Biden’s legacy and Trump’s pragmatism

Outgoing US President Joe Biden is seeking to ban oil drilling in the country’s coastal waters in the Atlantic, Pacific and east of Gulf of Mexico. Observers see the move, two weeks before Donald Trump, the next president is sworn in, as a bid by Biden to leave the imprint of his legacy to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 in the world’s largest economy. The presidential ban, according to law, cannot be revoked by Trump, who is against taking any measures to counter the effects of climate change because he thinks that there is no such thing as climate change.

Countries all over the world are taking decisions and implementing programmes to counter the negative effects of climate change. If Trump does not accept climate change plans for the US as partly implemented by Biden during his term then the US would be isolated. The US is also the largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs).

Biden has also been the strongest supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia. Trump is expected to recalibrate the unqualified financial and military aid that the Biden Administration had extended to Kiev. But it is doubtful whether Trump the extreme pragmatist who is not wedded to the Western’s world’s old-time ideology of democracy versus autocracy would be able to leverage his personal friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the nearly three-year war.

Trump has his own ideas of how NATO should be, and how the responsibility of keeping the military alliance afloat should be shared. He wants the European members of NATO increase their defence spend to 2 per cent of their respective GDPs. This is going to be a difficult task even for strong economies like Germany, while it will be much more so for other European members of the NATO.

Whatever his pro-business ideas, Trump will only harden the traditional US support for Israel. Biden did not restrict American military aid to Israel, and he stood by the Jewish state over the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

The Biden Administration had been urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for a ‘humanitarian’ ceasefire and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had flown to the Middle East scores of times. But the US was not able to prevail over Netanyahu to stop the attack on civilians in Gaza.

Biden for the first time for an American president had threatened Israel that he would stop the military aid if Israel did not stop targeting the civilians. Of course, Biden did not stop the military aid. All that he could do was threaten he would do so, Trump is unlikely to even pressurise Israel to agree to a ceasefire. Biden and Blinken must be trying hard to get the ceasefire going before Biden leaves office. It is difficult to say whether the Americans will succeed.

Trump will have little leeway in getting his way on the conflict zones in the world, whether it is in Ukraine, the Middle East or in the Taiwan Strait. His clarity on the China policy is confined to raising tariffs against all overseas trade partners of America, from Canada and Mexico, to India and China.

But when the issue goes beyond trade and tariffs, he has to fall back on America’s orthodox foreign policy positions of standing up for democracy, however hypocritical it might be in practice. Will Trump adapt to political and diplomatic cunning despite his bluster of plain speaking?

The Republican majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate may not make things easier for Trump to push through his simplistic policies. The Republican lawmakers understand the intricacies of policy and they are likely to reject many of his proposals. He has to negotiate with his own party in the Congress.