On Tuesday the American people spoke with clarity and determination. They voted for jobs, secure borders and to be able to look to the future in an uncertain world with confidence and optimism. What we know from Trump 1.0 is that he his true to his word.

We can then expect that Trump’s foreign policy will manifest these popular wishes and will be one of several instruments by which to achieve them. Trump has said he is against war, and Vice President Vance has been even more explicit on this, citing four decades of US military failure abroad.

They are against embroiling the US in military conflict not because they are some latter-day peaceniks, but because war costs a lot of money, wastes lives, especially of the working class who now vote for them, and have uncertain and potentially politically damaging outcomes.

Trump’s true instincts were revealed in a moment of extraordinary drama and clarity when, having survived an assassin’s bullet, his face smeared in blood, this 78-year old’s immediate reaction was to raise his fist and shout repeatedly, ‘fight, fight, fight’. Yet John Bolton during his brief term as Trump’s National Security Adviser was too ideological, hawkish and too trigger happy for Trump’s liking.

It is no great insight to say that Trump’s approach will be pragmatic and transactional: his diplomacy will be characterised by the ‘art of the deal’. No doubt also that he has a tremendously outsized view of his own skills as a negotiator and deal maker. Ideology and anxiety about maintaining US global primacy are not his concerns.

To the extent that some or all of these premises hold, then Australia will not matter much at all to Trump. Trump will concentrate on great power relations, confident........

© Pearls and Irritations