INDIAN OPTIMISM AWAITING A TRUMPIAN ORDER

We are dealing with a superpower seeking to reconcile multiple interests in a challenging global environment. Convergence of interests does not translate to a congruence of actions

- P S RAGHAVAN

Donald Trump will be inaugurated today as the 47th President of the United States, but he has already dominated the information space for over two months with media conferences, foreign and domestic policy prescriptions and Cabinet appointments. To cap it all, he claims a major credit for Wednesday's Hamas-Israel hostage release deal.

The world now awaits the new President with anticipation, anxiety and trepidation. A poll for a Brussels-based think tank (ECFR) and an Oxford University Project showed major European nervousness: merely 34 percent of respondents from 11 European Union countries felt Trump was good for America; even fewer (22 percent) felt he would be good for the EU.

These sentiments are obviously in response to Trump's harsh public pronouncements about EU freeloading on the US on trade and NATO's dependence on the US for security.

It upends the post-War understanding that Europe would support the liberal global order abroad, in return for US security umbrella and lenient economic terms.

The first order of business is to disengage from the conflict in Ukraine so that the US can focus more on the strategic challenge from China. Since his boast that he would stop the war in 24 hours, Trump has come to realize that many conflicting interests in the US, Europe and Russia need to be reconciled.

Trump's presumed policy guide, Project 2025, suggests a Eurasian security architecture comprising Europe developing a conventional deterrent against Russia, with the US providing a nuclear umbrella. With Europe's limited indigenous military-industrial capacity and economic situation, it is difficult to see this happening in the near term. The reasons for disaffection with Trump are obvious.