Weltwoche: Donald Trump’s cabinet is nearly complete. “They are persons who will shake up the status quo," House Speaker Mike Johnson said about Trump’s cabinet. Professor Hanson, do you agree, has Trump chosen a team of disruptors?
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, that's the primary qualification, to be very suspicious of the growth and the size and the ideology of the permanent American government that's four million people strong.
Weltwochen: Some of the nominees were described as disastrous and completely incompetent.
Hanson: The nominees, in one way or another, have been on the receiving end of criticism or unfair treatment by the very cabinets or agencies they're going to head, whether that was Tulsi Gabbard, or sometimes Pete Hegseth, who got criticism about his books he wrote on the Pentagon, or Pam Bondi, as earlier Matt Gaetz, who had been criticized by the DOJ.
There's a sense that someone with non-traditional resumes and somebody who knows deeply how it feels to be attacked by a government agency will be the people who could reform that.
Weltwoche: In Europe, the focus is on Trump's foreign policy. Key figures are Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, or Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor. What message does Trump send to the world with those picks?
Hanson: We have a term here in America that's called “Jacksonian”. (Refering to Andew Jackson, the 7th President, 1829-1837, and co-founder of the Democratic Party). It resonates Andrew Jackson's view of American foreign policy, and that is, don't tread on us. No better friend, no worse enemy. What that would mean is the United States would react very quickly and decisively if its interests or the allies of it were in danger, but it is not going to engage in preemptive attacks, or nation-building, or insertion of large troops on the ground.
If Japan says it's threatened by missiles coming from North Korea, or Israel feels that it should be able to retaliate toward Iran in a more decisive manner, or Europe is threatened existentially by Russia, I think the United States would be far more likely to support its allies than the Biden administration has been. I think it's far less likely to suggest that we need to go into Afghanistan and change the culture or rebuild Iraq or remove the government of Libya, things like that. I don't think it's going to sign up for.
Weltwoche: China has been expanding its power and reach around the globe by building what is called the “Belt and Road Initiative”. I would call it the “dependency initiative”, the strategy of making countries and societies depending on China. Is Trump going to stop or change that strategy of the Chinese Communist Party?
Hanson: Yes, I think, Trump, unlike the Biden administration, sees China as an enemy of Western civilization, that has an agenda to control most of the world in a sense of being non-Western. China feels that it can galvanize the non-Western world in trade, military affairs, politics against the Western world.
China looks at the world, according to Trump, as a zero-sum game. It will only gain if it can hurt us. It will send fentanyl to Mexico so it will kill 100,000 Americans a year vis-a-vis illegal immigration, or it will get around a tariff by sending Chinese companies to assemble their products in Mexico to undermine American jobs, or it will cut the price of a product to destroy its European or American rival to gain market share.
Weltwoche: Trump has already threatened China to impose sweeping tariffs until Beijing took action to stop the flow of fentanyl into the country.
Hanson: I think Trump has to be very careful because in the last five or six years, we've lost a lot of our international clout. I think he feels that he can restore the military and the economy to such a degree that it will be in the interest of allies to look with greater suspicion on China and help the Western world unite against what China's trying to do in the South China Sea bully Taiwan, bully Japan, bully Australia, bully South Korea. I think that's what he wants to do. He wants to realign the West and wake them up about China's intention.
Weltwoche: The majority of European journalists and politicians are in great fear of Trump. They think that he might give up the support for Ukraine and surrender to Putin for the sake of a quick peace. What is your prediction?
Hanson: He's a business person, so if you read his books, such as The Art of a Deal, you have to have something to negotiate with. Cutting off Ukraine is not negotiable. You will have no clout, no capital with Putin. He knows that. If he's going to stop the one and a half million dead, wounded, and missing on both sides on Europe's doorstep, he has to convince Putin it's not in his interest to continue this war. That won't be possible if he surrenders. I think he understands that.
One of the models, I think, that he references is Afghanistan. He did not want to keep in Afghanistan, but he did want to keep Bagram Air Force Base and enough US military assets so that the Taliban would not do what they did in 2021.
Weltwoche: How does that translate to Ukraine?
Hanson: I think he will probably say the Donbass and the Crimea have been Russian for a considerable period of time.
However, Putin should go back to where he was in February of 2022. There would probably be a demilitarized zone. Putin could tell everybody that he institutionalized the return of Crimea and the Donbass, that he prevented Europe and the United States from including Ukraine at NATO, that he created a new axis with China and Iran.
Then Ukraine could say, “only because of our heroic efforts could we save Ukraine. These other areas, we were not going to get back anyway. Although we won't be in NATO, we will be fully armed in such a way that he won't want to attack us. We will probably have bilateral agreements with the United States for arms supply,” et cetera. I think, more or less, that's what Trump will try to do, and he'll try to show each side they won't come away with an asymmetrical deal. They will get something out of it.
Weltwoche: You have studied Trump thoroughly and published New-York-Times-Bestseller “The Case For Trump”. What would you suggest to your European friends how to best deal with Donald Trump 2.0?
Hanson: I would cut the rhetoric. I wouldn't call him Hitler, I wouldn't call him a dictator, I would look at his record from 2017 to 2021. I would ask the Europeans, “when Trump left office, was NATO less prepared or better prepared to withstand aggression? Was NATO safer or less safe as far as threats from China or Iran or Russia under Trump?”
I would suggest not to listen to any of the rhetoric that emanates from the United States. You have General Milley, who said he was “A fascist to the core.” Now he is saying that the U.S. will be fine under his leadership.
We had Joe Scarborough from MSNBC say that he was Hitler. Then after the election, he went over to Mar-a-Lago and begged for an audience and said that after they talked, Trump was very reasonable.
Weltwoche: On world stage, war lords have shown some change of mind. For example, Qatar is making efforts to shake off Hamas leadership from its territory. The Houthis scale back their aggressions. What makes Trump suited to deal with rogues and autocrats who seem to, preemptively, tone down their aggression?
Hanson: Trump has great confidence in American economic and military power. He feels that it's either underplayed, or it hasn't been utilized, or it's unfairly deprecated because the people in the past who were in charge of its use themselves were not confident of it, or they were hostile to their own institution.
In the case of the Houthis, he has said again and again, "You are not going to close off the Red Sea to international shipping from Europe or the United States. If you do that, these are the things that we're going to do to you." When he lists them, people pay attention. They're pretty tough. Take out their power grid, take out their port facility. They don't want that.
Then he's told Qatar very carefully, "If you're going to sponsor and subsidize Hamas, there's no reason we have to have a huge base in your territory. If we do take out that base, you're going to be subject to pressures from Iran and from radical Islamists of your regime. You don't appreciate what we've done to you, but we're going to remind you of that. We want you to knock it off with the terrorists."
He's told Iran, "You've now had 500 missiles sent in to Israel. Just because they didn't work very well didn't mean it wasn't aggression. When I come into office, I want to warn you that, as far as I'm concerned, Israel can do whatever they want to you, and we're going to encourage it. You better be very careful about doing that again, because they're going to have the wherewithal with United States munitions to do whatever they need to protect themselves."
The world looks at all that, and they think, well, he's too unpredictable. In the past, he got rid of ISIS. He killed Soleimani, he killed Baghdadi, he killed 250 of the Wagner group in Syria. This guy means business. We don't know what he's going to do. We better cut the rhetoric and just lay quiet.
Same thing on the border. He stopped the illegal immigration. He told Mexico, "We know what you're doing. You're deliberately trying to undermine the United States. You're trying to send your poor into the United States. You're trying to get remittances sent back to you. We're going to put a tariff on you like you will not believe. We're going to cut a lot of our ties with you." Within six months, they had closed the border. He said that now again to Mexico, "When I come in, the wall is going to be finished."
Weltwoche: Trump has already threatened to slap a 25 percent tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods as long as the countries allowed immigrants to flow over the U.S. border.
Hanson: The weird thing about it is, these people, rather than them getting angry, they almost get a respect for him. They think, "Well, at least we know who he is and what he'll do." We respect people that stand up for their culture and civilization and country, whereas with Biden and Obama, the more they appeased, the more they had contempt. These autocrats abroad will actually like the United States better if we are tough.
I know the Europeans are incapable of believing that someone who goes to Europe a lot, but Trump will be the best friend the Europeans have had. Europeans are getting killed by Chinese exploitation and trade. They're very dependent on the Middle East sea lanes in a way we are not in the United States. He will be very eager to stop the Biden restrictions on energy export to Europe. He will tell the Greeks and the Israelis and the Cypriots, go ahead with your pipeline. You've got to supply Europe with natural gas. They don't know the beneficial strategies, policies toward Europe, but he's the best friend they could possibly have at this point in the United States.
Weltwoche: I had the chance to be at Mar-a-Lago during Trump's historic comeback, and the day after the elections, I witnessed a very powerful scene on the patio of Mar-a-Lago. There was Trump sitting together with Elon Musk, the most powerful and the richest man together engaged in deep talks about the world's future. How important is Elon Musk for the next administration and what do you expect from this unique duo at the helm of the world power?
Hanson: Well, Trump is telling people like Elon Musk, or even people he disagrees with, like Jeff Bezos, he's saying, "this country has a unique system that attracts talent, and unlike the left, I'm not jealous of that talent. Unlike the left, I don't even carry a grudge.”
“I'm not going to go after you. I'm going to encourage you to come up with ideas, come up with products, come up with services that enrich the United States and we're going to praise you. I'm going to be an example of that and I'm going to try to change the public viewpoint of success and prosperity, that you don't get jealous or envious of it, you want to emulate it."
That's what he's trying to do. I have talked to a lot of people in Silicon Valley that did not vote for him, and they voted for him this time just for that reason. They said, "We are subject to so many regulations and so much demonization by our friends on the left that we can no longer take it anymore. We want somebody who says, 'Go to it. We want you to build rockets."
Trump thinks the United States can't really do things that everybody said it was impossible. We can go to the moon again. We can build the best rocket, we can put a space defense system over the United States and knock down missiles. We can have a space program that's preeminent. We can do all of these things that people said are-- We can balance the budget, we can cut waste, we can lower taxes.
There's a sense of excitement that instead of…
Weltwoche: … the restrictions and cancel culture.
Hanson: Trump is saying, "Everybody fighting and try to be excellent, try to be prosperous, try to be successful and we're going to praise you and help you." I think that that's a powerful message.
Weltwoche: It is something that was felt during JFK's time, embodied in his famous Rice University speech "We choose to go to the moon” in 1962. Do you believe that Trump's second presidency has the potential for a brave new era of pioneer spirit?
Hanson: I do. I think the two closest presidents we had were JFK and Ronald Reagan. They were both a can-do president. "There's no limitation. The only limitations are self-imposed. We have an obligation to our ancestors, who we're not going to crash anymore. They were wonderful people to our civilization, Europe and the West. We're not going to crash it, we're going to enhance it, and we're not going to feel guilty about it. We're just going to feel proud and we're going to be successful, and we're going to do things that you can only imagine." I think it's infectious. People were waiting to hear that.
“Powerful message”: Victor Davis Hanson
Urs Gehriger