What to expect under another Trump presidency …… Syed Mohammad Ali

While it is not possible to predict the outcome of the next presidential race in the US, the policies adopted by the new American administration will have implications not only for Americans, but for the rest of the world as well.

Project 2025 is the radical blueprint for a potential second Trump administration put together by over two dozen or so right-wing supporters and affiliate of the former President. The resulting ‘Project 2025: Mandate for leadership, the Conservative project’ is a nearly 1,000-page document which claims to include input from more than four hundred scholars and policy experts of the conservative movement from across the US.

Project 2025 articulates an overtly right-wing governance model. Domestically, this document proposes a dramatic overhaul of the US government, including plans to boost presidential power and to ‘purge’ the American bureaucracy of “liberals”, who for Trump and his supporters represent “the swamp”.

While the bulk of Project 2025 is focused on dismantling the so-called ‘deep state’, this document also makes recommendations for how a potential conservative American government should conduct its foreign policies.

Project 2025 presents China as the main threat, and it argues for the need to counter Beijing’s belligerence, and to push American allies to do more to take on China. It wants to prevent the US Agency for International Development to stop promoting ‘woke’ cultural values including abortion, climate ‘extremism’ and efforts to contend with ‘perceived’ systemic racism.

Failing to discuss the human tragedy unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank, Project 2025 asserts that it is in America’s interest to build a Middle Eastern security pact which includes Israel, Egypt, the Gulf states, and even India, as a second ‘Quad’ arrangement to ensure regional security and to rebuff Chinese influence. Moreover, Project 2025 wants American allies to take on a greater share of the burden to deal with threats from Russia in Europe. At the same time, however, American Conservatives seem to want the US to ramp up and update it nuclear capabilities. Even though, such a move not only risks triggering an arms race with China, but its consequences could even upset the nuclear balance further afield, as in South Asia, for instance.

While Project 2025 wants to use statecraft to improve bilateral relations throughout the South Asia region, it wants to advance bilateral relations with India to counter the Chinese threat and secure a “free and open” Indo-Pacific. Project 2025 sees India as a critical security guarantor for key air and sea routes linking East and West, in addition to being an important economic partner. While Project 2025 notes the longstanding India-Pakistan tensions over the disputed territory of Kashmir, and how they pose risks to regional stability, it advises the State Department to strengthen the regional security framework linking the US and India, despite the potential risk of this increased security cooperation inflaming Pakistani and Chinese insecurities.

Moreover, Project 2025 asserts that “U.S. policy must be clear-eyed and realistic about the perfidiousness of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan” and about “the military-political rule in Pakistan”. It asserts that there should be no expectation of normal relations with either Afghanistan or Pakistan. These claims should provide a reality-check to some of the Pakistani analysts who think that another Trump presidency may be better for Pakistan, as the US may become less interventionist.

Of course, if Trump wins, his incoming administration may not accept all the recommendations laid out in the Project 2025 report. However, this influential report does provide an eye-opening sense of the sort of suggestions which are likely to be given very serious attention by Trump, if he wins another term in office. Perturbingly, most of these suggestions would not only increase tensions within the US, but they could also exacerbate problems afflicting other parts of the world.

Courtesy Express Tribune