Like most who have bid for the American presidency in the past 30 years, Donald Trump is an admirer of Ronald Reagan. He has said he intends to revive President Reagan’s goal of “peace through strength”. As a mantra, nothing has guided the US more successfully in containing an expansionist Russia, and it is reassuring to hear Mr Trump in his interview with The Times today commit for the first time, unequivocally, to a strong Nato.
Mr Trump clearly grasps the scale of the humanitarian disaster that has unfolded over the past five years in Syria, and Russia’s role in it. He wants early talks with Theresa May to update the special relationship for the post-Brexit era. These, too, are welcome signals. But peace through strength will require more than a resolve to bolster existing alliances. Such resolve must hold firm even when it infuriates the Russian leader with whom Mr Trump seeks a close relationship. And a new pax Americana will require Washington’s continued leadership in defence of free market capitalism as an international force for good.
That means free trade. So far Mr Trump has stuck to his campaign position that America’s terms of trade with the rest of the world will have to be re-written if he decides they put the United States at a disadvantage. He appears serious about seeking punitive tariffs on imports from Europe as well as China if they could have been manufactured in the US. Such tariffs would spark trade wars that would hurt America as much as its trading partners, and Mrs May should not hesitate to say so when she visits Washington.
Michael Gove notes in his account of a remarkable encounter in Trump Tower that the president-elect “campaigned in 140-character Twitter storms and intends to govern by spreadsheet”. There is no doubt that his business approach to politics means business unusual for Washington.
Mr Trump does not feel constrained by ideology or history. That is why he says unhesitatingly that his first call when he needs to “talk to Europe” will be to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, despite her “catastrophic” error in opening Germany’s doors to Syrian refugees. His reasoning: Germany so dominates Europe that the EU is best seen as its vehicle. He applauds Brexit on the basis of his experience of European red tape as a developer in Ireland. He condemns the Iran nuclear deal because of the scale of the unfrozen Iranian assets that he believes will end up in Swiss bank accounts. Asked whom he trusts more, Mrs Merkel or President Putin, he says: “Well, I start off trusting both — but let’s see how long that lasts.”
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A new president means a fresh start. Mr Trump should nevertheless be clear that in his 17 years in power Mr Putin has repeatedly squandered western trust. Much changed in 2016, but Russia’s annexation of Crimea and destabilisation of Ukraine remain crimes for which Mr Putin must be held accountable. If not, he will feel encouraged to threaten Russia’s other western neighbours.
Mr Trump seeks fairness in negotiations over Russian sanctions, which he notes are “hurting” the Russian people. That, unfortunately, is the point. They have been imposed to force a change in Mr Putin’s behaviour. His anxiety to have them lifted indicates that they are working. Progress towards nuclear disarmament would be welcome at any superpower summit, but Mr Trump will lose his reputation for deal-making if he throws away the leverage that sanctions give him before Mr Putin has stepped back from eastern Ukraine.
The next president’s deal-making on trade will also require nimbleness and nerve. He claims that manufacturers will stop taking advantage of low Mexican labour costs if the price is being shut out of US markets. If he turns out to be wrong, he should not over-react. He seeks “fair” trade deals. Long experience suggests the fairest trade is free, and a strong America has nothing to fear from it.