Donald Trump is “the most ill-informed, under-prepared, ethically challenged and psychologically ill-equipped president in US history”, the former Australian foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans has said.

Evans suggested it was foolish to expect Trump would “change his spots” but hoped that, in the long term, cooler heads would prevail, with the United States renewing global cooperation after the end of his administration.

He made the remarks at the National Press Club on Thursday, while launching a major academic work on Australia’s foreign policy by Allen Gyngell.

Evans joins the former prime minister Paul Keating in urging a more independent Australian foreign policy, both on its merits and as a reaction to the election of Trump.

He set out a vision for Australia’s foreign policy that he summarised as “less United States, more Asia and more self-reliance”.

The former foreign minister said Australia should not “walk away” from the alliance with the US because it benefited from access to intelligence, high-end armaments and, even if the Anzus security guarantee proved “flimsy” in reality, it notionally enjoyed “deterrent protection of America’s massive military firepower”.

“But less reflexive support for everything the US chooses to do is long overdue,” he said, citing Australia’s unconditional support for the US unilateral missile strike in Syria as an example.

Evans said re-evaluation of the alliance was “salient” after the election of Trump in November, describing the new president as “personally driven by instinct and impulse, unhampered by knowledge or judgment”.

“He has led an administration acting so far on the basis of postures rather than policies,” he said.

“While the commentariat is beginning to find some comforting early signs that the adults are regaining charge of foreign policy, anyone betting on this administration delivering consistent, coherent, constructive and decent outcomes over the next four years is making a very big gamble indeed.”

Asked how he would advise Malcolm Turnbull to treat Trump on their first face-to-face meeting, Evans said he should treat him as “serious, credible and respected”.

“It’s situation ethics in diplomacy: you have got to do what you have got to do.”

Evans said he thought Trump would continue to be “erratic and undisciplined” and to think otherwise defied our understanding of human nature. “People don’t change their spots on that sort of scale.”

He suggested Turnbull should exercise moderation and not kowtow to Trump by engaging in “handball in the Oval Office stuff”, in reference to a symbol of Julia Gillard’s close relationship with Barack Obama.

Gyngell noted that nationalism and protectionism were on the rise worldwide and argued the “postwar global order” established by the US, the UN, the World Bank and the IMF was “over”.

“Globalism, the spirit of the globalising norms, which shaped the second half of the 20th century, is, for the time being at least, in retreat.”

Gyngell said, “Trumpism is not a distinctly American phenomenon” and noted the rise of nationalist leaders around the world, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, India’s Narendra Modi, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte and Indonesia’s Joko Widodo.

“This does underline the point [of the emergence of] a more transactional and reciprocal world,” he said, contrasting the current state of play with a more rules-based international order.



Asked about cooperation between China and the US, Evans said it was “perfectly possible for the G2 to live with each other”.

“They are already joined at the hip pocket,” he said. “There is every reason to believe that, if we can get through the present administration, longer-term cooler heads will prevail on both sides – but it will be a pretty rocky period.”

Evans also recommended that Australia perform flybys or naval pass-bys within 12 nautical miles of structures in the South China Sea because “it has been conclusively determined by the relevant international tribunals that nobody has a credible claim to sovereignty over them”.