This article originally appeared in the National Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Tony Abbott, March 5, 2025
There is no point adding to the chorus of dismay currently being directed at U.S. president Donald Trump because it won’t do any good and will almost certainly make a bad situation worse. Instead America’s erstwhile allies just need to accept that there is now no country whose freedom America will readily protect other than its own and do their best to ensure that the Pax Americana does not turn into a new world disorder where only might is right.
Last week’s televised brawl between the leader of the free world and the leader of the country most heroically fighting for its freedom hardly advances the cause of liberty; and, likewise, the U.S. President’s tariffs against Canada and other allies hardly advance the cause of prosperity. Of course, withdrawal of American support for Ukraine will embolden aggressors everywhere and any indiscriminate tariff war will impoverish everyone; but what matters to this president is not global well-being but that of the United States first and foremost.
The opening weeks of this new transactional presidency have been shocking and demoralizing because Trump’s America is so at odds with the erstwhile character of the United States as global leader. In Ronald Reagan’s word’s America was “a shining city on a hill” and “the last best hope of mankind.” In John F Kennedy’s words, America was ready to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, (and) oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Yet denouncing President Trump as “historically ignorant and strategically naïve” is only going to further antagonize the current administration given its core conviction that America’s allies have been free riding on the United States for years; especially because — on this at least — they’re right.
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Tony Abbott was prime minister of Australia from 2013-15 and a visiting fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
