A group of us were trying to make sense of Donald Trump and discussing leadership and weakness. Why was Margaret Thatcher so great? I offered an answer.
Uniquely among modern peacetime leaders, Thatcher had an agenda and knew what needed to be done. En route, she displayed more tactical subtlety than some of her most ardent admirers would acknowledge. She understood when to emulate Quintus Fabius Cunctator. Yet she realised that in the end, the trade unions had to be brought under the rule of law, while the nationalised industries must be prevented from plundering the public purse and, where possible, privatised.
Most leaders have to resign themselves to the impact of ‘events, dear boy, events’, to quote Harold Macmillan. But to a remarkable extent, Margaret Thatcher shaped events. Later in her career, she was asked what she had changed. The answer was instantaneous: ‘everything’. Although that was an exaggeration, it was pardonable.
It could also be argued that things began to go wrong for her when she lost control of her agenda, both over inflation and the poll tax. But taking her time in office as a whole, she displayed a remarkable consistency. With the possible exception of Konrad Adenauer, who operated in very different circumstances, none of our small group could think of a rival.
Margaret Thatcher evolved her agenda out of hard thinking and distilled principle. That led us to a different character, Donald Trump. Some 48 hours ago, he was on the crest of a wave. After the buster bombs, Mark Rutte seemed justified in praising Trump and claiming that no one else would have had the courage to do it. Rutte may not have been aware of it, but he was taking advice from Benjamin Disraeli on how to flatter Queen Victoria: ‘Lay it on with a trowel’. This seems to have worked. It appears that the Donald has committed himself to Nato and the Article Five guarantee, while the Nato countries have agreed to substantial increases in defence spending.
A lot of us were hoping that Ben Wallace would have become Nato Secretary-General, and he would have risen to the challenge. So, to be fair, has Mark Rutte.
But what about the President and his 12 day war? Measurements in days is always a temerarious business in a region that measures geopolitical time in much longer periods. The Israelis’ victory in the Six Day War seemed to be a triumph which massively enhanced Israel’s security. Yet there remained the little matter of the Palestinians. The post-1967 settlement was an opportunity to create a Palestinian state. It was not taken. Over the years, it has become clear that this was a tragedy. Though God forbid, it could yet become a tragedy for Israel itself.
The war for the liberation of Kuwait was another triumph which virtually followed the classical unities. At the end, everyone seemed keen to bring events to a conclusion. A cynic observed that the American generals were competing to use a title for their memoirs: ‘The Hundred Hour War’. Though Saddam was still in power, the assumption was that he would be gone in weeks, if not days. No one – apart, presumably, from Saddam himself – believed that he would hold on to power long after the Western leaders had left office, and that it would take another, longer and more dubious conflict to dispose of him.
So: 12 days, and three great questions remain. First, how badly have the bunkers been busted? Second, how strong is the Iranian leadership’s resolve to press ahead with acquiring nuclear weapons? Third, what are the prospects for regime change in Iran? The region, indeed the world, will never be stable until the religious maniacs have been driven from power. Maniacs happy to unleash destruction in pursuit of their millenarian fantasies cannot be allowed to possess weapons of mass destruction. It may be that the bunker-busting has ended too soon.
It may also be that at Trump has one grave geopolitical weakness in that he is incapable of cold-eyed, cautious ruthlessness. One suspects that he knows nothing of history and has no understanding of religion. In his mental universe, everyone wants to make a deal. In this, he is suspicious of foreigners’ motives, ready to believe that their dealing-making would often be at America’s expense (he is not always wrong). But at the end of the day, after all the threatening and cussing, surely everyone will want to cut a deal.
I would also suspect that this influences his assessment of Putin. The Russian leader has seized a quantity of territory. But this has cost a million casualties, plus great economic dislocation. If Trump were Putin, he would cash in his chips, declare a stupendous victory – the rhetoric would come easily to Trump – and end the war. A character like Donald Trump has no insight into the Putin soul, an icy mixture of imperialism, thuggery and corruption.
Admittedly Nato’s stance has strengthened, but we should all be keeping our eye on the Balkans. Although there has been a period of peace, the tensions between Bosnians and Serbs are still there, if dormant. The EU should have been doing more to woo those troubled portions of the former Yugoslavia and persuade them to look forward to European prosperity rather than backward to ancient quarrels.
Apropos of troubled regions, a weaker Russia may be making the Chinese stroke their chins. It was not only the British who forced China into unequal treaties. In 1860, the Chinese were forced to cede Vladivostok and the Amur basin. Chinese leaders have long memories. No twelve days in their calculations. Also, the Mongolians have grounds for anxiety. Could it be that Xi and his colleagues might decide that there are easier targets than Taiwan?
On the subject of leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu has a saturnine agenda of his own. Donald Trump may believe that Netanyahu has agreed to a ceasefire. The Israeli Premier is thinking more in terms of a breathing-space plus agreement on the bunker-busters. His vision of the Middle East appears to be unrelentingly bleak: no attempt to establish a modus vivendi with Israel’s neighbours, no thought of reviving the Abraham Accords, no solution to the Palestinian question – nothing but endless strife. The only hope is an easier route to regime change, in Israel itself. There is an obvious candidate for leadership: General Ehud Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier, a man of courage and realism.
Donald Trump has broken one record: the first US President to use the word ‘fuck’ on live TV. There is one problem, however, which goes beyond obscenity. ‘They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing’, said the Donald about Israel and Iran. Alas, Mr President, you are wrong. They know perfectly well what they are doing and in one form or another, they will go on doing it.
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