Former US President Donald Trump has won the Republican primary in New Hampshire

Keeping a clear head matters most precisely when it is hardest to do so.

At present, with Russia's aggression in Ukraine continuing, with global economic growth modest, and with a wider war in the Middle East liable to flare up at any moment, the end of the year also holds out the prospect of Donald Trump becoming US President once again – a politician who is called an isolationist, and not without reason. And we need to start thinking about that – with a clear head.
In the classic Hollywood film “Scarface”, the drug-dealing protagonist is forced to listen to his beloved reproach him for his fondness for cocaine: “Don't get high on your own supply!” Michelle Pfeiffer's line to Al Pacino is at present a fine illustration of many Western politicians who, intoxicated by their own slogans, have lost touch with reality. There is not much to be said about Trump's fans: for the most part they genuinely believe in a conspiracy against the ordinary person, one involving gays, globalists, liberals, bureaucrats and, of course, Soros and Klaus Schwab as well. Politicians on this flank have no inhibitions whatsoever about talking unmistakable nonsense, and the applause serves them as unmistakable proof that their views are correct.

From the other, anti-Trump “liberal” and “democratic” camp one might expect something different – namely, keeping analysis separate from slogans. But we are still waiting! Even people in Europe, who have no need to campaign in a US presidential election, deliberately choose not to see how complicated reality actually is. However unappealing he may be, Trump is no evil genius but rather a fairly organic product of the American political situation. Nor are his voters necessarily “zombified” subhumans who could not care less about what is happening elsewhere in the world.

What will a second Trump presidency actually mean for Latvia?

To some degree it will be a continuation of the first. He is most likely capable of learning from his mistakes, and so he will not allow sabotage by the bureaucracy, including in the state and defence departments. That means Trump 2 will be more effective than Trump 1. A spirit of revenge will also play its part: Trump and his voters have taken the court cases of recent years as a humiliation. It is therefore likely that he already has a “magazine” of loyal specialists in mind for a second presidency – and one wonders whether our foreign service has any idea who these people are, or any contacts with them.

Americans on the whole have a tendency to view the world in broad regional categories. The question of Trump's relations with the EU and NATO is therefore a natural one. Although these are two organisations of vital importance to Latvia, nothing rosy really awaits us. First, Trump regards these broad, multilateral organisations as “global bureaucracy” and thinks nothing good of them. Second, since NATO's security rests on American military engagement, while the EU is a “civilian” organisation that came into being under the American nuclear umbrella, there is nothing to stop Trump from revisiting these relationships in the future. Talk of shared values will not help here. Trump is highly “transactional”: from all of America's alliances he wants clear benefits for the American voter. The bureaucracy characteristic of the EU, meanwhile – the way process is elevated above results, the sidestepping of geopolitical questions in the name of “European consensus” – is simply incomprehensible to many across the ocean. In 2020, present at the visit of Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the European Parliament, I witnessed this bafflement: if you say you are against Putin, then perhaps stop building Nord Stream 2 for Russian gas?

In short, Western unity during a second Trump presidency will not be something that can be taken for granted. This pathos of values is alien to him, and he instinctively dislikes the supranational bureaucracy of the European Union. But that in itself does not yet mean the end of our transatlantic security guarantees. First of all, in his first presidency Trump may have flirted with Putin in Helsinki, but at the same time he initiated the opening of a US military base in Poland. He may have lobbied for Russia's readmission to the G8, but he intervened militarily in the Syrian conflict directly against the Kremlin's interests. It is precisely this unpredictability that makes Trump dangerous, and it is feared not only in Brussels but also in Moscow and Tehran. Here, unfortunately, those Trumpists are right who currently maintain that the most recent Democratic administrations have made the United States look weak in the world: the humiliating departure from Afghanistan is the starkest illustration of this.

We in Latvia, of course, need a strong America. Yet “unpredictable” is by no means a synonym for “strong”. If America's partners around the world come to feel that they cannot rely on it at a critical moment, that will diminish rather than increase American power in the world. One would like to hope that the next occupant of the White House will understand this too. The greatness of America in the slogan “make America great again” most likely does not, after all, envisage deceiving America's security partners. Much worse is that Trump, in a naive belief in his own “outstanding” abilities as a negotiator, may set about resolving the situation in Ukraine through some agreement with Russia – by analogy with the unsuccessful talks with North Korea during his first presidency. That would be truly unnecessary and unforgivable. At the same time, despite Trump's influence over the Republican Party, support for Ukraine has by no means disappeared either in Congress or in American society, and so compromises in the sphere of Ukraine's interests would be very hard to accept there. It is another matter that the US foreign policy circles close to Trump already see Russia's aggression in Ukraine first and foremost as a European problem. Europe ought to prepare for the American contribution being smaller, and should therefore, among other things, urgently set about rebuilding its own defence industry.

Another Trump presidency is, of course, a dangerous signal to the whole democratic world – and especially so if he really does begin his presidency by walking out of prison (such a possibility still cannot be ruled out). But this is no time to be appalled, to take offence and to think in slogans about Trump as a “catastrophe”, a “Russian spy” and so forth. All possible future scenarios in relations between Europe and the United States must be assessed, sticking to what is known and not giving in to fantasies. In Latvia's case, we ought to work out what we can offer the Americans, not just what they can give us, as has been the case up to now. And we must work together with our European partners – with particular attention to Europe's two nuclear powers, Britain and France, which in the event of a crisis could offer us some sort of umbrella, however modest. These prospects are, of course, not especially rosy. Yet trying to “talk them away” with grandiloquent phrases is, at the very least, irresponsible.

An article from the January 2024 issue of the magazine Rīgas Laiks