MARK ALMOND: Even Trump admits he’s ‘f****** crazy’. But here’s why ‘mad dog’ Donald is the best hope America has for world peace

Donald Trump was on bullish form this weekend, conducting world diplomacy with customary finesse.

China would never blockade Taiwan with him back in the White House, he told the Wall Street Journal, because President Xi ‘respects me and he knows I’m f******* crazy’.

Russia didn’t dare send tanks into Ukraine while Trump was in office because, he claims, Vladimir Putin, too, was afraid.

‘I said, ‘Vladimir, if you go after Ukraine… I’m going to hit you right in the middle of fricking Moscow’,’ Trump explained to the WSJ. ‘He said ‘no way’. I said ‘way’.’

Such grandstanding tactics might be familiar to those who’ve seen The Apprentice – the new movie charting Trump’s early business life – because they come straight from the brutish playbook of Roy Cohn, the crooked New York lawyer who took the young property developer under his wing in the 1970s.

It’s from his mentor Cohn that a young Trump learned that losers are never forgiven. That you must win at all costs. That opponents will never give you their respect unless they fear you.

The former president doesn’t mention Cohn so much these days – and tried to block The Apprentice, in fact, describing the film makers as ‘human scum’.

But Trump is less reticent when it comes to another figure from the Cold War years and a close colleague of Cohn’s: fellow anti-Communist and fierce ‘Red-baiter’, Richard Milhous Nixon, whom Trump praises as a personal inspiration when it comes to foreign policy.

Famously introverted and paranoid, President Nixon might seem the polar opposite of showman Trump, yet the two have much in common as politicians and, especially, as players on the global stage.

It was Nixon who first portrayed himself as a ‘mad man’ of diplomacy: aggressive, unpredictable and ready to mete out harsh retribution, pre-emptively if required. 

Trump has been attentive. And that’s why, strange as it might sound, he might offer a better path to global peace than the more emollient President Joe Biden or his new rival for the White House, Kamala Harris.

Even before the Watergate scandal which brought him down in 1974, no American president had been as controversial as Nixon.

Back in November 1968, however, the balance of world power seemed to be turning against America – a key factor propelling ‘shifty’ Nixon and his famous five o’clock shadow into the White House.

Russian tanks had just crushed the Prague Spring, Czechoslovakia’s bid for freedom from Communist rule. Despite Israel’s victory in the Six Day War of 1967, Palestinian terrorists were wreaking bloody revenge.

Mao’s China had acquired nuclear weapons and had, notoriously, decried the United States of America as a ‘paper tiger’.

Most troubling of all was the apparent menace of the Sino-Russian Communist bloc, an alliance of Communist powers dedicated to the overthrow of America.

Nixon’s response was to offer ‘peace through strength’. He promised an end to the interminable war in Vietnam – a restatement of American global dominance – and voters backed him. Nixon beat Democrat nominee, vice president Hubert Humphrey, and a series of high-stakes diplomatic wins soon followed.  

To conventional thinkers, Nixon’s decisions to pursue détente with the Kremlin in 1969 and then recognize Communist China were wild and unprincipled departures from diplomatic norms.

Nixon sensed, though, that if Moscow and Beijing were united in their hatred of America, they were also deeply suspicious of each other.

He suspected that dialing down tensions with Washington would allow the two Communist rivals to dwell upon their mutual fear instead – and he was proved right.

Russia and China fell out and Nixon split the Communist world, a move still seen as a diplomatic masterstroke.

The echoes of Nixon’s time in office are unmistakable today.

Beijing has once again cozied up to Russia, this time in an alliance of formidable military and industrial might. Iran, close to developing a nuclear weapon, has thrown its weight behind them.

After four years of Biden’s presidency, Moscow and Beijing stand together as the greatest threat to American interests since the end of the Cold War. 

Backed by China, Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbor, Ukraine, igniting a bloody conflict that looks likely to end only when Moscow declares victory. North Korea, more bellicose than for years, is pouring weaponry and maybe troops into the Russian cause. The conflict in the Middle East seems wholly beyond American control.

Should the Democrats regain the White House in two weeks’ time it is hard to imagine anything but more of the same misery.

That’s why those who like to decry Trump’s ‘divisiveness’ should think again, at least when it comes to the global stage, and recognize that his capacity to split opinion could play to the advantage of the United States.

The mere prospect of a Trump victory is already making a difference, driving a wedge between Russia and its new ally, Iran.

President Putin wants Trump to win next month, hoping a Republican White House will force a peace on Ukraine that suits Moscow, not Kyiv. The Mullahs, meanwhile, fear a Trump victory, believing he would back Israel more resolutely than Biden and Harris.

Already, there are signs of tension between Moscow and Tehran. A recent meeting between the Iranian president and Putin in Turkmenistan was notably downbeat with none of the ceremonial flummery expected on such occasions.

The ayatollahs know that, if the Ukraine war ends, Putin will have no need for Iran’s support or the thousands of drones it supplies the Russian military.

Meanwhile, the shadow of Trump in the wings appears to have emboldened Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Defying Biden’s demands for restraint, Israel’s military have landed a series of crushing blows on Iran and its murderous proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, including last week’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 atrocity one year ago.

Sinwar’s death has itself been widely interpreted as a chance to move forward – for Israel to declare victory now and restore some measure of peace.

But it is entirely possible that – backed by Trump – Israel will press further ahead and succeed in its aim of neutering Iran and reshaping the Middle East in its own favor.

Would Iran have dared to sanction the Hamas savagery and the killing of 1,200 Israelis on October 7 with Trump, a ‘mad man’ president, at the helm?

Trump continues to state that there would have been no invasion of Ukraine had he still been in the White House. Who is to say that he is wrong?

Yet, whoever becomes president, it will be China that remains the overwhelming concern.

Thanks to a ‘limitless friendship’ with Russia, China now has access to all the oil, gas and metals it needs to satisfy Xi’s galloping geopolitical ambitions, which include an attempt to force a new world order.

The Sino-Russian alliance is a challenge not just to Pax Americana, but the future of America itself.

How, then, could Trump make a difference where Biden has so obviously failed?

One answer is that, like Nixon, Trump intends to combine his threats with personal diplomacy. Remember, after his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump shocked the Washington establishment by reaching out to Putin and Xi. He even paid a visit the murderous North Korean ‘rocket man’, Kim Jong Un.

Although Trump failed to get the deals he wanted, lines of communication were opened and a principle was established: some measure of peace is possible, provided you are realistic about what can be achieved.

Too many liberals on the Democrat side believe, in contrast, they should only deal with the foreign rulers they happen to approve of.

In this absolutist view, negotiating with vicious or murderous regimes is an unacceptable denial of American values. Yet this is self-defeating utopianism. It misunderstands both the world and the limits of American power.

That is why a Harris presidency is more than likely to keep Russia, Iran and China in long-term alliance, while a second Trump term could produce a very different outcome particularly if, as he has threatened, he forces a negotiated settlement in Ukraine.

However disappointing the terms might be for Europe and Ukraine, it could be a first step in separating Moscow and Beijing.

There may also be pressure on Iran to reduce or drop its support for Hamas and Hezbollah and, so, make it possible for Israel to relent on its bombardment of Gaza and Lebanon.

This, in time, might breathe fresh life into the Abraham Accords, Trump’s groundbreaking set of agreements fostering diplomatic and trade relations between Israel and Arab states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 

When Trump says the world was calmer when he was president, the fact is he was right.

It wasn’t perfect by any means. But it would be a bad mistake to let Trump’s outsized ego blind us to his real foreign policy acumen. 

Like Nixon before him, Trump appeals to those Americans who want ‘peace through strength’.

They want a change from the Democrats’ ‘safe pair of hands’ approach that has been dropping the geopolitical ball since 2021.