The world is sleepwalking into the dangers of a second Trump presidency

The former president’s return to power could cause huge problems for Ukraine, the Middle East, and for us here in the UK, writes Jon Sopel. So why don’t our leaders seem all that concerned?

Putin must be rubbing his hands with delight at the thought of another Trump win (Getty)

Not sure I’m going to stay up for the exit polls from the Russian elections, because – call it a hunch – I have a feeling Vladimir Putin is going to squeak home. I know, I know: I might have called this entirely wrong. But there we are.

What will be worth staying up for are the telegrams and phone calls from world leaders congratulating the Russian president on his victory – always that bit easier to win when your opponents are either locked up or dead.

Donald Trump won’t be sending any message, I suspect. But then again, he doesn’t really need to, does he? His admiration of Putin has been absolutely consistent. It was the most baffling bromance of the Trump presidency. Sure, he has said disobliging things about Russian behaviour – for example, when there was the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal by means of a chemical weapon in Salisbury. The US under Trump’s instruction even expelled Russian diplomats. But find me a word of criticism of Putin. A single one.

I was at the Helsinki summit where the two men met and gave a joint news conference afterwards. It was the one where Putin told Trump that the Russians hadn’t intervened in the 2016 election, and Trump accepted those assurances.

Even though it was the unanimous view of all the US intelligence agencies that Russia had. Quite the judgement to make: choosing to believe a Russian leader whose nuclear arsenal is pointed at the US and Nato over all those dedicated professionals whose sworn allegiance is to keep the US safe.

But that was then. What about now? What will the relationship be like if – and this is of course assuming I’m right – Putin is back in the Kremlin, and Trump early next year is back in the White House?

Some of it we know. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian leader and perennial thorn in the side of Nato and the EU, said this week that Trump had told him he would bring the war to an end in Ukraine by not giving Kyiv another cent. Well, that’s clear. Putin must be rubbing his hands with delight when he hears something like that.

And we know what Trump thinks about Nato. He said it out loud, saying that Russia could “do what the hell they like” to any nation that hadn’t paid its 2 per cent of GDP into the western alliance’s coffers. So much for collective security.

There was once a time when you would go to a think tank for a chin-stroking seminar on world affairs, and under consideration would be the various different strategic geopolitical threats: China and the militarisation of Asia Pacific. Iran and its destabilisation of the Middle East. Russia and its undermining of Western democracies. And of course the invasion of Ukraine.

But today it feels like those concerns have metastasised into one. This week China, Russia and Iran are conducting joint military naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman.

If we know where Trump is on Nato, what about Israel? US foreign policy is not where it was after 7 October. While the US is still saying Israel has the right to defend itself,

there are ever more strings attached to that. The carte blanche has gone.

And tensions between Joe Biden and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have intensified – massively. At the State of the Union last week, it seemed Biden was happy to be caught on a microphone complaining about Bibi.

That wasn’t all. On Thursday, the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, came out and stated unequivocally that Netanyahu was a barrier to peace and Israel needed fresh elections. Sure, it’s possible this was an entirely unilateral move by the veteran New York senator. But he is a big powerbroker in Washington politics, and it’s hard to believe he would have done this without a nod from the White House. It could be that the president himself is moving towards disowning the Israeli PM. That would be an extraordinary moment.

There will be one crucial difference from 2017. Then, his ragtag army were making it up as they went along in a shambolic, dysfunctional, end-of-the-pier-show White House; this time around there has been a great deal of planning

But where is Trump in all this? The only president since Netanyahu became an important figure on the world stage (and you have to go back to George HW Bush) to have an easy relationship with him is Trump – I think it’s fair to say everyone else has found Netanyahu impossible.

Democrats are bleeding support from young people and Arab Americans over the situation in Gaza. And there are those in Washington who believe that Bibi’s stubbornness and intransigence over Western demands is – in part – designed to help Trump; a way for the Israeli PM to get back into the former president’s good graces.

That strikes me as a rather myopic view – my judgement is the Israeli PM has enough problems with public opinion at home to worry about without trying to put his thumb on the scale in the US election. But that policymakers in Washington are thinking it is another sign of the febrile mood.

So, are Western leaders ready for a potential return of Donald Trump to 1,600 Pennsylvania Avenue? In the past few weeks, I have met a few Foreign Office diplomats with long experience of the US who are deeply concerned.

Not that he returns to power (well, truth to tell they are concerned about that), but that Britain is sleepwalking into a second Trump term with no idea of what it will mean, with an almost negligent lack of preparation for how it will affect the UK. These people told me there seemed to be a “don’t worry, it will all be fine” attitude permeating the highest levels of government.

One person who knows Rishi Sunak extremely well, having worked closely with him in government, told me that the thing about the prime minister is that he is decent, clever, truthful and hard-working – but not in the least bit interested in foreign policy. And that is a problem.

In his first term, there wasn’t a “tough guy” that Trump didn’t like: Orban, Xi, Putin, Duterte, Erdogan, and of course Kim Jong Un. The Merkels, Macrons and Mays of this world, not so much. Yet the one thing that’s 100 per cent nailed on is that if he does win in November, the upheaval will be massive.

Except there will be one crucial difference from 2017. Then, his ragtag army were making it up as they went along in a shambolic, dysfunctional, end-of-the-pier-show White House; this time around there has been a great deal of planning. The troubling question is: are America’s allies equally prepared?

Jon Sopel is the former BBC North America editor and now presents Global’s ‘The News Agents’ podcast