Suppose Donald Trump never left the business world and did not become the 45th president of the United States. How different America and the world would be… or would they? File Photo by Tannen Maury/UPI | License Photo
Here is a thought experiment: Suppose Donald Trump never left the business world and did not become the 45th president of the United States. How different America and the world would be… or would they? Could one person have had such apparent influence for good or ill as Trump?
This story begins with the Democrats. Clearly, the Democratic Party was moving leftwards for some time. After twelve years of Ronald Reagan to George H. W. Bush, the country was barely center-right. The election of Bill Clinton was due more to Ross Perot’s winning about 20% of the vote than to any shift in the nation’s ideology. After all, America had just removed the last vestiges of the Vietnam War with the overwhelming and bloodless victory over Saddam Hussein, driving the Iraqi despot from Kuwait in 1991. Advertisement Advertisement
George H. W. Bush’s policies were restoring the American economy. The USSR had collapsed. Relations with China and Russia were excellent. Neither state had displayed revisionist tendencies challenging the world order defined by the United States and its allies. Clinton took office in 1993 with a degree of global peace, prosperity and stability unprecedented since the end of World War II.
Whether or not those positive conditions would have continued under Al Gore — regardless of the impact of the attacks of September 11th, 2001 — 527 hanging chads in Florida gave the 2000 election and the presidency to George W. Bush. And, under Bush, his strategic choices would prove catastrophic for America and much of the world. Afghanistan and Iraq were the most obvious of these blunders. But people forgot how Bush inadvertently began the process of turning Russia into an adversary.
Vladimir Putin, recently arrived as Russian president on New Year’s Day 2000, and Bush initially bonded as George could look into Vlad’s eyes and “see his soul.” That did not prevent Bush from abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with the USSR that had been central to the US-USSR strategic foundation. The rationale was to allow deployment of missile defenses in Europe to defend against imagined Iranian nuclear armed long range missiles, which after more than twenty years have never materialized. Advertisement
Unforced errors such as promising NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 were further examples of how American actions would reinforce Russian paranoia toward the West. And Russia was far from blameless, seizing parts of Georgia in 2008 and all of Ukraine in 2014. Worse, the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the weapons of mass destruction responsible for the invasion were never found, intensified growing political divisions at home and stained America’s reputation as leader of the so-called “free world.”
Barack Obama’s aim was to heal the nation after taking office in 2009. Instead, he had the opposite effect, creating division and not unity. In this process, the Democratic Party continued moving left, where more extreme elements would increasingly seize ideological control. The opposite phenomenon was affecting the Republicans.
Populism was in the ascent. But had Donald Trump never existed, would an alternative have risen to take his place? While that is unknowable, it is difficult to identify someone with Trump’s unique experiences.
In business, Trump learned to disregard rules and regulations standing in his way. His mentor was the infamous Roy Cohn, Senator Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel during the “were you ever a communist” Senate hearings of the 1950s. In the 2000s, Trump spent over a decade hosting his hit Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice TV series that made him a star and household name. Based on winning by any means in business, including profligate use of lawsuits while honing his verbal skills as a showman, Trump would fill the political vacuum for many tens of millions of outraged Americans isolated from the political process with few means of seeking representation from either political party. Advertisement
Over time, Trump would grotesquely and cleverly turn the GOP into the TOP — Trump’s Own Party — and espousing MAGA — Make America Great Again. But, if there were no Trump, could there be a TOP or MAGA? Regardless, Democrats would be where they are today, even though Trump has certainly accelerated Democrats believing Trump is a “clear and present danger” to the republic who must be opposed by any and all means.
Where Republicans would be today sans Trump could consume infinite hours of talking head debate, cocktail hour chit chat and media speculation. The question is whether or not the nation and the world would be better off. My answer is clear: No Trump, no TOP, no MAGA. And how much better for us all.
Harlan Ullman is UPI’s Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior adviser at Washington’s Atlantic Council, the prime author of “shock and awe” and author of “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.” Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. Advertisement
