But he was at his most plausible when he said he would not engage in foreign wars

When devising the executive branch of government in 1789 the founding fathers of the American constitution were anxious to avoid creating an all-powerful monarch like the English king from whom they had declared independence a few years earlier in the American war of independence in 1776.

The US constitution was inspired as much by French republican ideas as it was by English traditions which lie dormant to resurface now and again. Central to the American constitution is the principle of the separation of powers which was taken from the Spirit of the Laws (1756) by Baron Montesquieu, a French political philosopher who borrowed from English constitutional practice of his day.

Montesquieu had many some eccentric ideas, but the principle behind the separation of powers has served the US well until Donald Trump came along with his total disdain for the checks and balances built into the American constitution by the separation of powers. The separation of powers holds that it is more conducive to political liberty if the legislative, executive and judicial arms of government were separated and performed by different institutions. However, what did not exist at the time the founding fathers drafted the American constitution were political parties.

Political parties are good for democracy so long as they are broad churches that are not monolithic and not in thrall to a strong autocratic leader. What happened in the unique case of Donald Trump is that he transformed the Republican Party in his own image so much that when he and his party won the presidency and congress the protection of political liberty provided by the separation of powers has diminished to dangerous levels.

His mantra that captured the soul of the American electorate in 2024 is to make America great again – MAGA to his ardent supporters. The last time an American president made America great again was during the long presidency of Franklin Roosevelt between 1932 and 1945.

“You have nothing to fear but fear itself” was President Roosevelt’s memorable quote in his inaugural speech in 1932. Roosevelt’s focus on fear was symptomatic of the fear that gripped the markets in America when the stock market collapsed in Wall Street in 1929 and spread to the general economy and caused the Great Depression in America in the 1930s.

Roosevelt’s New Deal that included massive state intervention by means of investment in public projects was the answer to begin with and marshalling the US to engage in total war 1941-1945 did the rest.

At the end of the war the US reached the zenith of its powers. In 1948 it initiated the Marshall Plan to aid European economies recover from the destruction of WWII and helped found the United Nations and the western rules-based order that enabled the West to thrive in relative peace and prosperity for the last 80 years.   

What was interesting about Roosevelt was that he was elected president four times. It had been the tradition set by George Washington who retired to his farm after serving two terms of four years, that American presidents served only two terms in practice. After Roosevelt’s break with tradition – deemed necessary owing to World War II – the American constitution was amended in 1951 by the 22nd amendment that prohibits a president from serving more than two terms. It would require an amendment of the 22nd amendment to enable Trump to serve further terms.  That can only be done by a two thirds majority in Congress and three quarters of the 50 states of the union agreeing to remove the two-term limit – not at present a likely prospect.

Yet in his 2025 inaugural address Trump talked as if he was anointed to the presidency until he makes America great again. “God spared my life for a reason; to make America great again.” Divine intervention is claimed hyperbolically by lots of people after a close encounter with death, but Trump was not being hyperbolic about why the all-American boy who shot to kill him only hit his ear. He and his supporters believe he was spared by divine design, which is very dangerous because it is not too far removed from the divine right to rule that was abolished when King Charles I of England was beheaded in 1649

There are many more memorable quotes from Trump’s inauguration speech: some good and some bad. The best was his claim that he was “proudest as a peacemaker and unifier” marked by “the wars we end and those we never get into.” Later in the week he called on Russia to end “the ridiculous war in Ukraine”.

Which was all plausible except that he also said he would take back Panama Canal because Panama is charging American shipping too much and that “China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn’t give it to China we gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back.”

The hope must be that the threat to Panama – and his earlier threat to Greenland – are bargaining ploys in respect of legitimate concerns about what’s going on in America’s hemisphere.

But he was nasty about trade and climate change. On world trade he said that “instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax other countries to enrich our citizens.”

On climate change he promised to “drill baby drill” because it makes Americans rich in liquid gold and to hell with scientific evidence that global warming is causing permanent damage to planet Earth’s fragile atmosphere on which all life depends. As Louis XV France famously told his mistress: apres mois, le deluge.

There were other memorable quotes but as Trump makes no secret of his wish to be awarded the Nobel prize for peace, the hope is that he will end the bloodshed in Ukraine and not engage in foreign wars, which chimes with the views of this column that as he told Russia in a post on social media last week, the war in Ukraine is “ridiculous” and had to stop.

All those young men killed and maimed is a serious indictment on all those who let it happen, and Trump is at his most plausible in his claim that it would not have happened if he were US president in 2022.

Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a retired part time judge