What next for Rudd? He’s steeling himself for his grandest ambition

May 23, 2026 — 5:00am

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Kevin Rudd’s supposedly great insult to Donald Trump was to call him “a traitor to the West”. An uncomfortable Rudd eventually apologised to Trump in front of the world’s TV cameras.

But he was, of course, exactly right. US presidents spent 75 years painstakingly building and maintaining the NATO alliance. It’s commonly described as the most successful alliance in history.

It excelled in its purpose “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”, in the immortal words of its first secretary-general, Britain’s Lord Ismay.

But while NATO defied the Soviet reds, it couldn’t withstand the tangerine titan. Attacked from within, its credibility today is in tatters. With the Americans on the way out, the Russians are testing its borders and the Germans are rearming.

“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” pledged German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. While alienating allies, Trump panders to the dictators of Russia and China.

What really happened after Trump told Rudd ‘I don’t like you either’

Now that Rudd has returned to life as a private citizen living in New York, he would be entitled to claim vindication. Offered the opportunity, Rudd replies: “Next question.” And then: “Life’s complex,” he told this masthead, his first Australian interview since leaving government service.

Rudd has learnt restraint, and learnt it the hard way. His brilliance is that he has been so right about many of the great matters of our time. His tragedy is that he alienated some of the very people he most needed in order to fulfil his reformist ambitions.

Most consequential was his prime ministerial alienation of Labor’s faction chiefs.

The result was that the most consistently popular prime minister that Australia has had since the invention of the opinion poll was not only struck down in a lightning coup; he remained so potent in seeking vengeance that Labor systematically denounced him mercilessly in order to destroy him. No political party would defend him and the Murdoch media pursued him.

He told graduating students at the University of Southern California in a commencement address last week that resilience was of central importance........

© Brisbane Times