President Trump's second term — five assumptions

President Trump's second term may shift U.S. foreign policy, focusing on national interests, and global leadership.

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The much-awaited inaugural address by President Donald Trump will take place on 20 January 2025 as he will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. All kinds of speculations are being made about how President Trump might change the very ways that United States will behave and review and reconstruct its relationship with the outside world. At this stage one can only assume what the President-elect might do in future, and making some assumptions on the subject may not be out of order. But first a quick look at what few of the American presidents had been doing in the past and what legacy they have left behind for the world to remember them.

We cannot take away from the American Presidents the influence their personalities create on the Office of the President. President Jimmy Carter, who died recently, is well remembered for the role he played in managing the famous Camp David Accord. President Regan along with Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain opened up the global economy and gifted the world free markets and open trade. President G W Bush gifted the world its first Gulf War but left the job half done - by liberating Kuwait but not taking on Baghdad. Maybe, he already knew that his son would later come and complete the unfinished job.

Bill Clinton in his two terms as president avoided taking the United States to war and maintained his stature as an anti-war President. He would be best remembered for choosing to ignore Rwandan genocide when he decided not to intervene in the Rwandan civil war in which more than 800,000 people died. President Bush was riding high on the wave of creating a liberal world as he was presiding America in an era of unipolarity with the Soviet Union disintegrated and its former republics democratising. Nine-eleven changed everything and President Bush is remembered in history as the most blundering American president who made mistake after mistake to create a world that not only became very violent but immoral and intolerant too. President Obama's presidency was to bring the balm that the injuries of the wounded world needed. But the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq consumed his presidency and along with it any goodwill that he may have harboured or demonstrated to create a more just and moral world. The first Black American President will be more remembered for his oratory skills than any substantial achievement. The legacy that he left behind was of redlines being no more redlines when America as a great power declares them. Syria was not punished despite the President declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime as the redline that America will not allow to be crossed.

President Trump came to the office in his first term carrying a bag full of promises on his shoulder - promises that he made to the American people during the election campaign. He needed a team to translate his vision into action. That team was never there for him as most of the secretaries that he appointed were part of the deep state and were always apprehensive and reluctant to implement orders that were not going by the book. President Trump will not be remembered for anything that he did in his first term. I say this because what he intends doing during his second term will overshadow all he did during the first. President Biden, from whom President Trump takes over, will be more remembered for pulling the American troops out of Afghanistan. He leaves behind a legacy of old age, absent mindedness and incompetency to run for the second term.

I make five assumptions about President Trump's second presidency which is now weeks away.

One, he will take a clear position on the war in Ukraine and will focus more on the war's global repercussions than supporting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his lost cause.

Two, he will seek global leadership more than global security which means that the American willingness to take risks will be characterised by the sensitivity of its national interests being served in a leadership role and not the security role it plays. America may back off from leading the European security but not leading the world. If American interests are not being served by maintaining a force posture in a country or a region so that may change. The European Union, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and many other countries may, under Trump's second tenure, find American troops' presence and security not as guaranteed as it had been in the past.

Third, America under President Trump will be able to convert its unlimited power into influence. With a carefully selected team he will have the support of political and institutional mechanism to bring both the American political and military strategies on one table. This will result in more rational policymaking and will mitigate the factors that were previously not imagined, anticipated and controlled.

Fourth, in the broader global context President Trump will continue to divide the world into democracy and dictatorship. The Trump administration will only back democracies and all autocracies will be ignored and sidelined.

Fifth and the last is how President Trump's administrations may treat the subject of sphere of influence. America has made a name for itself by using power to affect influence and control in spatial spaces and countries where it had no formal authority. This has only brought trouble and made the world a more insecure place to live. I assume President Trump will respect the role other two great powers, China and Russia, can play in their regions and allow them the room and space to execute the order they wish to lead. The colour revolutions the United States supported in the former Soviet Republics and the regime changes it has executed around the world are dark chapters of American history. It seems that under the new Trump administration, all this is about to change.

Any assumption is about building a case without any proof. So these five assumptions are also just a leap in the dark with a hope that the United States is able to meet the commitments that are expected of it as the world leader and that under President Trump the world becomes a more peaceful and secure place to live in.