Cover Story
Tackling Trump 2.0
The narrative is true that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will take a stand to undo the political victimization against Pakistan’s former prime minister, Imran Khan.
Politics is the art of possibility. Donald Trump’s return to the White House after losing the 2020 elections reflects how resilient and single-minded he is in seeking power by all means. By securing 312 votes out of 338 electoral votes against his rival Kamala Harris’s 224 votes, Trump is all set for another term in the White House. Armed with a clear majority in the Senate and House of Representatives, President-elect Trump is now ready to implement his age-old agenda, which ruptured because of his defeat in the 2020 elections.
Donald J. Trump, in his late seventies, did not have an energy deficit, which was reflected in his victory speech. Deviating from his traditional rhetoric and loose talk for which he is well known, Trump spoke responsibly and maturely, calling for unleashing a ‘healing process’ in American society. How far will the second stint of Donald Trump in the White House be different from his first one, and how far will the implications of his landslide victory against all odds cause policy change in critical regions of the world, including South Asia? Since it is his last stint in power, he must differentiate between Trump and ‘Trumpism.’ His victory speech reflected Trump as an American and not the ideology of ‘Trumpism,’ which is known for its exclusive mode of governance: anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-non-whites, pro-Russia, anti-China, and hostile to NATO.
Without going into the debate about how Trump won despite being impeached twice by the House of Representatives and scores of cases piled up against him and how Kamala lost despite the avowed support of female and minority voters, it is time to analyze how Donald Trump’s recapturing the White House will have global and regional implications. If Trump behaved in the same manner that he had done during his first term, his party would suffer in the midterm elections of 2026 because swing or battleground states that pushed him to the road to the presidency again may change and cost the Republican Party a majority in the U.S. Congress. Indeed, during the 2028 elections, Trump will not be a candidate, and his party will deal with a Democratic Party candidate who will be strong and not carry the baggage of the faulty policies of President Joe Biden. Two and four years will pass quickly, and if Trump’s performance is similar or worse during his first term, his party will lose the 2026 mid-term and 2026 presidential elections.
It would be unwise to predict things still in the offing because of the transitory period of power transfer in the United States. However, how Trump is asserting his position and wants to get things done impatiently reflects that he is conscious of the marginal time that he has at his disposal to implement his policies, ranging from the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, controlling inflation, securing American jobs and more than above his rhetorical slogan of “Making America Great Again.” Knowing that he will invite severe backlash from the communities that he wants to target, one can expect another phase of racial and ethnic polarization in America.
The implications of Donald Trump’s second coming to the White House can be analyzed from three significant standpoints. First, the Trump administration will officially proclaim the glory of ‘White America.’ When the majority of white Americans voted for the Republican Party, the racial divide in the U.S. was visible. Although American Muslims, because of Biden’s overt support of Israeli brutalities in Gaza, were offended by the Democratic Party, it doesn’t mean that Trump will take an anti-Netanyahu stance.
Who can forget Trump’s avowed support for Israel when he approved the U.S. policy of accepting East Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel along with the Golan Heights, occupied from Syria during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war as part of Israel? Trump also endorsed illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions. It would be wishful thinking on the part of Arab Americans to expect a neutral stance of the Trump administration vis-à-vis Israel. Arab-Americans and American Muslims traditionally supported the Democratic Party but, during the 2024 elections, released their anger by not voting for Kamala Harris, which cost her the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
A U-turn by President Trump on Russia, unlike the hostile policy during the Biden administration because of the war in Ukraine, will have adverse ramifications for America in the Atlantic alliance. Already, European leaders are discussing pursuing a unified strategy to deal with the ostensibly ant-NATO stance during the second Trump administration. Russia, particularly its President Vladimir Putin, has been declared a pariah and a war criminal by the West. It will have strategic implications if Trump tries to reverse American policy on Moscow. It will cost the U.S. its leadership role in the Atlantic alliance.
One can expect a meaningful role for Zalmay Khalilzad in the new Trump administration.
About China, taking a hostile position will not benefit the Trump administration because in the last four years, through the platform of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), China, along with like-minded countries, challenged the U.S.-led world order. With America under Trump following isolationist and inward policies, China and Russia will get an impetus to strive for a multipolar world.
Second, as far as regional implications are concerned, the tilt of the Trump administration will be towards India because of New Delhi’s economic, demographic, and security clout. Apart from congratulating Donald Trump on X, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him and pledged to work with him again during his presidency. Pakistan will not matter much to the U.S. because of its fragile economy, political instability, and serious governance issues. Yet, the narrative that after assuming power, Trump will take a stand to undo the political victimization against the former prime minister Imran Khan is true to a large extent. The pro-PTI Pakistani American diaspora, to a large extent, supported the Republican Party. More so, a couple of weeks back, 60 U.S. House of Representatives members wrote a letter to U.S. President Joseph Biden in which they urged him to use his influence to release Imran Khan from jail.
Another dimension of Trump’s regional and Afghan policy is the role of former American academic and diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad. Who can undermine the role of Khalilzad in crafting the Doha accord of February 2020 with the Taliban and his consistent position against the Pakistani military establishment? After the re-election of Trump, he twice tweeted in support of Imran Khan. One can expect a meaningful role for Zalmay Khalilzad in the second Trump administration. If he retakes a significant position, one can expect a clear shift in Washington’s approach to Pakistan. The PTI leadership and Imran Khan criticized the Biden administration for Khan’s engineering overthrow by silently supporting the PPP-PML-led no-confidence vote against him in April 2022.
Coming months will witness some shift in American policy in the region in the form of the Trump administration’s pressure on the military establishment to reverse anti-Imran policies. Knowing that the U.S. has an age-old clout on Pakistani elites, it will not be possible for influential establishments to resist predictable American pressure. Finally, the first 100 days of the Trump administration will determine how successful it will be in ending the war in Ukraine and Gaza. Both conflicts got an impetus during the Biden administration in which the United States rendered relentless support to Ukraine to combat the Russian invasion and Israeli policy of genocide against Palestinians of Gaza since October 7, 2023.
President-elect Trump, during his election campaign, committed that after coming to power, he would end wars in Ukraine and Gaza but failed to mention how he would achieve the two objectives. Otherwise, the American people and the world will consider his commitments mere election slogans without practical impact. So far, the West has provided 150 billion dollars to Ukraine to fight its war against Russia. Will the Trump administration have the courage to offend Europe and withdraw American financial and military support to Kyiv, knowing that 100 billion dollars of American support to Ukraine since 2022 also benefited the U.S. military-industrial complex? It is easy for Trump to launch a mass deportation program for illegal immigrants, but taking punitive steps against millions of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers will have severe fallout on American society, particularly on Latino voters.
Slashing American defense expenditures of around 950 billion dollars is essential for the Trump administration to use that money for infrastructure modernization, mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and dealing with inflation. Trump faces a threat from the age-old ‘deep state’ in America, composed of the military establishment, intelligence community, and military-industrial complex. Still, if he gets the support of the majority of American people, he can in the coming four years turnaround, provided he again doesn’t repeat rhetoric against immigrants, Muslims, and non-white communities and controls white supremacists.
The writer is Meritorious Professor of International Relations and former Dean Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Karachi. He can be reached at moonis.ahmar59@gmail.com
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There shouldn’t be any misconception regards to DT’s change in Character concerned to Israel and Middle East. He will follow the Direction of Neocons in South,
South East, Central Asia and rest.
Pakistan needs a very strong Diplomatic team across missions in USA.