Letter: In a worst-case scenario, another Trump presidency could be the stuff of nightmares
My guess is that a large majority of people in the UK would not welcome a Trump victory in the presidential election.
We should prepare ourselves for a shock.
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Hide AdMr Trump's failings are clear to many, as is his potential, as president, to do long-term damage to US domestic politics and the fabric of its society. The Supreme Court, for example, is very powerful in the US, and could be further compromised by another Trump term.
It's his likely foreign policy, however, that matters most to us. Mr Trump is erratic, unpredictable, and a human being susceptible to reason. He might surprise us, if elected, and not do some of the things that we fear. But here are a few areas where Mr Trump could give us sleepless nights. Some are too far under our radar at the moment:-
Donald Trump does not seem to care about climate change. If he pulls America out of the Paris agreement we will struggle to control global warming.
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Hide AdHe likes heavy tariffs on international trade. Protectionism is tempting and sometimes necessary. But Trump could start a major trade war with unknown consequences.
He is likely to abandon Ukraine, causing a tragedy and a crisis of confidence in the UK, Germany and much of Europe, also Japan. The implications for how we might be forced to reposition ourselves geo-politically could be grave.
If Trump proves too hostile to NATO, the implications for us could be even graver.
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Hide AdThen there is Aukus, our really quite significant defence research and development treaty with the US and Australia. Mr Trump may decide that it is not a good "deal'.
Lastly there is the survival of Taiwan, which China constantly threatens. Does Trump care?
If we see worst-case scenarios in all of these areas, the West would be catastrophically damaged. The West is not just a recent construct, it's a culture and system of values that has been built, painfully and through extraordinary error and sacrifice, for centuries. But, since the Enlightenment, we have been slowly heading in roughly the right direction.
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Hide AdIf Mr Trump wins, and proceeds to get everything wrong, the future could slip away from the West and belong to China, a handful of monstrous regimes working closely with it, and a broader group of countries with vile and corrupt elites in the pay of China.
That would be a world familiar to George Orwell and 1984, and peopled by characters from a bad Bond movie. It's the stuff of nightmares.
John Gemmell, Wem, Shropshire