Image source: Flickr- by Gage Skidmore
US election: Donald Trump presidency is cause for real security concern
In my view, Australia should be concerned, very concerned, about a Trump victory. And here’s why.
If Trump wins the presidency there could be serious consequences for our crucial alliance relationship with the US and for our regional security partners such as Japan. A President Trump may prove to be an isolationist and a destroyer of alliances. He has asserted that NATO allies, Japan and South Korea need to spend more on defence before he would be convinced to defend them. He is nonchalant about Japan and South Korea under those circumstances acquiring nuclear weapons. We certainly would not welcome such a destabilising development in our region.
With the NATO European allies such as the Baltic countries, Trump fatuously has asserted that if Russia attacked them he would have to first consider how much they had spent defending themselves before implementing the NATO pact’s article 5, which states an attack on one is an attack on all. Just imagine how Vladimir Putin is probably already factoring that into his war plans.
Former Australian ambassador to Washington Kim Beazley asks where Australia is to begin to work with a victor in the presidential race who has trashed the alliance system and the liberal international rules-based order that have underpinned American leadership since 1945.
Bishop quite rightly makes the point that, unlike Beazley, she will have to deal with whoever becomes the democratically elected US president.
Read the full article US election: Donald Trump presidency is cause for real security concern by Paul Dibb in The Australian.
