As the blue wave of unambiguous Maga repudiation crashed over the United States, a former Australian ambassador to Washington issued a warning about what to expect from the newly minted lame-duck leader of the free world, Donald Trump.

Arthur Sinodinos, ambassador for three years until 2023, said Trump “is always at his most dangerous when he’s cornered”.

It was an ominous warning, and one that echoes the anticipation of the Australian government and its leading military-strategic, intelligence and diplomatic thinkers.

Indeed, Trump’s somewhat conciliatory – even sanguine – tone amid the Republican rout including his concession that his great folly, the US-Israel war against Iran, had been a contributing factor, was his first act of unpredictability.

A closer result – one more blithely dismissed by Trump as a “fraud” or a “fake” – would have posed immediate challenges for other democracies. Not least of them is Australia, the most assiduous – and at times obsequious – middle-power American ally which has largely been reluctant to call out Trump’s creeping second-term absolutism.

Would Australia (having willingly called out election subversion in developing-world dictatorships) condemned any such conduct in the US while Trump still had........

© The Guardian