US president-elect Donald Trump could be more pragmatic once he assumes office and set aside some of the controversial pledges he made about trade deals and security alliances during his campaign, American experts Alyssa Ayres and Daniel Twining said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Saturday.
Ayres, senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump’s foreign policy stand was a “mystery at the moment”, but noted the real estate mogul had already rolled back campaign promises about bringing back waterboarding for terror suspects and prosecuting his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Twining, the director of the Asia Program at The German Marshall Fund of US, described Trump as a “rational man who can be persuaded” and an “American nationalist, not an isolationist”.
Speaking at the session on “The new US president and South Asia”, he said: “Watch what he does, not what he says.”
In some ways, Trump’s election win could be compared to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory in 2014 because both men wanted to shake up the existing “ossified” set-up, said Twining, who has worked with previous Republican administrations.
Trump’s outreach to Indian-Americans – including a campaign advertisement in Hindi that spoke of “Ab ki baar Trump sarkar” – was an indication that India could be a key element in his policy for the region, said Ayres, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia.
Twining noted that there had been a marked shift in the US military’s policy towards Pakistan as American soldiers had seen their colleagues killed in “Pakistan-sponsored” incidents of terrorism in Afghanistan. “Trump is probably going to be harder on Pakistan as he doubles down on India,” he said.
Also, Trump could take a hard stand on China, and a planned build-up of the US Navy could allow Washington to move from a position of “speaking loudly and carrying a small stick” to a situation of wielding a “big stick”, he said.
Ayres expressed concern that the US could lose its place as a key player in climate change negotiations if Trump walked out of the Paris Accord.
Source:- Hindustan Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment