After US President Donald Trump’s disastrous defeat in the midterm elections, the American leader will have little option but to spend his remaining two years in office focusing on his controversial foreign policy agenda. With Republicans losing control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Trump has effectively become a lame-duck president when it comes to implementing his domestic agenda.
Under the US Constitution, Congress controls both the legislative agenda and the purse strings, meaning that without Democrats’ support, Trump will find it virtually impossible to pursue his political and economic agenda.
And with the Democrats giving every indication that they intend to spend the next two years of Trump’s term at the White House launching investigations into his conduct, especially over allegations of corruption, Trump’s main priority on the domestic front is likely to focus on defending himself against the possibility of facing impeachment.
With Trump’s room for manoeuvre severely limited so far as his domestic agenda is concerned, his only option will be to concentrate his energy on global concerns, an area where he will have far more freedom to act given the powers he still retains as the country’s commander-in-chief.
Foreign focus
This means that, so far as the ongoing conflicts in Iran, Gaza and Ukraine are concerned, Trump will still be able to play a leading role, one that, so far as the Middle East is concerned, could have profound implications for the region’s future stability and security.
The only obstacles he is likely to face from Democrats in his dealings on the world stage will emerge if he requires Congressional approval. For example, any further attempt by the Trump administration to ease sanctions against Russia as part of the president’s attempts to improve relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin would face stiff resistance from the Democrats in Congress, which has the power to veto any changes to the existing US sanctions policy against Russia.
Most Democrats simply do not share Trump's confidence that Russia is serious about negotiating a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict. The Kremlin has certainly lost no time seeking to take advantage of what the Russians will see as Trump’s diminished status after the midterms, with Moscow keen to use the American leader’s domestic difficulties to press for a peace deal that is favourable to Moscow’s interests.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Trump’s disastrous showing in the midterms by saying he hoped the American president would remain committed to helping broker a deal to end the Ukraine conflict. “President Trump will continue his term, and we sincerely count on him continuing his peacemaking efforts,” Peskov told a state media reporter.
