Dhaka, Feb. 5 -- These are days of rapid fire politics in Donald Trump's America. Geopolitics has been pushed into chaotic unpredictability. With Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Elon Musk looking on, the world must now find the means of maintaining a sort of equilibrium in its dealings with the new regime in Washington. It will not be an easy task, for Trump has never been an easy man to deal with.

If there were many who had thought that his second presidency would be a qualitative improvement on his first, that it would be less confrontational than what it was by the time it ended in January 2021, they now realise that they have considerably more reasons for worry than they had in the years 2017-2021.

Begin at the beginning. The Trump te...