In the last few weeks since his inauguration President Donald Trump has actively bulldozed through various significant policies driving fundamental change in the way in which the United States is positioning itself globally.
The sheer speed and directness of his tactics have left his main opposition, the Democrats, largely grasping at straws and unable to land any significant criticisms. This has also forced the world to take notice of Trump’s leadership and thrust the USA once more into the spotlight as a major world player.
Trump’s approach would be embraced by the realist tradition as very direct.
In international relations, realism is the theory that frames global politics as a continuous struggle for power among self-interested states. It emphasizes the role of the state and national interest, and argues that the international system is anarchic. There is no central authority over states and thus their primary concern is a drive to exercise power over others. Let’s define power simply. Power is the ability of character A to get character B to do something that character B would not normally have done.
Afrter reading Ivo Vegter’s argument titled “Trump: a very stupid trade war”, I believe he likely did himself a disservice in that he should have waited to see if the tariffs and trade war that he criticises were actually ever going to be put into effect. They were not. After Trump’s meeting with the Mexican president, she agreed to send 10 000 troops to the border. So Trump has suspended those tariffs for a period for further discussion. The same is true for Canada which will now enter negotiations while its tariffs are delayed for a month.
Trump gets to make an easy claim on these victories. He made direct threats, forced a response from these states and effectively now he can force discussions from a position of strength, all while showcasing American power. He picked on Canada, probably one of the USA’s greatest and closest allies. Whether poorly thought-out or not, what Trump has very clearly communicated to the world is this. No one is safe. It’s a win, simple as that. Trump was able to make these countries respond to American foreign policy in a way to make them defer. Country A exercising power over country B. Has this damaged relations? Quite possibly, but that isn’t of interest to Trump. He wants to win.
And now, as Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) take a scythe to the bureaucracy, opponents of these actions are finding themselves hard-pressed to find public support for their opposition. The United States Federal Government has grown so big that the team from DOGE can find countless examples of waste and mismanagement that it can then use to continuously reinforce its mandate.
With the USA Agency for Internal Development (USAAID) in their sights, the teams at DOGE are finding the receipts for countless programmes that make no sense or cannot be explained. Without a doubt, USAAID has done incredibly important work globally, pertaining to healthcare, access to clean water, specific HIV/AIDS programmes and poverty alleviation. But the agency has grown so big and its mandate so broad that the current administration has decided the time has come to properly evaluate exactly what it is doing and for which countries. Is the cut-and-slash approach being adopted by the Trump administration appropriate? The DOGE team seems to think so, particularly if the intention is to shut it down totally or reform its mandate, which appears to be the direction where things are going. Will it alienate large portions of the staff and hurt the USA’s relationships in the countries or communities where USAAID was deployed? Most likely, but this isn’t the matter that is being considered with these actions.
The challenge that segments of the media in the USA are facing is that Trump and his administration have clearly learnt lessons from their first term in office. They are moving quickly and decisively on various key policy matters that they were committed to in the election.
The media are not only struggling to keep up, but they are also unable to direct their criticism in an effective manner, because Trump and his team are very effectively delivering on the mandate they offered their voters. Whether people support that mandate or not.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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