On a convenient demon – Tom Stevenson in LRB:

“Trump at Mar-a-Lago might be easier to take were he more like Tiberius on Capri. But far from being a debauched libertine Trump is a roaring teetotaller uninterested in much except power and fame. That predilection leads to talk of fascism and Europe in the 1930s, or of a transplanted Oriental despotism. It was always lazy to try to see Trump as part of an international group of autocratic rulers (Modi, Erdoğan, Orbán, Duterte), each of whom was in fact defined more by specific national conditions than any global trend. In reality, Trump is an exquisite figure of Americana. His appeal is to a distinctively American form of mercantile nationalism tempered by grift. His closest contemporary analogues – and they’re not that close – are in Brazil and Argentina. But he has always had more in common with his domestic opponents than they like to admit.”

(…)

“Like Biden before him, Trump sets the tone of the court more than he runs the practical business of government. In these conditions cabinet appointments take on greater importance. Some of his nominations are conventional enough. His choice for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, is a Floridian soldier who wouldn’t have been out of place in George W. Bush’s team. Waltz has spent much of the last few years raging about the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, which he believes will lead to ‘al-Qaida 3.0’. On Russia and the war in Ukraine he complained not of the cost to the US but of Biden’s ‘too little too late strategy’. For secretary of state Trump has nominated Marco Rubio, another member of the orthodox neoconservative faction who once co-wrote an article with John McCain in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the overthrow of Gaddafi would lead to ‘a democratic and pro-American Libya’. Rubio is preoccupied with schemes to destabilise Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. As late as 2022 he was criticising Trump’s ‘unfortunate’ praise of Putin’s intelligence. An internal Republican vetting dossier (almost certainly obtained and leaked by Iranian hackers) noted that ‘Rubio appears to have generally postured as a neocon and interventionist.’”

(…)

“Trumpian foreign policy has distinctive features, but they are hardly aberrations. The MAGA Republicans are for swinging their weight around in Latin America. Like the Democrats, Trump’s allies believe that the US is in the middle of a second Cold War with China. The major exception to the continuity between Trump and Biden may be Ukraine. Some, though not all, Trump-adjacent figures have been critical of US support for Ukraine, mostly on the grounds that it is expensive. Whether Trump will terminate that support is probably the question of greatest strategic import. Under Biden and Sullivan, the US has treated the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to weaken Russia, and cared little that the price for this is paid in Ukrainian dead. Trump has claimed he will end the war ‘before I even arrive at the Oval Office’. But what form he imagines this taking, if he has imagined it at all, is unclear. He is likely to approach Nato in the same manner he did in 2018, with bluster and threats but no dénouement. Threats are likely to be a much used diplomatic tool, whatever their efficacy.”

(…)

“Trump is a convenient demon. But his victory won’t make very many countries reconsider their relations with the US. Tactical differences aside, the traditional sites of American preoccupation will remain Eastern Europe, East Asia, the Middle East. The underlying theme for US foreign policy remains elite consensus. In his use of the machinery of American empire and the ideology of perpetual primacy, Trump shares much with his predecessors. Maximum power, maximum pressure – without consoling illusions.’

Read the article here.

The narrative here is a bit too much, the difference between Biden and Trump is a minor detail, but when it comes to foreign policy it’s reasonable to think that also Trump will do whatever it takes to prolong the American century.

I do believe that he is very much interested in winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but he can support the empire and being awarded the Nobel.

Consoling illusions are never far away.