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Cover Story

Inheriting a World in Chaos

The U.S. foreign policy goals under every president remain unalterable.
President Trump leaves a ‘scar’ on the very shape of U.S. foreign policy.

By Shamshad Ahmad Khan | January 2021

What difference will the Biden presidency make to the world? Well, I am reminded of the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan used to orate against the Soviet Union. He often quoted form Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ with his vision of a United States great enough “to begin the world over again.” It seems his two Republican successors, President George W. Bush at the very onset of the new millennium and lately Donald J. Trump, both did try to ‘begin the world over again’. But in doing so, the former turned the world upside down, and the latter spared no effort to turn it inside out. No wonder, our world today couldn’t be in greater chaos. The question that now spontaneously comes to mind is, would the world have been any different if the Twiddling George W. Bush and the Tweeting Donald John Trump were not there.

No matter who is at the White House, the U.S. always has the same worldwide interests with direct or indirect stakes almost in all issues of peace and security across the globe. Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Hussein Obama, also inherited a world in chaos. In his last State of the Union message, President Obama had himself admitted that the world he was leaving behind for his successor was in a terrible flux. He warned that “instability will continue for decades in many parts of the world -- in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, in parts of Central America, in Africa, and Asia.” What in fact he said was that his successor will be the proud owner of a world in chaos. And that’s the world in chaos that Trump is leaving behind for Joe Biden. This carrousel of cold-blooded realpolitik will continue, no matter who is in the White House in Washington D.C.

The U.S. foreign policy goals under every president remain unalterable. Yes, individuals do bring their mark on the style of the actual conduct of U.S. foreign policy through their personality and temperamental proclivity. Whether we agree or not, President Trump does leave a ‘scar’ on the very shape of U.S. foreign policy. His was indeed a complex personality, thick-skinned on criticism of his policies and thin-skinned on personal slights. That made him a sloppy politician and a bad diplomat. From his campaign rhetoric, character traits, long-held public views and business life, one thing was clear. Trump never looked at foreign policy in terms of America’s worldwide interests, but only as a business transaction. His instincts of expediency and opportunism made him a shrewd, hard-boiled negotiating hand. As a businessman, he was always looking for profitable bargains.

Biden’s foremost task will now be to remove some of the ‘Trump scars’ from the face of America’s foreign policy. With his focus on oil-rich Gulf states’ philanderer princes, Trump never had any sober, well thought out strategy for our region as a whole. He didn’t even understand the real dynamics of India-Pakistan conflictual legacy, much less even the history of the Afghan war in which his own country has had a key role. To him, India was just a huge market that he had to cash in. There, he found in Modi, the killer of Gujrat, a partner of the same greed and brand; intellectually and morally, both devoid of any sense of human rights and justice. Ironically, in his first three years, contrary to his election promises to end the Afghan war, Trump allowed the Afghan stalemate to continue. The Indo-US strategic nexus in the region had blurred his South Asian vision.

Trump ignored the reality that Afghanistan was in a mess not because of Pakistan; it was so because of other known reasons. Having seen Pakistan’s army successfully routing terrorist groups in its own tribal areas and its ability to facilitate the long-awaited Afghan peace, he discovered another reality. Pakistan’s new leader Imran Khan, who always believed that peace in Afghanistan will come not by war but by peaceful means alone. To his credit, President Trump realized that Pakistan alone could bail the U.S. out from the Afghan quagmire. Since December 2018, with Pakistan’s support and help, the U.S. was engaged in direct talks with the Afghan Taliban through its representative Zalmay Khalilzad for its withdrawal from Afghanistan. This dialogue finally led to an agreement between the two sides in Doha on February 29, 2020.

It was a historic development marking the first step in the right direction. Imran Khan was right that Afghan peace will come only through negotiations. What the Afghans now need is a determined effort involving all stakeholders in an equitable and broad-based peace process based on mutual respect and reconciliation, reflecting the aspirations of freedom and justice for the Afghan people regardless of their ethnic, lingual and religious backgrounds. They must rise above all factional consideration and join together in building durable peace in their country. But in the Afghan context, it is always easier said than done. There are forces within the region, inimical to genuine peace in Afghanistan that seek to scuttle the whole peace process. We must all work together to thwart their destabilizing potential.

India in particular must not be allowed to use the Afghan soil for subversive activities in neighbouring Pakistan. The new U.S. president will no doubt have a crucial role in bringing an end to the Afghan tragedy. Like his predecessor, it seems, Biden would also like to leave a small counter-terrorism force. And he knows well that on Afghanistan, he will always need Pakistan’s help. But he must now also understand that the US-Pakistan relationship is not all about Afghanistan. Despite ups and downs, this relationship has remained fundamentally strong, serving over the decades some of the vital interests of the two countries. Biden knows Pakistan well, and in fact he was the original architect of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, known as the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, a high watermark in the otherwise troubled US-Pakistan relationship during the Obama presidency.

Besides this, as a presidential candidate in 2007, Biden also called for remaking of the US-Pakistan relationship to make it more people-specific rather than remaining focused on one man. In the bilateral context, the prospects of the Biden-Imran equation working together on Afghan peace and on the region’s other burning issues look good. What the US-Pakistan relationship now needs is a stronger bilateral perspective based on mutual benefit and respect. The objective must be not to weaken this important equation but to strengthen it by infusing in it greater political, economic and strategic content. It must no longer remain a “transactional” relationship and must go beyond conflictual scenarios. Democracy, pluralism, security, market economy and people-oriented development must be the constant features of this relationship.

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