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Thursday March 28, 2024

Trump steps in

By our correspondents
January 22, 2017

Inauguration Day in the US is an event so full of self-congratulation not even the vinegary Donald Trump could cut through the treacle. The forty-fifth – and most unlikely – president of the US took his oath of office  on Friday with typical bluster and apocalyptic fervour. Even as the US media and political class trotted out the usual homilies about a peaceful transfer of power, Trump painted a dark picture of an America on the verge of ruin thanks to the wiles of shady foreigners and a sold-out ruling elite. To the extent that he articulated any policies, they were in line with current US practise even if they were expressed in overheated Trumpian rhetoric. He promised to unite the ‘civilised’ world and eradicate radical Islamist terrorism from the face of the earth, which is something all his predecessors have attempted to do even if they never articulated it in such politically incorrect terms. Trump’s speech was an unvarnished expression of US arrogance and self-regard. But there were some carefully-chosen phrases meant to reassure his xenophobic base that he would be the representative of White America. Particularly worrying was his invocation of the nationalist ‘America First’ slogan. After outlining an agenda of economic protectionism and infrastructural investment, Trump’s first acts were to begin the rollback of Obamacare, a new day to celebrate patriotism and funds for a new US missile programme.

Donald Trump’s nominations for his cabinet give a glimpse of what we can expect from him as president. All his populist bluster has not translated into a change of policy as his cabinet is heavy on billionaires and executives from the financial and energy industries. His secretary of state Rex Tillerson served as chairman of ExxonMobil, which raises fears that the US will continue pursuing Middle Eastern oil on behalf of oil giants. The proposed attorney general Jeff Sessions was once rejected as a judge by the Senate in the 1980s for a history of racism while his treasury secretary is a Goldman Sachs alumnus. What’s worrying is that the Democrats don’t seem up for a fight. All living presidents were present at Trump’s inauguration other than the ailing George H W Bush and all the talk has been of working with the new president rather than staunchly opposing him. On foreign policy, Trump continues to give confused signals. How can the US ‘stop fighting other people’s wars’ while ‘eliminating Isis from the face of the earth’ and ‘increasing the US military budget’? The only way to see this is that Trump is following what Obama did. In his early days, Obama continued to claim he was committed to non-intervention. By the time his tenure ended, Obama had committed the US to more warzones than any US president before him. Trump may have mocked those before him for being all talk and no action, but this is a fate that may befall him. Washington and the Pentagon are beasts than Obama discovered were not easy to beat back. For Pakistan, a smooth ride under a Trump presidency may not be that easy. One, Trump has already begun to ruffle China’s feathers, something that could be problematic for us. Two, Trump’s promise to eradicate Islamist extremism is one that could easily find Trump aligning with India and Afghanistan at the cost of Pakistan. We will have to tread with care.