Trump 2.0: The rest of the world will have to adapt in various ways

Trump may spring surprises but there exists a broad outline that other policymakers could go by

- HARSH V. PANT is professor of international relations, King's College London, and vice president for studies at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

The era of Trump 2.0 has begun and everyone is busy trying to decipher the multiple meanings of the policy arrows that US President Donald Trump has unleashed from his quiver ever since winning the presidential contest in November. There are his appointments, there are his statements and then there are his pronouncements on social media. If there is a method to this madness, no one is quite sure, but for global policymakers who are already battling a turbulent phase in global politics, managing Trump's shake-ups will be a key policy objective in the coming months.

In one of his most important public interventions where he outlined his foreign policy agenda for his second term, he harked back to the era of territorial conquest and spheres of influence, while rejecting the constraints of allied partnerships and economic complementarity. He underlined his willingness to wrest control of the Panama Canal and Greenland through the use of force, even as he threatened Canada with obliterating its sovereignty. It was a remarkable statement of intent by a US policymaker in contemporary times as such a pronouncement by any other country would have led to the label of "rogue" being slapped on it by Washington itself.