Opinion: Would the world have been any safer?

By CHARLES HUCKELBURY

Published: 10-13-2023 10:15 AM

Charles Huckelbury lives in Henniker.

For those of us who have lived long enough, memories of the country at war remain painful but relieved that our democracy was resilient enough to survive both domestic and foreign assaults. Donald Trump remains, however, a bizarre anomaly. At 77, he has lived through Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, all of which required the sacrifice of blood and treasure to maintain the fragile military and moral balance of the world.

Authoritarian figures in each war attempted through armed force to coerce the collective will of their citizens. American soldiers gave their lives to stop the abuse of those citizens, whose only relationship to us was their fundamental humanity. These are the men and women whom Trump called “suckers” and “losers” as he stood by their graves.

How would things have been any different under a Trump administration? Would the world have been any safer? According to the ex-president, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine. That’s correct. Through his personality alone Donald J. Trump would have convinced Vladimir Putin not to attack his peaceful neighbor. Moreover, had he been president, Hamas would not have attacked Israel this weekend. Both claims require a closer look.

Recall the summit at Helsinki in 2018. With Putin beside him, Trump responded to a question about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, tactics confirmed by U.S. intelligence services. Trump blithely responded that Putin had denied the charges. To which Trump added that he believed Putin, rather than accept the analysis of his director of national intelligence. This is, of course, old news but demonstrates the degree to which delusions govern Trump’s decision-making mechanism, an observation confirmed by this weekend’s campaign in Iowa.

Touching on the attack on Israel by Hamas, Trump employed the identical rhetoric he had used with respect to Russia and Ukraine to address the destruction in Israel: it never would have happened had he been in the Oval Office. Presumably, Trump would have turned his persuasive smile on the leaders of Hamas and by dint of personality alone convinced them not to mount an armed assault across the border between Israel and Gaza.

This is the same man who described Putin as “brilliant” and claimed to have exchanged love letters with Kim Jong Un, both notorious butchers who have demonstrated a powerful resistance to any influence but their own self-interest. And yet Trump claims to have the ability to deter our primary geopolitical adversary and leaders of an authoritarian theocracy to adopt a more tolerant rapprochement with their perceived enemies.

This makes as much sense as giving Trump credit for avoiding war involving, say, the Baltic states simply because he occupied the White House for the four years in which Latvia did not attack Lithuania. Simply asserting the existence or absence of an event does not entitle the one making the assertion to claim credit for that event or lack thereof. Anyone who doubts Trump’s penchant for suspicious claims need only examine the fluctuating value of his assets now on display in his fraud trial in New York.

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Can we therefore assign credit to Joe Biden for dissuading Chinese president Xi Jinping not to invade Taiwan? Or preventing a nuclear holocaust between Monte Carlo and Malta? No, the president must, according to Trump’s analysis, instead shoulder the blame for the Hamas attack on Israel. According to Trump, said invasion was funded by American taxpayers. We await a further explanation of that claim but must remain optimistic as we anticipate another Trump presidency, which would bring with it four years of world peace.

Memo to Putin, Kim, Hamas and Xi: wink, wink.