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The fanfare return of Donald Trump as the 47th President to office on January 20, came with a new American strategy for the globe. Trump has been adamantly critical of his predecessor’s foreign policy, just as he was in 2017 during his first term, and he has promised significant differences in goals and style of his foreign policy. His supporters applaud the return to an ‘America first’ mindset, the popular populist slogan of ‘Make America Great Again’(MAGA) that prioritizes toughness, seeks tangible gains from all international interactions, and focuses on shrewd negotiation based on a transactional approach. “At its core, transactional diplomacy is based on a quid pro quo logic: I don’t do anything for you if I don’t get something in return. Moreover, transactional diplomats perceive a zero-sum world”. His critics think that he has a limited, short-term perspective and a chaotic, transactional attitude to a complex global situation. In either case, a large portion of the globe is now anticipating a big shift in U.S. foreign policy and is bracing for huge policy changes.
He likes to see himself as the destroyer of conventions, rules and the breaker of institutions. He rose to power on the back of a personal mass following, raising the question of whether he has the potential to change the course of events and create a different United States in a different world. He is like a mutant, the Mule in Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction trilogy, The Foundation with millions of loyal followers and tremendous powers, and who poses a danger to chaos and aspires to overthrow the normalcy. Judging him from his 1st Presidential term and his 2.0 Presidential speech, the fiction looks more like a scripted future that is slowly turning into reality. He sees the opportunity knocking at his door steps which he can use to build his own kingdom. He is also more like a real estate shark who thinks in terms of business deals and his appetite can only be satisfied by the sort of executive orders he is signing.
He is not some Greek ruler who is taught and properly qualified for all the political rhetoric he has committed himself to but rather a self-taught one who uses it skilfully to arouse a deep sense of belongingness and connection with the people. His return signals a world-wide triumph of populist tendencies now so common to our world. Demagogues are the new so-called torchbearers who want to change the world for the better. His rhetoric matters, as neo-classical realists would argue because he is positioned as the most important actor on the world stage and is a pivot to making and remaking (destabilising) the world order. This rhetoric in IR is no ordinary talk show of words but rather read as the political signal from the allies, competitors as well as enemies alike. Any sign of belligerence or threat spotted from such an important position can cause a serious disruption in the healthy working of the state-system. One important qualitative factor in his overall success has been the skilful use of rhetoric and populist sloganeering in his speeches with a high-handed hard approach to politics. It raises a fundamental question of understanding the importance of the rhetoric-loaded speech of the most important and powerful person in the world having far-reaching consequences. Focusing on the rhetoric of the January 20 customary or commemorative Presidential speech of Donald Trump, we will analyse the implications of such political rhetoric.
A Presidential speech of our Times!
The Presidential speech of President-elect Donald Trump was highly admired by the chosen audience and even the political opponents particularly the erstwhile President of the USA, Biden even when he was so scathingly being attacked from the start of the speech. Joe Biden’s uneasy existence was visible in the hall after Donald Trump in his own triumphant tune lashed out at the failures of the previous government. But it didn’t stop him and his colleagues from giving Trump a standing ovation. It was a moment in history, unchallenged and unseen where even political insults were cheered and rewarded with respect!
Trump staying true to his arrogant spirit, did not even acknowledge a single policy of Biden, even when he continued with many of the policies of the previous Trump government like the tariffs, calling China the strategic competitor, etc. U.S. President Joe Biden retained key aspects of Trump’s nationalist economic approach, including Trump’s tariffs, and pushed forward the first major U.S. industrial policy in decades via the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act”. Cheering over the Prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas and giving legitimacy to his actions even when Biden knows very well that the deal has been in process for long, like months, shows the moral bankruptcy of the elites of the US and its leadership. The Democrats have lost not only the election but also the larger battle against Trump’s illiberal world in making. Trump outlined all the major areas where he is going to venture into and later in his executive chair by the end of Jan 20 he had signed around 80 executive orders. By this he has already started shaping the foreign policy of the USA at least for the next 4 years.
A Plain or an Applied Rhetoric?
If we look back to his previous campaigns of 2016, and 2020 as well as the last one, we can clearly see the full use and rise of rhetoric in his rallies- a typical display of a demagogic style of leadership. Continuing with the plain rhetoric in his Presidential speech of Jan 20 quoted verbatim: “Four greatest years; great glorious nation; American decline is over and the betrayals are over; that no President has been challenged in the past 250 years in history; the life and freedom of the President taken away; revolution of common sense; disastrous invasion of the country; January 20 as the Liberation Day; reclaim sovereignty; free speech to America; Drill Baby Drill; Defeating American Enemies” and the list goes on, lies the deeper understanding of using the rhetoric to galvanize the voter base and the large section that was tired of Democratic Party’s silence in the face of war in Gaza.
The rhetoric was very much visible in the Presidential speech but the executive orders which Trump signed on his first day in office showed that he can forge the same rhetoric in his policies with all the powers he now commands. Among other things, by signing executive orders leving high tariffs, cancelling treaties and agreements, removing the US from the WTO, shunning away from some important responsibilities to the world and keeping transactionalism as the basis of relationship with the partners, declaring National Economic Emergency and National Emergency on Southern Border, etc Trump can shape the next four years (both of US foreign policy as well as its relationship with the outside world) like no other president of the US has ever done. Behind all the heavy wording and rhetorical jargon, Trump has all the state machinery, the elite billionaires, and a powerful economy to justify and actually back all of this, if not the power to implement all of this at once. This makes him a dangerous player on the international stage, the one among the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
If he thinks of sending aliens back and ending the catch-and-release practice, which he has already started by signing the executive order, then he is going to lock horns with almost all the regions of the world, not only Mexico. This would be the largest mass deportation of the scale unimaginable with sending ripples all around the globe.
He ostensibly thinks that the USA has lost its sovereignty and thinks of reclaiming it back, by not getting involved in costly wars like in Ukraine, and Afghanistan on the one side which the US has nothing to do with, and on the other side seizing control of Panama canal and Greenland. This inherent contradiction of the thought and the problem it raises while implementing the policy of reclaiming the lost sovereignty is worth noting. Not getting involved in the costly wars symbolises maintaining a safe distance from the war in Ukraine, and any future war over Taiwan. If this argument is stretched a bit more it would also mean not getting involved in the conflicts of Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. The question that this raises is what are the just wars that Trump thinks the US should fight and what are the criteria for deciding the wars that concern US? On a hypocritical note, it could also imply a military takeover of the Panama Canal, or Greenland which would again be equivalent to the imperialism that the USA has principally stood against on the world stage. It raises another problem of getting involved in messy wars which Trump so much wants to end. China has been an important player in the region and is directly dependent upon the canal for the SLOCs as are other countries. It means that Trump is risking getting the US involved in another confrontational situation with Beijing.
On his first day, he renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, a very symbolic gesture to the ‘enemies of the USA whom he wants to defeat’. What makes Trump think that a conventional war between USA and its so-called enemies can be won by seizing peaceful territories and the lessons from recent history show that even powerful states like Israel in Gaza and US in Afghanistan cannot even win against non-state entities. Leave aside Russia and China, imagine defeating less powerful enemy-states like North Korea and Iran. Putting such thinking on policy papers can be disastrous with geopolitical implications for the whole world, not only for the enemies and friends of the US. If ever this political rhetoric is implemented, Trump is going to be like the real intergalactic warlord, Thanos of the 2019 Marvel comic series Avengers: Endgame who disintegrates half of the Universe to be restored back by the Avengers later (only if we knew who our avengers are in real world).
Strategizing Rhetoric
His long-standing wish of overhauling the trade system by imposing tariffs as high as 25% on Canadian imports, 10% on China and in some special cases particularly targeting China as high as 60% which he considers as the strategic competitor. He is an inward looking neo-liberal whom Branko Milanovic also calls an “unashamed neo-liberal” who wants to be a neo-liberal in its truest sense at home by freeing the internal market of all red tape, taxes, and regulations while being an economic conservative outside the boundaries of the US imposing heavy taxes on the import of foreign goods and services. His previous regime was much focused on this key area and now his cabinet is full of anti-China hawks, so there is no one to stop him from not doing what he aims to do. By using the phrase ‘disastrous invasion of the country’ he might be signalling Chinese influence on the US economy, or it can also allude to the ‘alien migrants’ he wants to clean the US from. Trump is a man of phrases and a black-box who can bring anything to the table and his speech we are very sure would have not been missed by many leaders of the states. While Trump is getting ready to implement his mind as he very rarely listens to anyone around him, the states of the international system also are readying themselves to brace for the impact of his policies. BRICS, SCO, and other multilateral forums are going to be important contesting platforms where the US can be challenged collectively. Individually states are also not going to bow down to the pressures easily, as multilateralism and bilateral agreements of the states are going to absorb the after shocks of Trump adventurism in a very much globalised space.
He boasted about how, in his first term, he had threatened to abandon NATO allies and claimed that in his second, if European NATO members failed to increase their defence spending, he would let the Russians do whatever they want. The resurgence of U.S. partnerships after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s alignment with Moscow was seen by U.S. allies as a return to the geopolitical normal, whereas Trump’s election in 2017 was mostly seen as an exception. However, the impacts of Trump’s re-election could extend longer. The alliance network that the Biden administration laboriously established over the previous four years may be weakened by Trump’s second term, and the resulting upheaval may have an impact on the internal political systems of U.S. partners. This progress might be undone by Donald Trump’s return to the White House. U.S. allies tried their best to comply with Trump’s demands throughout his first term, tightening trade sanctions against China, raising defence expenditure, and changing trade policy. With a more equitable distribution of the security burden, American partnerships not only survived but also grew stronger.
However, four years later, the forces of fragmentation are far more potent in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters and the security threats are much greater. Trump, however, seems determined to bring back his “America first” foreign policy and increase the political and economic pressure on American allies. These actions may sour ties between nations in the alliance system and drive Washington away from its allies, providing Beijing and Moscow more leeway in their diplomatic strategies.
This shift and the case for a new developmental approach is being met with bemusement and consternation. There is, of course, the matter of tariffs that could affect the economies of competitors, friends, and enemies alike, like China, India, and Iran respectively, or the deportation of illegal immigrants which will primarily affect the US itself but also its neighbours, particularly Mexico. However, what has created alarm has been his policy guidelines relating to Canada, Greenland, and Panama. This gesture to grab the independent sovereign territories can be termed “imperialism” or “neo-imperialism,” but in abnormal times like these where the US controls the narrative, not much resistance is going to be seen from the different corners of the world.
Biden was firmly committed to supporting Ukraine, defending Taiwan militarily, fulfilling the United States’ climate change commitments, and centering democracy in U.S. foreign policy. He stressed the benefits of the United States’ alliances and the threats that China and other revisionist powers pose to the global order. Trump, on the other hand, questions the need to continue aiding Ukraine, declines to commit to Taiwan’s protection, downplays climate change, and deprioritizes the promotion of democracy and human rights. He is sceptical of the need for US alliances like NATO, QUAD, AUKUS, etc which have given the US an edge over the other competitors like China and Russia. The return of Trump on the world stage with his hard-nosed geopolitical calculations is to be watched carefully and to be prepared accordingly.
[Photo by the White House]
Musssaib Rasool Mir is a senior research fellow at the School of International Relations, Department of SCAS, Central University of Punjab, India.
Dr. Santosh Kumar is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Relations, Department of SCAS, Central University of Punjab, India.
Srishti Sharma is a research fellow at the School of International Relations, Department of SCAS, Central University of Punjab, India. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors.
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