Tri-Service

Comment: Is Trump Anything New?

Article by Christopher Lee, Defence Analyst, in New York

The elite I trust. They taught me, commanded me, trashed me. So when all else has failed I have asked them, read them, listened to them.

This week, the elite outside of America tell me President-to-be-Friday Trump (PTBF) is a scary guy, should not be President of the USA, is grotesque, is intellectually corrupt - and we should leave town by Friday.

I wonder. Or rather, I wondered at their confidence to say all these things and, I wonder if they are right. After all, the experts all said Trump would never make it to become PTBF.

This comes from a weekend tour of my Harvard haunts, along with every column that could be read over Georgetown brunch and a couple of sours in Charlie O's, plus from Joyey Margolies, who says he ran for 'Swifty Lazar' and has a friend on the Wall Street Journal who knows the real deal on Trump, over weak tea in the back house in that place on 59 West 44th Street.

"Here's how they tell it. Trump will cancel the already limited two-way intelligence street between London and Washington and the five-eyes intelligence network that takes in Australasia, even though his people plan a major military deployment in the Southern Ocean."

Trump would/will bomb North Korea's warhead and rocket development bases, even though the immediate retaliation could take out a 30,000 US troop contingent in South Korea.

Trump admires the way Putin has fixed Syria - about which he knows little and cares less. Trump will defy US doctrine and team up with Putin to solve global issues. Russia is on verge of bankruptcy, so Trump will lift sanctions.

Trump will threaten but not destroy Chinese military coral reefs in the South China Sea and will confirm a major and permanent bomber and amphibious deployment in Australia's Northern Territory, to which the Australians will agree. Trump will encourage Japan to scrap restrictions on long-distance military deployment and build nuclear weaponry, thus threatening war with China.

The above is just a taster to add to the very European view that the man should never be President.

"But pause for a moment. Every single thing Trump scares us with has been, more or less, US policy for the past 40 years."

The US intelligence people have always ignored the two-way street. North Korea has always expected a US attack - part of the reason why it's building a nuclear arsenal (using the Pakistan model of 'megatons mean respect').

Every president since NATO's formation in April 1949 has criticised European contributions and threatened to pull out. And did not Reagan in his October 1986 Reykjavik Zero Zero nuclear summit with Mikhail Gorbachev propose solving the world gone mad hand-in-hand?

But, say the experts - especially at Harvard and in Charlie O's (the connection is a whiskey sour so more obvious than you think) - before was all about the nice, reliable guys. Oh yes? LBJ? Nixon? George W Bush?

Just read his lips, as George Herbert Walker would have said. PTBF is not saying anything the earlier guys did not say. Maybe he's got bad manners. But then so have the guys he's calling 'sad, sad, sad'.

Joey Margolies learned from Swifty Lazar to always follow the money. The experts are losers. Joey Margolies is giving 5-4 on a PTBF second term. Mind you, that makes Joey an expert. Trump is not going to be as bad as the experts tell me. You heard it here. (So be careful).

Christopher Lee is the Forces Radio (BFBS) Defence Analyst. He can be heard every week on the only radio programme devoted to discussing matters of defence and security, Sitrep. To listen head here. To download, click here.