As the US elections approach, polls indicate that former president and convicted felon Donald Trump could be back in the Oval Office in early 2025.
For an indication of what a second Trump administration might look like, look no further than Project 2025, a transition plan led by the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank in Washington, DC.
The 922-page document is essentially a practical guide to a right-wing governance model, proposing a dramatic overhaul of the federal government with plans to expand presidential power and purge the civil service of “liberals” – the better to move forward. a hard-line agenda.
Although largely focused on dismantling the “Deep State,” the document also offers guidance on foreign policy, giving an aggressive tone to China – “the most significant danger to the security, freedoms and prosperity of Americans” – prioritizing production of nuclear weapons and restricting the international production of nuclear weapons. aid programs.
Read on to learn more about Project 2025’s vision for the US and its relations with the world. What is driving this political agenda? And should we all be worried?
How does Project 2025 see America’s place in the world?
In defense and foreign policy, Project 2025 aims for a definitive break with President Joe Biden’s administration.
Christopher Miller, who served as Secretary of Defense under Trump, criticizes Biden’s record in the bill’s robust Mandate for Leadership section, speaking of “disturbing decay” and a “dangerous decline” in “the nation’s capabilities and will.” .
The signs are all there, says Miller, pointing to the “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our impossibly confused China strategy, the increasing involvement of senior military officers in the political arena, and the deep confusion about the purpose of our military.”
Overall, Project 2025 has plans for a foreign policy that Allison McManus, managing director of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank based in Washington, D.C., told Al Jazeera that it would have long-term costs for the world because it would prioritize the military over humanitarian programs.
“There will be enormous costs when it comes to food insecurity, climate insecurity and conflict,” she said. “I think we will see millions, billions of people suffer globally. We will see reverberations around the world.”
What are some of Project 2025’s main foreign policies?
Here are some of the highlights:
Facing China
China is the project’s main defense concern. Miller fears that the country is “undertaking a historic military build-up” that “could result in a nuclear force that equals or exceeds America’s own nuclear arsenal.”
He wants to prevent China from subordinating Taiwan or allies such as the Philippines, South Korea and Japan, thereby upsetting the “balancing coalition… designed to prevent Beijing’s hegemony over Asia.”
As the U.S. faces what Project 2025 presents as Beijing’s belligerence, Miller wants U.S. allies to “step up,” some helping them confront China, others taking greater leadership in “dealing with threats from Russia in Europe, Iran, the Middle East.” East and North Korea.”
“There is a lack of nuance in China’s view,” McManus said.
The Biden administration, she said, “has taken China’s growth very seriously in recent decades and has prioritized how the U.S. competes in China, making investments in the U.S. industrial base, balancing areas of cooperation, say on climate, with areas of competition in Commerce and industry”.
Project 2025, she said, applies a “conflict lens to the US-China dynamic.”
Increasing nuclear weapons
Project 2025 wants the US to “modernize, adapt and expand its nuclear arsenal”.
“All U.S. nuclear capabilities and the infrastructure they rely on date back to the Cold War and are in urgent need of replacement,” Miller states in Mandate for Leadership.
Under Project 2025, nuclear production would be seriously increased. Among other things, this would involve accelerating the “development and production of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile.”
It would also involve nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada National Security Site – in defiance of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, to which the US is a signatory.
McManus said he sees “an effort to rebrand” with a Reagan-era “peace through strength” approach.
Aiming for international aid
Max Primorac, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, doesn’t like the “woke ideas” promoted by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
“The Biden administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue a divisive political and cultural agenda abroad that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism and interventions against perceived systemic racism,” he says in the Mandate for Project Leadership. .
The main problems of the project seem to be “gender radicalism” and the right to abortion.
As Primorac charges, the promotion of “gender radicalism” goes against “traditional norms in many societies where USAID works,” causing “resentment” because recipients have to reject their own “firmly held fundamental values regarding sexuality.” to receive “life-saving assistance”.
It also, he claims, created “total prejudice against men.”
He claims that abortion on demand is “aggressively” promoted under the guise of “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights”, “gender equality” and “women’s empowerment”.
To counter “woke ideas”, Project 2025 wants to “dismantle” all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which it considers “discriminatory”.
Among other things, this would involve eliminating all references in USAID communications to the terms “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender awareness,” “sensitive gender”, “abortion”, “reproductive health” and “sexual and reproductive rights”.
Can Project 2025 be avoided?
If the authors of Project 2025 get their way, there will be little resistance from the US administration under President Trump to implementing their changes.
The bill proposes an overhaul of the federal government, allowing the dismissal of up to 50,000 “liberal” workers and replacing them with eager loyalists who have already been listed in a database.
This, McManus said, is the real danger. “What they have laid out is the plan to remake the civil and foreign service with ideologues and loyalists,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Dissent is a crucial component of what it means to work in government. Many officials dedicate their services to promoting interests for the good of the people, and sometimes this means dissent.”
The situation was already written in the last Trump administration, she said. “At the highest levels, we saw several officials confronting some of Trump’s most dangerous inclinations.”
In 2020, for example, Miller’s predecessor, Mark Esper, was fired after disagreeing with Trump’s threat to use the military to suppress protests over racial injustice following the police killing of African-American George Floyd.
What does Project 2025 propose internally?
Much of the manifesto bears a strong resemblance to Trump’s familiar political leanings, with proposals to mass deport more than 11 million undocumented immigrants and give states more control over education while limiting progressive initiatives on issues such as LGBTQ rights.
But on some issues, it goes even further than Trump’s campaign, calling on federal authorities to ban pornography and reverse approval of a pill used in abortions, mifepristone. It also calls for anyone supplying or distributing abortion pills through the mail to be prosecuted.
Project 2025 is steeped in religious right values, committing to restoring “the family as the centerpiece of American life and protecting our children.”
It recommends that authorities “proudly affirm that men and women are biological realities” and that “married men and women are the ideal and natural family structure because all children have the right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them” .
In keeping with the theme, the Biden campaign posted a scene from the dystopian television drama The Handmaid’s Tale on X, showing women stripped of their identities in front of a cross, with the caption “Fourth of July under Trump’s Project 2025.”
Democrats, currently beset by concerns about Biden’s mental fitness for office after his poor debate performance late last month, have redoubled efforts to link Project 2025 to the Trump campaign.
Did Trump endorse Project 2025?
Aware that the perception of being guided by external groups could be a loss of votes, Trump claims that the transition plan has nothing to do with him.
“I have no idea who is behind this. I disagree with some of the things they are saying and some of the things they are saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he posted this month on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Although Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, he has close ties to the people who contributed to its launch.
According to journalist Judd Legum, 31 of the 38 people who helped write or edit the project served in some way in the Trump administration or transition.
1. Project 2025 is a radical project for a potential second Trump administration, led by the right @Heritage Foundation
Trump says he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025 and “has nothing to do with them”
THIS IS A LIE
HERE ARE THE FACTS
-Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 8, 2024
These include project director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the US Office of Personnel Management under Trump.
John McEntee, former director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel in the Trump administration, served as senior advisor on the project.
And the project’s partners include several prominent conservative groups linked to the Trump campaign, such as Turning Points USA; the Center for Renewing America, run by Russ Vought, former director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget; and America Legal First, founded by Stephen Miller, the former president’s immigration adviser.
Should the world be worried?
This will not be the first time that the Heritage Foundation has exerted direct influence over the US administration.
In 1981, at the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he published his first Leadership Mandate to “rescue the American people from Washington’s dysfunction.” Sixty percent of his recommendations for combating stagflation and winning the Cold War actually became political.
As much as Trump denies ties to the project, the evidence appears to tell a different story, critics say. The project’s main contributors also revealed their connections to the former president.
In February, Dans told a gathering of religious broadcasters in Nashville that he intended to serve in a second Trump administration.
And McEntee told the Daily Wire that Project 2025 would integrate much of its work with the Trump campaign when the presidential candidate announced his transition team.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
