The Dawn of the Trumpian Age: Reflections from the Side-lines Part 1
In Part 1 of a new series of ‘reflections from the side-lines’ of geopolitics, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton - Senior Advisor in geopolitics at Audley, Associate Fellow at RUSI, and former SAS officer - looks at the political landscape after a year that changed the world.
The views expressed by the author in this piece are their own, and do not represent those of Audley. Written 23rd January 2025.
A view circulates that Donald Trump’s first term as President of The United States was a rehearsal, an experimentation in ‘MAGA,’ an exercise in assessing its potential and its limitations, probing for aspects of it that most appeal to the floating vote as well as to the core support. A reconnaissance in force, before the full-scale assault in the second term. With two hundred executive orders signed off by Trump in the first two days of his second Presidency and the new Administration now dominated by the disciples of MAGA, this view appears to hold at least some validity.
In May 2024, when the world was girding itself in trepidation or in hope for what November’s election would bring, I wrote my first ‘reflections from the side-lines.’ It was with great presumption that I chose to frame it as a tour d’horizon of the world then extant – as I saw it. Now, the greater part of a year later, I return to the rarefied heights to look back at what has transpired, offering some commentary of my own and, with an even greater presumption – and not a little foolhardiness – some predictions of what could come next.
The Year of Elections
Back in May, we were in the midst of a year that saw more than forty significant elections take place across the globe. Those held in countries under the sway of autocracy went the way that they were always going to; with ‘victories’ for incumbents, amid harsh repression of any genuine opposition. Georgia, despite huge and nightly pro-democracy demonstrations, serves as a case in point, still at time of writing with an autocratic regime taking the country against the will of its people into the sphere of Putin’s Russia, and away from Europe, the West, and freedom.
In late 2023, Poland was the first of the true democracies – those with generally free and fair elections - to go to the polls, electing Donald Tusk who has returned the country to the centre-ground of European politics. His government is now the standard bearer on the continent for the preservation of Ukrainian democratic identity and survival. The flavour of his victory did not persist across the rest of Europe. Along with the triumph of the Left in Britain, his win can now be seen for what it was: an outlier. Instead, the mid-year European elections and a swathe of national polls saw a seismic shift to the right. The centre-ground French Presidency of Macron is now effectively on life support through a combination of an electorate abandoning his En Marche! en masse for the polarities of Right and Left, and his own over-weaning personal hubris. Germany, hitherto the other leading power of liberal Europe, now also has a lame-duck leader in Olaf Scholz, with his Chancellorship about to end in ignominy. The big winner in Germany, reflective of most resurgent parties of the Right across Europe, which may or may not be in power but could be on the cusp of it, is likely to be Alternative for Germany (AfD), until now branded, like others of its ilk, as populist.
Populism
As a label, ‘populism’ is going to have to be re-thought. The term – to my mind, at least – has always been difficult to define. When is fervently held national, political sentiment an acceptable platform of democratic legitimacy? When does it stray beyond that to become more insidious and, as it evolves further, ‘populist’ and therefore the enemy of democracy? The answer to these questions in large part resides in the eye of the beholder. The only firm ground I’ve been able to identify centres on that moment of inflection when the would-be populists seek to destroy the foundations of democracy to facilitate their movement’s – and their own - rise to power… and, as night follows day, to keep hold of it illegitimately and, therefore, autocratically. Such destruction is traditionally shielded from the populace by preserving a façade of democracy, creating a chimera of legitimacy whilst wholesale desecration of the system is wrought within.
Hitler was a classic case in point. Elected – with a lot of pushing and shoving but still elected – as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, from whence he proceeded to dismantle the safeguards one by one, until the husk of democracy, long dead, was used to ornament his criminal and absolute autocracy. Compare Hitler to Churchill, whose pre-war political contemporaries – both from his own party and the Labour opposition – frequently cast him as an opportunist (i.e. ‘populist,’ had the word been coined at the time?). Churchill did come close to rabble-rousing on occasion, but generally for a good cause. As a fervent champion of the British Empire, he was infused from birth with an unshakeable belief that his country was singularly empowered and equipped for the betterment of mankind. But the difference – in the populist sense – between these two arch enemies was that Churchill saw democracy untrammelled as the only way to pursue legitimate, if at times opportunistic, political ends. Much of Europe (and I include Britain) has arrived at this inflection point.
The Election of Donald Trump
Through the eyes of US Democrats and progressive liberals across the world, as well as many conservative moderates, the high priest of populism is of course President Donald J. Trump. This view is far from unreasonable, given recent memories of the January 2021 assault by his followers on the Capitol Building, the epicentre of American democracy. However, his victory in November last year – the scale of which has handed him degrees of power seldom if ever before enjoyed by a peacetime President – must throw into doubt the wisdom of continuing the witch-hunt against him, much of it through ill-judged ‘lawfare’ – ill-judged in that, whether legitimate or not, it acted recruiting sergeant for his second, successful bid for power. He is, after all, once again the leader of the Free World and, if the stampede of former Democrat-supporting tech giants to bury the hatchet is anything to go by, then re-alignment – if not reappraisal – is already well underway.
It is safe to assume that there will be no element of global geopolitics over the next four years that will not be influenced directly and, in most cases, decisively by the new President – for better or worse. Compare that prospect with the torpid foreign policy failures of his predecessor. President Biden tripped up at almost every turn, whether over the shameful debacle of Kabul and the ensuing betrayal of the people of Afghanistan, the failure to rein back Netanyahu over Gaza with appalling consequences for its Palestinian population, or through his anxiety-driven shortcomings in support of Ukraine, always too little too late. We have already witnessed Trumpian effectiveness in getting things done. Only the most diehard Biden apologist could claim full credit for the ex-President in making the Gaza ceasefire agreement of January 16 a reality. Technically, it was formulated and signed during Biden’s term of office, but assuredly it was rammed through by Trump officials, empowered by the incoming President’s dire warning to Hamas that the deal must be signed and hostages released before his inauguration… or else. As we saw in Trump’s first term, it’s all about bullying forthrightness and the man’s inherent unpredictability.
So, the last significant election of 2024 – the year of elections – eclipsed all others, as it was always going to. Since first making that easy prediction in my essay in May, the world has changed again, quite dramatically. A new set of challenges and opportunities sit alongside those that confronted the world eight months ago. The geo-political baseline of autocracy versus democracy – with the ‘non-aligned’ occupying the bleachers on either hand – has not, it is true, changed in a fundamental way. But conditions have, radically in some important strategic contexts. As a result, the world is a yet more dangerous and volatile place. But this shaking-up also presents opportunity for both sides, should they have the will to grasp it. Whatever transpires, the new reality on the ground and shifts in the political balance across the West mean that this next half-decade will be defining. But before we consider what global leaders – established and new – make of the hand they have been dealt we should study the tectonic shifts over this past period. We will do so under the three defining headings of the Middle East, Ukraine and Russia, and what the war’s outcome portends for Europe and China and the Pacific Far East. A backdrop to all these remains the ongoing battle for the soul of The West.
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Look out for Jamie’s reflections and predictions for the Middle East, coming soon.
Read his previous ‘reflections from the side-lines,’ ‘Geo-politics, The Threat to The West, and The European Dilemma,’ here.
For more on the decisions moving the geopolitical landscape, listen to Audley’s global affairs podcast The Diptel here.
By Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Senior Advisor at Audley and former SAS officer.
Image credit/Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America/License