EditorialReadying for new path

Readying for new path

Date:

Readying for new path

With initial contours emerging, Donald Trump's foreign policy is becoming discernible. The President-elect has declared in a very clear term that he wants stability to build his own country not chaos and that he will pursue a new foreign policy.

American President, in other words, would not be investing the America's huge resources in misplaced transformation in foreign lands. “We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments,” he declares. This suggests a definite departure from the interventionist tradition and record of the United States, under both the Republican and the Democratic Presidents. President Bill Clinton's place in history was defined by intervention in Kosova; President George Bush sent the topsy-turvy with his post-9/11 crusade; and President Obama encouraged and abetted “democratic” revolutions in the whole of Levant, which resulted in the departure or destabilisation of established regimes and brought in its wake the ISIS.

Donald Trump promises not to scratch this interventionist itch. This is a welcome change, that too from a man who had all these months portrayed himself as a bully and a busy-body. Not being from the “establishment”, Trump has the political clout and sanction to junk the intellectual theology that informed American interventions oversees.

All these decades the foreign policy elites in the United States arrogated to themselves a burden and an obligation to make “the world safe for democracy”. Each country was to be induced and, if necessary, coerced, to become a replica of Jeffersonian democracy irrespective of its cultural and historical contexts. This arrogance contributed to turmoil, intrigue and instability in country after country.

Trump's rhetoric suggests that he is not exactly enamored of the “my way or the highway” syndrome. Yet, rather incongruently, he has surrounded himself with a number of former military men. He has announced that he will be putting a retired General, James Mattis, known by the sobriquet ‘Mad Dog', in charge of the Pentagon. He is yet to name a Secretary of State. The Trump presidency carries with it the threat of a muscular foreign policy without being woolly or idealistic. This return of realpolitik is to be welcomed.

Northlines
Northlines
The Northlines is an independent source on the Web for news, facts and figures relating to Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh and its neighbourhood.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Share post:

Popular

More like this
Related

Bring Fire Safety in vogue, stop devastation!

The figures of fire incidents in Kashmir alone are...

Unveiling the Shades of Electoral Bonds

The controversy surrounding Electoral Bonds has once again gripped...

Regulate Reused Cooking Oils

Sir, In commercial settings like restaurants, it’s common practice not...

Putting ‘Horse Blinders’ won’t work

The edict issued by the J&K Government directing its...