The way Donald Trump has begun his second innings as the President of United States do not sound very comfortable for the rest of the world. The dramatic way he signs the executive orders before the members of the press gives an indication of his ‘I-don’t-care-anybody’ attitude, which he will follow in the four years of his tenure. And this does not augur well for the world.
The first thing he did was to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The move is in tune with his earlier stand not to recognise the climate change phenomenon. He is in a tearing hurry to make USA super rich and for this reason he publicly announced that his motto will be to ‘drill, drill, and drill’. USA has ‘liquid gold’ underground and he intends to extract that. So the Paris Agreement has to go for a toss since USA, with more cheap fuel at hand, will not follow the global restrictions on emissions. The withdrawal also means that the US will not pay the funds which it had committed earlier to United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC). The attitude is very clear: who cares for the health of the world? Almost immediately, he signed another executive order by which the US withdraws from World Health Organisation (WHO) on the plea that China pays much less money to the organisation and yet virtually runs WHO.
Some of his other executive orders – like the one on immigration – have been put on hold by the Supreme Court orders; his decision that henceforth the US will only have a binary gender – male and female – and no third gender has been heavily criticised. But he is adamant – he will have his way for sure. In his hurry to ‘make America great again’ (MAGA) he announced spending, through a consortium, 500 billion dollars on the AI industry, which is supposed to spearhead the new American dream. Almost the same day, China released DeepSeek, an open source app developed at a cost which is miniscule when compared to the AI apps of Microsoft, Google and other American software giants. This obviously rattled Trump and his consortium. The IT stocks in the market nosedived.
However, sanity still prevails in America and in the rest of the world. US billionaire Bloomsberg announced that he will pay the amount that America has promised to UNFCCC. But what happens to WHO? Who will be the benefactor? Such questions will continue to be asked following such frequent erratic behaviour in the next four years. He has also put on hold all US Aid contributions. This will put smaller nations
in jeopardy. One such beneficiary to be affected immediately will be Bangladesh. Bangladesh, of course, which is now in turmoil, will need careful handling. The return of Trump as president of the US in the context of Bangladesh may be beneficiary for India because Trump is no friend of Mohammed Yunus, who has now replaced Hasina as the leader of Bangladesh. And Hasina is an ally of India and stays here as an exile. Bangladesh is now in dire need of funds. If US Aid is stalled, Bangladesh will drift to the China camp for help, which is neither good for the US or India.
The ‘bear-hug’ of Narendra Modi is by now good inter-national relations for India. But we were surprised not to find the Indian Prime Minister at the swearing in ceremony of President Trump, though the Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar was present. We are told, Narendra Modi will be in the US in February. Lots of things need to be sorted out in the Trump-Modi meeting. First in the agenda should be Bangladesh. In this context, Trump’s return is advantage India: can India’s friend Hasina be re-located in Bangladesh? Will it be safe for India to allow Bangladesh to drift towards the China camp? India is the new found ally of USA in today’s geo-politics where China has clearly replaced the erstwhile USSR in the ‘cold war’ 2.0.
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