For All Our Sakes America Must Be United Once Again

A VITAL CHOICE: Trump seeks to divide and rule, Biden’s calling card is bi-partisan co-operation

- Stephen Pollard

I’M 55, which means I am lucky enough to have lived my entire life so far without my country being engulfed by a major war. That is true, of course, for most of the West. And it is in large measure because the most powerful nation on earth has been a force for good.

We take the US’s role in the post-World War II world for granted. It has spent fortunes on defending the free world, both through its own armed forces and through its involvement in Nato. It was not Britain and our European allies that defeated the USSR – the “evil empire”, as President Reagan rightly called it. It was the US.

That is just one reason why, whatever achievements he might have to his name, it is in all our interests that Donald Trump is defeated in today’s presidential election. We need the US to be an active and willing participant in the world. More than that, we need American leadership once again.

Mr Trump was clear when he first began his campaign for the presidency in 2015 that he believed in “America First”. And he has made good on that, with a mix of tariffs and international rows. He has, for example, repeatedly threatened to pull the US out of Nato and many other international bodies.