Turnbull tries out shirtfronting Trump as a way to handle the bully-in-chief
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Version 0 of 1. Lest there have been any remaining doubt, Donald Trump has confirmed a bully now resides in the White House. The question for Malcolm Turnbull, and for all world leaders, is how do you deal with the bully-in-chief? Turnbull – who right now is in a world of pain, and has absolutely everything on the line – has decided to deal with the bully in time-honoured Australian fashion, by standing his ground. We know that’s his disposition, not because the prime minister told us. We learned it first from the Washington Post, which revealed explosive details of a Trump temper tantrum over the refugee resettlement deal the Turnbull government spent months stitching together with the Obama administration. Trump told Turnbull he didn’t want “these people” – namely the refugees languishing on Nauru and Manus – and offered only an equivocal undertaking (it’s my “intention” to honour the agreement). That’s an industrial-size hint you hate the agreement, and you intend to nix it. Rather than wilting, the Australian prime minister cut to the chase and told the president to honour the deal. Turnbull has lost his voice in public, something I criticise him regularly for, but reassuringly, it seems he hasn’t lost it in private, and Turnbull was perfectly within his rights to ask that basic conventions be respected. But perhaps Trump felt the upstart from Down Under was intent on backing him into a corner. Perhaps a strategic leak or two might sort that out? After the Post succeeded in blowing up the issue, another rant emerged on Twitter, followed by another equivocation, which didn’t kill the deal, but shifted it decisively into the kill zone. Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal! Hard to see how the deal comes back from this bleak presidential diagnosis. Never mind that just a couple of hours earlier, the US state department had said very clearly the deal was on. “President Trump’s decision to honour the refugee agreement has not changed,” a US embassy spokesperson in Canberra said in a statement. This is the Trumpocalyse. The bully-in-chief rules with contradiction and chaos, forcing the outposts, nations and leaders that were once considered valued friends and allies, and treated as such, to orbit like little moons around planet disruption. The Trump tweet made it impossible for Turnbull to say nothing. So he said something. Turnbull took to the airwaves to insist he had a personal undertaking from Trump, which had been confirmed subsequently by the White House spokesman, by the state department, and by the US embassy in Canberra. In diplomatic terms, Trump’s impolite shirtfront has been countered with a polite Turnbull shirtfront. Not something you see every day of the week. High stakes is a terrible cliche, but this is about as high stakes as diplomacy gets. Now let’s consider the implications. First, the alliance. Washington always throws its weight around with willing sidekicks like Australia, but the convention is to do it in private, not thunder unpredictably in public about what you might or might not do, and issue contradictory statements about bilateral agreements agreed between leaders. Turnbull insists that the US alliance is strong, regardless of the fact the bully now has the nuclear codes, but the fact of the matter is we are in uncharted territory. Basic conventions are being discarded. Predictions become little more than guesswork. Now sorry to be crude, but in a rational world, Trump would not hand the Australian prime minister his arse, in full view of the world, because there would be consequences. Trump’s obduracy would be consequential in the sense that it would become harder for any prime minister to build a domestic constituency to do America a “favour” which plays negatively in the Australian political context. I can think of the odd favour America might need in this region. But the bully-in-chief could do anything, and has demonstrated amply during the transition he will do anything, particularly if it gives him the conflict and self aggrandisement he craves. We are in the international diplomatic zone of tissue for your issue. Secondly, there are the consequences for Turnbull himself. The prime minister is entering the year in a shaky position. That is obvious to anyone watching politics right now. As the Trump story spasmed across the news cycle over the course of Thursday, a couple of ominous signs. Cabinet colleagues helpfully briefed TV networks that the Post report was accurate. Strange, when they weren’t on the call. Tony Abbott was also doing laps of a shopping centre with one of his Sydney Liberal colleagues, who kindly popped mugshots of the cheerful meet and greet on his Facebook page, just in case anyone was interested. The piranha-stuffed aquarium of parliament looms next week. To return to my earlier unfortunate but memorable analogy, the last thing Turnbull needs right now, bobbing along on ocean underwhelming, is for the American president to hand him his arse. Now to the most important consequence of all, the human dimension of this story, the one that gets lost too often. Australia’s unhinged border protection debate has seen people who have committed no crime warehoused in indefinite detention in offshore immigration detention. Refugees once again find themselves pawns in a rancid political game, this time, with global scale. So our immigration detainees wait, with rising despair, while the wheel of political fortune turns another cycle, and brace for it to deliver the hammer blow. |