Why Trump as US president will benefit India
FiveThirtyEight, a website run by Nate Silver, America's best known poll forecaster, has said that Donald Trump's chances of winning the US presidency, as of Sunday, July 31, 2016, is 50.1 per cent.
The time has come, then, to suspend disbelief and assess just what a Trump presidency could mean to the world and India.
Trump has divided the US electorate down the middle. He has been attacked for his erratic ways, racism and questionable business practices and what not.
Yet, he has bested the powerful Republican establishment to become the party nominee for the presidential elections.
Inequality
What are the forces that have brought a Donald Trump to this stage? Win or lose, they will be around in the US in the coming decade.
Primary amongst these are the feeling among large sections of the people that the American establishment has colluded with the rich in other countries to impoverish the average American.
This has led to a chronic and growing inequality in the US and an exacerbation of the race issue.
Globally, instead of benefiting from the rise of East Asia, the US has spent a fortune in wars in the Middle East, and is now witnessing the destabilisation of its key ally Europe by Islamist terrorism and unchecked migration.
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| A Donald Trump supporter at the Republican National Convention. (Reuters) |
Meanwhile, China expands its military and economic capacity and bids fair to challenge the US, first in east Asia, and then, possibly, the world.
Assuming Trump does not quite live out his persona as POTUS, and that he is a person of reasonable intelligence, it is possible to get a reasonable idea of how he will be different.
A lot will matter in the outcome of the Congressional elections because while the Congress cannot make policy, it has the capacity to obstruct a president's agenda, just as has happened in the case of Barack Obama.
Perhaps the most significant shift will be in the way the US engages the world.
The US played a crucial role in setting up the UN, the international monetary and trading system, non-proliferation, arms control and host of international agreements that bind the world.
It shaped a global environment in which most states believed that following the rules was in their self-interest, and in turn, the US paid the primary cost of policing that system.
Now, Trump wants out. Many Americans have spoken of free-loading allies, but for Trump it has been an obsession.
His world will be much more transactional, where, say in the area of security, Europe, Japan and the Middle Eastern allies of the US will be asked to cough up their contributions.
Momentum
His words and deeds suggest that he will seek to restore the geopolitical balance which has been skewed by the Western policy on Ukraine, which has sent Russia into the arms of China.
He will take a tough stand on Islamism, with implications for the Gulf monarchies. On the matter of trade, the horse has already bolted.
Trump has attacked Mexico and the NAFTA, but in recent year many US analysts have averred that the US gave China a free ride in the trading system and by cleverly undervaluing its currency, Beijing sucked away US industries and jobs.
There is little they can do to reverse this; China has gained unstoppable momentum.
Trump is committed to opposing the brahmastra of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) but he is bound to a tough line on China on trade and currency issues.
Worldview
India does not figure in Trump's Manichean worldview, which is for the good. That is because India does not impact the US to the extent Russia, Europe or China does.
IPR and job outsourcing issues are undeniable. But they are minor in the larger scale of problems that the US must tackle to reduce its debt, reform its tax laws, rewrite trading agreements and get on to the path of growth which also benefits the average person.
However, whether it is in tackling China, Islamism or the Russian rift, Trump's policies will benefit India.
However, New Delhi will also be on that transactional framework where it will be asked what it has on offer to merit the US' friendship and we cannot rule out an American decision to knock heads on issues like Kashmir.
All US presidents since the Cold War have been committed to maintaining the American global hegemony.
Trump and his supporters believe that their harsh agenda is the medicine necessary to administer to the US and the world, to save them, and in the process retain America's number one status.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)