View from the Himalayas | What a second Trump term means for America and the Himalayas

To say that he has a sweeping mandate would be to state the obvious. How did it happen and, as importantly, what does it mean to America and the world?

In the 2024 election, Trump tapped into the dark American mood over continued inflation, and resentment of the working class (including among the Blacks and Hispanics) toward the liberal elite, successfully projecting Kamala Harris, born to Jamaican and South Asian parents, as a member of the progressive class. He made his followers believe that the Democrats had lost touch with the American people and that Kamala Harris was even a dangerous communist demagogue. In his campaign speeches, he repeatedly chided her (‘Comrade Kamala’), a rhetorical device he had used with a certain degree of success against Hillary Clinton (‘Crooked Hillary) and Joe Biden (‘Sleepy Joe’) and many others he decides to admonish, including foreign leaders, media figures (‘Fake Jake’) and certain groups (‘Lunatic Left’).

In a very thoughtful article penned after the election results were announced, David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, talks about the alienated Americans: “These people, and many other Americans, weren’t interested in the politics of joy that Kamala Harris and the other law school grads were offering.”

A billionaire, Trump managed to appeal to the working-class voters across the racial divide.

To many, Trump takes up American leadership in January 2025 as the most consequential American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, known by his initials FDR. Like Trump, FDR was also born in New York to wealthy parents; he was first elected president in 1932. He introduced groundbreaking federal legislation, providing economic relief to people suffering during the Great Depression. American historians now rank FDR among the three most successful US presidents. Three major events defined the dark American mood in the 1930s and 40s – the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl (a series of storms brought on by a lengthy drought killing people, livestock, and crops), and the Second World War.

Notably, the success of the New Deal also offered a blueprint for the new world with three major pillars: the institutionalisation of collective security, economic stability, and the rule of law. This became instrumental in defining what we now call “the postwar international order,” resting on negotiation and diplomacy. Thus, FDR offered an internationalist vision for America as it became the preeminent leader of the free world.

How will Trump’s vision impact the world we live in – for Asia, South Asia, and the Himalayan region? And do small states in the region even feature in the grand Trumpian sphere? If the past is any indication, many are understandably uneasy about the prospect of an iconoclastic second term.

First, in November 2020, exactly four years ago, America became the first nation to formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement in the final days of Trump’s presidency. The Paris Agreement was drafted in 2015 to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change.

The Himalayas are immensely vulnerable to climate change. The mountain range is the largest source of stored water after the polar regions. In the last decade, the glaciers in the Himalayas have melted 65% faster than in the previous decade, with Nepal losing almost a third of its ice volume in 30 years. This has catastrophic consequences just not only for the highlanders but also for the millions of others downstream. The glaciers feed large river systems, including those originating from the Tibetan Plateau, home to over 1.8 billion. Already, the reduced water flows in the Indus, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra have threatened crops, livestock and the economies of communities downstream. Low-lying communities face existential threats.

In October last year, the glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in South Lhonak Lake in northern Sikkim led to floods in the Teesta and incapacitated a 1,200MW hydroelectric plant, which powers cities downstream in the plains.

In Bhutan, glacier retreat was approximately 8% in 66 glaciers that were studied from 1963 and a satellite image taken in 1993 while some small glaciers have disappeared completely. From 1962 to 2000, the retreat of the Imja glacier in the Everest region was found to be among the highest in the Himalayas. On August 16 this year, Thame, another village close to Everest, was hit by floods from the Thyanbo glacial lake, destroying a whole community, including hotels for high-land visitors. Alarmingly, several glacial lakes lie upstream of Thame.

An ICIMOD study has revealed 21 GLOF events from the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. Records of past GLOF events illustrate that once every three to 10 years, a GLOF has occurred in Nepal, Bhutan and China causing varying degrees of socioeconomic impacts. The Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) studies eight countries in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region – Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Another study in the Poiqu basin in Tibet in 2004 revealed that the glacier area had decreased by over 5% within 12 years from 1988 to 2000. Similarly, the Gangotri Glacier snout in the Indian Himalayas had shifted about 2km upwards from 1780 to 2001 due to climate change. To the visitors and locals in the Himalayas, bare mountains and lack of snow cover have now become common sights. In the sub-continent temperatures are predicted to rise above an average between 3.5°C and 5.5°C by 2100.

The great power game

Other than the non-traditional security threats like the climate crisis, Trump’s second term in office raises concerns over how the rivalry between America and China will play out in the region, and what that would mean to smaller states – Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, which are going through their own share of internal political, social and economic transitions and crises. Externally, they face new geopolitical headwinds. For example, India, South Asia’s traditional hegemon, is a member of the Quad, which China believes is a tool to contain China. For its part, China is expanding its footprint across the Himalayas in South Asia. With all their outstanding boundary disputes, India and China continue to expand bilateral trade and simultaneously engage with Russia in multilateral forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Brics.

As the world experiences these tectonic geopolitical shifts, a predictable United States mindful of engaging independently with small states, would be a desirable prospect. Is that asking too much in Trump 2.0?

Akhilesh Upadhyay is a Senior Fellow at IIDS, a Kathmandu-based think tank. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of The Kathmandu Post. Views expressed are personal.