun to convulse itself over such things as whether our culture was ‘transphobic’ and whether young people needed to be protected from harm ‘triggered’ by its great works of literature. She missed out on having her say about much of the cultural transformation effected in the 21st century West by its university-educated progressive clerisy. But what she would have had to say had she been in her prime in 2024 would be a good guide for Trump 2.
She always called a spade a spade, loud and clear and damn the consequences. She never fell into the rhetorical rabbit hole of trying to frame arguments against ‘identity politics’ using its own tendentious terminology. Asked to discuss issues relating to the LGTB+ community she would probably have told the interviewer to stop talking such nonsense. She would have said it insistently and would not have shut up however impolitic the subsequent verbal joust became. Asked to comment on ‘systemic racism’, she would have wagged her finger and asserted that the West was the least racist society that had ever been and how crazy to have lurched – in a couple of generations – from racism against coloured people to racism against white people.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
1 month ago

Thatcher was weighed down by the wetness of her cabinet, and their betrayal. When many conservatives (with a small c), remember her, it’s the battles against her cabinet (and some civil servants) that they remember, more than those against the Labour Party.

Good decisions need differences of opinion to create meaningful discussion, but not totally different agendas. The EU, rather than Europe, was the problem. For the ‘Conservative’ Party, it still is.

And it’s become even more visible for Continental Europe! 🙂

Tony Price
Tony Price
1 month ago

Thatcher was the cause of many of our current serious problems because she did indeed ‘damn the consequences’ with her short-term ideologically over-driven actions. A serious leader indeed who did good stuff but we are living with those consequences today.

James Kirk
James Kirk
29 days ago
Reply to  Tony Price

They blame her for the loss of our manufacturing industry when in truth it was the Unions and Accountants who made us un competitive. The EU stopped Government from supporting interim troubled big companies while inducing manufacturing over to Europe.

Max More
Max More
1 month ago

Even better as a model: Milei.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
29 days ago

Thatcher oversaw a deliberate undermining of UK industrial capacity, which is the opposite of what Trump wants to do in the US.

H W
H W
28 days ago
Reply to  Dash Riprock

And she was a war monger.
An early neo-lib/con

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
29 days ago

however, Thatcher did shortsightedly miss the opportunity to purge academia, the civil service and the BBC of their inbuilt Marxist tendencies.
Let us hope does not make the same mistake.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
29 days ago

Badenoch is a real hope.

What? A smart, determined woman with a supportive partner?

Ooh she’s a but darker than most of us…

Who cares? She’s more British than many of us.

andy young
andy young
28 days ago

To my mind, she’s more British than Starmer will ever be. But then, I think Britain is a state of mind rather than a country. Anyone can be British, so long as they espouse our long traditions of (genuine) tolerance, free speech & equality before the law

Frederick Dixon
Frederick Dixon
28 days ago
Reply to  andy young

Anyone? Is that really all that it takes to be British? Does our nationality (and therefore our country) really belong to anyone who embraces those qualities irrespective of language, citizenship, birthplace, place of residence?
You have reduced Britishness to meaninglessness.

Martin M
Martin M
29 days ago

Thatcher was honest and decent though. Quite different from Trump.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 month ago

Just an aside:
Why is it that when the topic is bringing manufacturing back to the US only large corporations are referenced?
The strength of the manufacturing sector in its heyday was more in small manufacturers than giant “factories”. As recently as the 80s America had hundreds of thousands of companies making buttons and zippers; firing pins and bullet casings; bandanas and stockings and just about anything you could imagine. I knew a family that had a nice business just making party frocks for little girls! They had 40 or 50 employees, including well-paid designers, pattern makers and cutters, and dozens of skilled sewing machine operators.

j watson
j watson
29 days ago

Beyond the populist rhetoric – who wouldn’t want more on-shored manufacturing – some significant challenges exist. Would it create an inflationary pressure? Remember inflation probably what got Trump elected because of what it did to peoples sense of whether things were improving for them. And to be competitive would it just be automation focused and thus few jobs created anyway?
And he’s only 4yrs and such shifts can take longer. Is he able to make longer term strategic decisions that perhaps are not initially popular, or does he constantly get distracted and merely react daily to the latest nonsense on X?
Does not mean not an important debate about how to strike the balance, but now he’s in Govt he has to move beyond the simpleton rhetoric to the complexity of government.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
29 days ago
Reply to  j watson

the complexity of government
Because government is complex it has to be left to the people who know best, eh? Well, we’ve had almost thirty years of that now and I suspect that even you would have to concede that it’s been a disaster.

Wayne Hennessy-Barrett
Wayne Hennessy-Barrett
1 month ago

Rare error. Mattis stormed Baghdad in 2003, not 1991.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
1 month ago

Excellent article. Too bad it was hidden away and Lee Siegel’s much poorer article got all the attention.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
1 month ago

Apart from the fact that Trump couldn’t achieve all that in four years, his personality would not allow him to achieve it in forty years, which is a pity because much of what he wants to achieve is in the best interests of the US and the West too. If he is succeeded by JD Vance or Tulsi Gabbard, they might make some headway with his agenda if they get a clear run at it, say two terms.

mike flynn
mike flynn
29 days ago
Reply to  Michael Clarke

1000 people in power to grind down his plan. You’re onto something about building out a party now to follow through the plan when he can no longer serve.

Personally believe Gabbard is a RINO, or worse. Vance, maybe, except VP is usually the last post those people ever hold. Notwithstanding the circumstances of Bidens ascendancy. Remember, Bernie was true DEM nominee in 2016 and 2020 until Obama bumped him. Not to mention the convenience of COVID and riots and election inconsistency.

CF Hankinson
CF Hankinson
29 days ago

This we know: Trump is one of those very rare people who has successfully translated his large ego into action and success.
I think as he gets nearer the end of his life, and needs no other goals of riches or fame to achieve in this life, he will concentrate on his reputation and fame after death.

He has everything to gain by fulfilling the dreams and wishes of his vast electorate at whatever cost to him in this world. He can afford it, and Musk too is equally focused on his legacy.
This might not be politically of worldwide benefit of course. Or benefit to the planet. (Which is why Musk is devoted to escape route. A stepping stone for the potential survival of humans, eons ahead.)
They may crash and burn of course but don’t underestimate their ambition and Will.
I believe they are committed to short term benefit to the mass population and after all that is the definition of democracy.

Planetary forces much greater than human will always threaten our existence. And snuff out human history in a blink. So bit of a gamble to play dice with the planet’s ecosystem when it is sending out so many warnings.

Martin M
Martin M
29 days ago
Reply to  CF Hankinson

This might not be politically of worldwide benefit of course. Or benefit to the planet“. The idea that Trump would do anything at all for a purpose other than fuelling his own ego is laughable.

Victor Southern
Victor Southern
29 days ago

You assume that Trump believes he made such mistakes.

James Kirk
James Kirk
29 days ago

A friend sends memes ridiculing Harris. Many a truth in jest, one was:
If Trump was going to destroy America, he’d have done it in his first term.
If Kamala wanted to save America, what were she and Joe doing for four years?
I wonder what another 4 years will bring? Vance sounds good but ex Democrat Gabbard may be a sound compromise. With nothing sensible to say this time, Harris, AOC, Clinton, the Obamas and Pelosi will have hopefully vanished into obscurity by then.

mike flynn
mike flynn
29 days ago
Reply to  James Kirk

AOC just warming up. Obama will be puppet master of policy. Don’t see big money dumping him. Clinton’s still influential. Pelosi has nothing but carry water for Beijing.

0 0
0 0
29 days ago

Trump also needs to remember from his first term that if things are left in the wrong hands and get on the wrong track, the results may exceed even outstanding crisis management and deal-making ability. As he learned from the Kabul debacle.

Trump’s first term record on this is mixed. While he can claim credit opening the road to the Abraham accords, he also bears some responsibility for fostering the illusions of the Israeli religious right which have now placed that country in an impossible position.

And while the forcing the outbreak of war over Ukraine can be laid at the door of his successor’s administration, Trump failed to curtail the neocon agenda nurtured under Obama and presided over the ramping up of far right elements there on destroying the relative peace that existed there and in Europe.

Now the territory of Ukraine will be partitioned one way or another, the Ukrainian nation is in shreds, Western
investors have lost many billions and Russia has been goaded and prodded into an actual rather than potential adversary. Only fanatics like Lindsay Graham would consider that success. And Trump will be hard pushed to avoid worse things there.

Martin M
Martin M
29 days ago
Reply to  0 0

Even if the Ukraine war ends with Ukraine being partitioned, huge amounts of Russians have died during the course of it. That alone makes the world a better place.

John Ramsden
John Ramsden
29 days ago

As a Trump supporter, I would love Trump to succeed in his aims, and wish him every success. But I suspect that, to paraphrase the grafitti Princess Elizabeth scratched on her cell window while in captivity (“Much is suspected of me. Nothing proved can be”) :
Much is expected of me,
Little achieved will be.

mike flynn
mike flynn
29 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

1000 people girding to have your final statement come true.

G M
G M
29 days ago

Backbone and courage will be needed by Trump and others because the media will be daily filled with stories about those who might be hurt or offended by Trump’s policies.

Obadiah B Long
Obadiah B Long
29 days ago

Every indication is that Trump has learned a great deal from his first term.
The real question is, have the opposition learned anything? Every indication is that they have not.

General Store
General Store
29 days ago

He must learn from Mrs Thatcher in her first term. Forget about being popular. Do the right thing, without looking back, without worrying about future elections, and giving no quarter – and do everything possible in the first 100 days to break progressive monopolies in public institutions, starting with schools and universities

Martin M
Martin M
29 days ago
Reply to  General Store

And the chances of Trump taking that viewpoint are?

mike flynn
mike flynn
29 days ago

Will Trump be the first president to leave office poorer than when he started?

Martin M
Martin M
29 days ago
Reply to  mike flynn

I think that is a moot point, because the chances of him surviving for four years are low.

George Venning
George Venning
28 days ago

This is surely right in its general thrust. Most of us learn from experience after all.
But, like so many of Luttwak’s pieces, it is dumb in its particulars.
Take for example, Merkel’s insistence that increased military expenditure was unecessary because war in Europe was unthinkable. She was wrong but the reason that she was wrong was that the US was recklessly fomenting a war in Europe at that very moment. War in Europe happened because the US and others in NATO were committed to antagonising Russia – a policy that those fringey peaniks at the RAND corporation described in detail and then dismissed as much too risky.
But antagonising Russia was emphatically not a Trump policy. What was his first impeachment about? It was because he had held up US arms exports to Ukraine in an attempt to find out more about why Joe Biden’s son was being employed by a Ukrainian gas firm and why there was so much US involvement in this odd, corrupt country miles and miles from US strategic interests. If the extent and nature of US involvement in Ukraine had become widely known, it might have had to be dialled back – at which point the whole grisly war might have been avoided.
So, yes, Merkel was wrong. But she was wrong for the understandable reason that she did not think the US would actually provoke the war it was risking in a policy that Trump’s people do not seem to have approved of but weren’t sufficiently switched on to stop. Maybe Merkel’s misjudgement was not, ultimately, that she trusted the Russians too much but rather that she trusted the Americans too much. She simply failed to see how little weight the Americans gave to German judgement or interests. I doubt that she would have believed, for example, that the Americans would go so far as to blow up Germany’s brand new gas pipeline – an unambiguous act of war against the civilian infrastructure of an allied nation.
As to the Abraham accords, they were almost the remarkable victory over establishment wisdom that Luttwak suggests they were, but there is the small matter of the 7th October – which was unarguably a direct response to them. The whole reason that Hamas opted for that desperate action was in order to prevent the accords from making an end run around the Palestinian cause. They gambled that, in the event of a flare up between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Israeli reaction would be so grossly disproportionate that it would be politically untenable for the other Arab nations to continue with the accords. Gruesome as that logic is, they weren’t far wrong. If the last year of conflict has been the outcome of the Accords (and it is) then the conventional wisdom that they were a crap idea has scarcely been disproved, has it?
Etc
My point is not that Trump won’t be smarter this time round, it’s simply that, the insight he gains from his experience might not precisely mirror the “wisdom” of ghouls like Luttwak

simon lamb
simon lamb
28 days ago

It’s interesting how far right and far left Unherd commentary attracts so many birds of a feather to comment. I’m an English Conservative Party member, and a would-be Republican in the Reagan mould (who MT greatly admired) and I (and they) do and would utterly deplore most of what Trump stands for – conveniently omitted from this carefully crafted post-event political propaganda piece. MT would have loathed this narcissistic piece of s**t. Abortion rights: no mention. Project 2025: no mention. Trail of bankruptcies and scams: no mention. Disastrous climate denial: no mention. Environmental and human health abandonment: no mention. Criminal record: no mention. Attempted coup: no mention.
Instead, some improbable greater wisdom from the mouth of a fool is implied. May you be right – hopefully even a blind Trump squirrel will find a nut somewhere in the dung heap of his imagination. But I doubt it.
Expect negative votes galore for this among the mostly hard right and left groups commenting here. Who gives a damn – I don’t. History as ever will be the judge. And I, Reagan and Thatcher are on the right side of it, as you will undoubtedly come to see.

simon lamb
simon lamb
28 days ago

It’s interesting how far right and far left Unherd commentary attracts so many birds of a feather to comment. I’m an English, Conservative Party member, and a would-be Republican in the Reagan mould (who MT greatly admired). MT would have loathed this narcissistic idiot. Conveniently omitted from this carefully crafted post-event political propaganda piece are abortion rights, Project 2025, the long trail of bankruptcies and scams, the lies, the absurd childish egoism, the ridiculous COVID cures, the anti-science climate denial, the abandonment of environmental and human health, the criminal record for fraud and rape, and course the attempted coup.
Instead, an improbable wisdom from the mouth of a fool is suggested. May you be right at least in some small way – hopefully even a blind Trump squirrel will find a nut somewhere in the dung heap of his imagination. But I doubt it.
Expect negative votes for this opinion among the mostly hard right and hard left groups commenting here. Who gives a damn – I don’t. History as ever will be the judge, and I, Reagan and Thatcher are on the right side of it, little consolation though that will be when Daft Donald the village idiot has done his worst.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
27 days ago

Well, it sounds like everything will be just hunky-dory.

Dominic Lyne
Dominic Lyne
27 days ago

Trump has the political capital and popular backing to make real changes. Not pretending some of his policies are not a little scary if he can end the wars in a good fashion, stop the woke slide and make USA strong and prosperous, the rest of the world would benefit. He might even deal well with us in the UK, if starmer and lammy don’t mess it up.

I just worry about his succession planning. He can only serve one term it seems, who will he anoint?

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
12 hours ago

I have rounded around to the belief Trump will be a historical figure. This will be helped by the contrast with Biden and his corrupt cohort and family. After Doctor Jill comes out with her memoir no one will read but for which she will receive millions, all traces of the Bidens will sink into utter obscurity. Hunter’s paintings with his own sh*t will do nothing to slow the process.