Donald Trump assumed office as America’s 45th President on Friday. Over 25 ears Sixteen years after the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Empire in December 1991 and four Presidents in the interim period when the US regarded itself to be the only superpower in the world, the sheen today is off. While any democratic nation is entitled to elect whosever they like, the one significant thing that Mr Trump’s election underscores is the deep anxiety that Americans have about their future and what the complexities of the present world mean for the American way of life. Immigration, the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism and the loss of its manufacturing base essentially to China were the three hot-button issues that politically correct establishment figures were unwilling to address. By taking these issues head-on early in the campaign, Mr Trump hit a raw nerve that resonated with the people a reality that mainstream media in the US refused to acknowledge. That’s all in the past. Mr Trump has triumphed and now the show must begin in right earnest. What does the Trump presidency mean?
The first dilemma goes out to Southeast Asians — there is a perception that the Trump administration will not be as engaged in Southeast and even North Asia as earlier US administrations have been. In that event, a power vacuum will manifest itself which China will be eager to fill. If the spectre of Chinese domination grows, where does that leave Australia, India, Japan, South Korea and the littoral states of the South China Sea? The second dilemma goes out to West Asians, or what is referred to as the Middle East. As Mr Trump surveys the swathe of territory from the Strait of Bosphorus to the Khyber Pass and beyond that to the Wagah border between India and Pakistan, it sees a region in deep turmoil. The Trump administration has already sent out some strong signals about the way it would want to shape the Israel-Palestine conflict, and though the recent Paris Conference on this festering sore of history was largely factitious, it remains to be seen as to how the new administration looking at the region with a fresh pair of eyes can come up with workable policy prescriptions.
The third dilemma goes out to the ayatollahs of nuclear proliferation, arms control regimes and disarmament soothsayers. Mr Trump has tweeted for a qualitative and quantitative expansion of the US nuclear arsenal. There has always existed a minor school of thought in the US that more is better in terms of nukes? The question that it raises what would such a world look like? Would it spark off an arms race again with a resurgent Russia? Would it compel some of the yet undeclared nuclear weapon states to go public? This would have profound implications on international security that are too horrendous to even contemplate. The fourth and final dilemma goes out to cyber security mandarins. The recent general election in the US has challenged the fidelity of voting processes. The unanimous intelligence read of the intelligence boffins presented to Mr Trump have pointed to alleged Russian interference in the US election processes? Does it have implications for other democracies around the world, specially in Europe, where a round of critical elections are coming up? These are some of the larger issues that are not country-specific.
India so far has been pretty nonchalant about the Trump presidency. There is a general belief that while Democrats are more feted by the Indian political elite, strategic thinkers believe that Republicans are better to do business with. In the past eight years of the Obama presidency not a single big idea has either emerged or has been conceptually incubated by the two countries. Would the Trump-India engagement be any different? The concerns of the Trump administration on the need to rein in ISIS, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the lack of a conceptual framework vis-à-vis the Afghanistan-Pakistan paradigm are some of the areas to which Indian policymakers must apply their minds too. Does India fit into any of these concerns? One of the frameworks that ostensibly attract the new American administration is the size of the Indian defence establishment and its intrinsic institutional capacity.
This in no way applies to the procurement potential that in any case has seen an exponential jump in the past few years. It, on the contrary, has everything to do with projecting power and putting it to practical use. India was called upon by a previous Republican administration to weigh in when Iraq was invaded by a multinational coalition in March 2003. Even then there was a BJP-led NDA government that was charged with the remit of steering the ship of the Indian state. However, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee wisely refrained from committing any Indian troops to that ill-advised venture. Would Prime Minister Narendra Modi respond differently if a similar call goes out regarding the ISIS?
Mr Vajpayee is a libertarian at heart; Mr Modi’s core beliefs are closer to some of the ideologically-driven foreign policy positions that the Trump administration may decide to take. Coupled with the desire to stride on the global stage, ignoring the reality that India is home to the second largest Muslim population that can proudly claim that none of them has even been remotely allured by the medieval caliphate vision of the ISIS, this government may inadvertently walk into a situation that can have domestic consequences as well. The world of Mr Trump may be very different from what the world has so far encountered. It will after the inauguration have to constantly keep figuring out if the early morning tweets represent Mr Trump’s personal view as opposed to a carefully-crafted inter-agency-driven American position articulated and executed in a calibrated manner. We surely do live in interesting times.
