Historians will debate for ever and a day why the second Donald Trump government was so much more extreme than his first. So extreme that Trump’s second term, if unchecked, could launch a revolution that ends the west as a system of liberal democracies and open economies uniting North America, Europe and Asia beyond China.
To my mind the key point is that Trump himself has always been an anti-liberal revolutionary, an American Lenin for the rich and entitled. Trump doesn’t believe in democracy, just in winning at all costs. He doesn’t believe in limited government, but in the triumph of his will. He doesn’t believe in an international order based on respect for human rights, open economies, good practice regulation and settled borders. He is an authoritarian, lawless plutocrat who admires similar characters at home and abroad. And he views government as a machine for massive personal, family and clan advancement.
Trump has been pretty consistent on all these matters. In retrospect, his refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat and his encouragement of the 6th January attack on Congress as the closing act of his first administration could not have been more significant.
What has changed is that second time round, the domestic checks and restraints against Trump have weakened dramatically. The Republican party has become a cipher. The Democrats are shell-shocked and demoralised. The courts, the military and Congress are browbeaten, packed with Trump supporters or otherwise largely compliant. There are none of the restraints which Trump himself assented to in his first term, out of inexperience and expediency, notably the succession of generals and establishment figures whom he hired for most of the top jobs around him. This time, virtually all his key appointees are Maga operatives or Trump extremists with the literal zeal of the convert, led by JD Vance, Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr.
It is no longer fanciful to see this revolution ending very badly indeed. Might a Trump government invade Greenland and Panama, and even Canada? Might Nato collapse and Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping engage in new invasions with US connivance? Might the next elections in the US be subverted in favour of Trump or his successor? Might a Trump-led global trade war run alongside massive deals between Trump, Putin and other dictator-plutocrats? Might Trump-inspired demagogues take over other major democracies?
None of this now seems fanciful and we should be genuinely alarmed.
However, Trump personally may be hugely malevolent, but he is also deeply distrustful of rivals and intrinsically chaotic. The French senator who went viral last week with a speech likening post-inauguration Washington to “Nero’s court with an incendiary emperor” captured both the depravity and the decadence, including his artful reference to “a buffoon on ketamine in charge of purging the civil service”. Maybe this imperial power grab will implode partly of its own volition.
Let’s hope too that the forces of American constitutionalism and liberalism are quiescent but still capable of acting. The Democrats are only a few seats away from a majority in both the House and the Senate and they control about half the US states. There could be a huge fightback if bold leaders come forward. So too in Europe. With a population larger than the US and Russia combined, Europe could rapidly replace Nato with an effective Europe-led defensive alliance, starting in Ukraine. Europe is a huge and fairly integrated economic market, thanks to nearly 70 years of the EU; it could withstand a trade war and lead a new alliance of open economies spanning Asia too. Fortunately, the leaders of Europe—including, vitally, the incoming chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz—grasp this and appear determined to act. There are Trumpite demagogues on the fringes of Europe but not yet in its citadel.
It is imperative that the forces of domestic and European liberalism mobilise fast against the Trump revolution, reinforcing each other and forcing division and retreat on the Trumpites. And doing so in less than the 14 years that Nero ruled and largely destroyed Rome.
