As Donald Trump prepares to take office, his foreign policy approach faces immediate challenges, with Syria’s dramatic upheaval and the Ukraine war shaping his priorities. (AP File Image)
Donald Trump is to take office on January 20, 2025, but it appears he has had to slip into the role of a roving US President-elect quite early even as an explosive international situation confronted the world with the historic tide of change in Syria.
When he made his flamboyant entry onto the global stage in the historic Paris cathedral, Trump may have been greeted with the resounding philosophy of the Notre Dame reopening that inspired the words — “fire has not conquered stone, and despair has not conquered life”.
The usually assertive Trump may, however, have been a bit nonplussed by events in Syria, speaking somewhat hastily as he did about the USA not needing to brood over a fight that was not America’s. The turn in Syria is bound to be a test for American foreign policy goals as a global power in the integrated economy of today.
Trump had been at his self-confident best earlier when meeting with Macron and Zelenskyy at the Elysee Palace in Paris when he said that he was all “pumped up” about bringing an end to the war in Ukraine. Wasn’t he the one who had said he could end the war in 24 hours if he became the US President?
Trump’s promise to end the war quickly could, however, force Ukraine to sacrifice substantial territory as well as scale back the condition that the country should become a NATO member after any settlement. And Russia is not as keen now to come to the negotiating table as all recent war gains have been its, though its preoccupation with Ukraine may have dented its sphere of influence in the Middle East with its benefactor Bashar Al-Assad now a refugee in Moscow.
It appears Trump would be more inclined to take on the Ukraine war settlement as the first aim of his foreign policy diplomacy as he has promised to give Netanyahu and Israel a long rope in fighting their enemies in the region. If any issue becomes a security threat, the global policeman US would find the need to intervene, but right now Trump’s America First and isolationist stand seem to have painted a confusing picture. But then has not Trump always taken pride in being the ultimate disrupter?
( Source : Deccan Chronicle )
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