In his second term as U.S. President, Donald Trump has created quite a flutter. Many see his actions as disruptive. Some call them populist. And there are others who find him perfectly in sync with ground realities.
So why is Trump doing what he is? Many people say Trump has transformed American politics, which is actually not true, says James Jay Carafano, foreign policy and security expert. “What Trump did is capture a populist movement. Populism today is not what it was in the 19th or the 20th century.”
Populism Has Changed?
Modern populism is bottom up, not top down, he adds. So people are picking leaders to fix what are fundamentally bread and butter issues. More than green energy, people care about affordable and reliable energy, border security and immigration, politicization of free speech, Carafano, senior counselor to the president at The Heritage Foundation, told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale.
People have a lot of ideas on China but everybody recognises that China’s growing power creates problems, he added.
Voters increasingly want a government that delivers on issues actually important to people rather than the government dictating terms to them. “People have their priorities rather than being told to care about the green agenda, have as many genders as they want and that their children should get to decide what their own sex is.”
So the world world’s changing and while it may seem that Donald Trump is breaking all the eggs, all he’s doing is making an omelette, according to Carafano.
He feels issues that made Americans vote for Trump hold good for what voters in India or elsewhere care about. He doesn’t think Indian foreign policy would turn 180 degrees if another political party comes to power. Even on many domestic issues, Indians would hate the idea of segregating people in the name of equity or inclusion, he adds.
‘India, U.S. Natural Partners’
Carafano thinks in many ways America and India are natural partners because what both want to do in the world is actually similar. He fails to understand why people think tariffs or H-1B visa issues will destroy the bilateral relationship.
“I’ve seen four American Presidents so far, Republican and Democrat, and we’ve gone in one direction with U.S.-India ties. And that’s forward. It’s not really about whether it’s Donald Trump or Barack Obama. It’s about what’s in the best interests of people in both countries.”
Is the China factor driving the India-U.S. partnership? What we have discovered is actually not really about China. It’s that our world views and our goals for the world are so linked together that we are really a natural partnership, he adds.
“So we probably should thank the Chinese for being so evil. But the reality is we (India & U.S.) had a blind date and now we’re going to get married.”
