Trump and US Leadership in Asia

Having witnessed a remarkable U.S. election, the world wonders how President-elect Donald J. Trump may choose to alter course on the country's foreign policy. In the Asia-Pacific, as elsewhere, this has raised considerable trepidation among allies and adversaries alike that the United States may grow unpredictable and unwilling to sustain the liberal international order. U.S. partners and allies additionally have grown concerned at Trump's rhetoric as a candidate, which revealed cost sensitivity to existing burden-sharing in U.S. alliances in Asia, including the ones with South Korea and Japan.

Meanwhile, Asia offers no shortage of flashpoints and diplomatic challenges that will require thoughtful U.S. leadership. North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs continue apace; China remains mired in maritime territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas; and nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan have ramped up their saber-rattling in the final months of 2016.

As the Trump team is set and the groundwork is laid for the presidential inauguration in the United States on January 20, 2017, much will remain uncertain about where U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy will go next in the Asia-Pacific. Will Barack Obama's rebalance persist? Will U.S. alliances endure? Will the nuclear nonproliferation agenda falter as South Korea and Japan consider nuclear breakout amid uncertainty about U.S. extended deterrence assurances?

Evidence for the evaluation of each of these questions remains inadequate given scant formal commentary by the incoming administration on its plans for the Asia-Pacific. An article authored by two Trump Asia advisers in Foreign Policy magazine, one of the few pieces of guidance for the administration's Asia policy, suggests that despite concerns about Trump's rhetoric as a candidate, we may see a fairly conventional Republican take on Asia-Pacific issues, including, most significantly, a strong emphasis on a forward-leaning U.S. hard power presence.

Recommitting U.S. hard power in the Asia-Pacific was always one of the goals of the Obama administration's pivot. The other leg of that diplomatic initiative – the economic ballast – was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a flagship 12-nation trade agreement that now appears to be fully moribund under the incoming Trump administration. Instead, Trump's Asia advisers, in the Foreign Policy article, highlight a plan to crack down on China, potentially leading to ruinous protectionist policies in the United States to placate the working class voters who supported Trump, accepting the narrative that trade and China were leading to the destruction of their jobs. (Never mind that automation might have been a more suitable culprit and that unemployment rates continue to be at 40-year historic lows nationally.)

Here a Trump administration is poised to depart considerably with the usual Republican foreign policy shibboleths. Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign chairman who was rewarded with a top White House post as chief strategist to the president-elect, has voiced support for protectionist economic policies, bemoaning the rise of an Asian “middle class.” Bannon, like Trump, suggests that zero-sum thinking about trade will find currency at the highest levels of U.S. policymaking, with deleterious outcomes for U.S. and Asian prosperity that go beyond the demise of the TPP in its current form.

Though the evaporation of the TPP represents a low point for the idea that U.S. Asia policy may see continuity under a Trump administration, hope remains that the considerable U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy, from the large diplomatic corps within the U.S. State Department to the intelligence community, may steer a Trump administration into effective continuity on more granular questions, including U.S. bilateral relationships in the region.

As Obama traveled in mid-November – first to Europe and then to Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit – he sought to argue this case. As the outgoing U.S. president told the New Yorker's David Remnick in one of his more revealing post-election interviews, the U.S. government – its foreign policy apparatus included – may be more like an aircraft carrier and less like a speedboat. Trump, despite his impulses, may be unable to effect real change, despite his rhetoric during the campaign.

Signs that Trump is looking to take a hands-on interest in Asia diplomacy are mixed at the moment. His history as a businessman reveals a persistent interest in Japan and China. Though one is a treaty ally and the other a great power rival today, Trump has described both as equally responsible for economic ruin in the United States. It remains to be seen if this long history of pointing fingers will make its way into his decision-making as president.

With Japan, some initial trepidation in Tokyo and Washington was offset by an early meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Trump in the second week after the election. Though a lack of press access and involvement by the U.S. State Department meant that little official information is available about the trajectory that the two leaders discussed for U.S.-Japan ties, Abe's conviction that Trump will be “trustworthy” assuages some concern in the short-term. Nevertheless, unease with Trump's foreign policy agenda continues to persist in Tokyo.

A particular area of concern for U.S. allies may come from U.S. adversaries in the Asia-Pacific region. China, Russia, and North Korea in particular may be willing to probe the Trump administration's reaction thresholds at various flashpoints. Given the disconnect between Trump's largely isolationist and retrenchment-favoring campaign rhetoric and hawkish early appointments as president-elect, adversaries may choose to probe for information about how this new and unconventional U.S. administration will behave.

Above all, the question both allies and adversaries alike will be seeking an answer to is whether a Trump administration will carry forward the common historical understanding among U.S. presidents going back to Harry Truman that Washington must underwrite the post-war liberal international order. Trump's inherent skepticism of the value of alliances – despite his cordiality with Abe – and lack of appreciation for the benefits conferred on the United States by the sustenance of this order do not bode well for the future of order in Asia and elsewhere in the world.

If the United States steps back, pursuing an insular “America First” approach to world affairs as Trump had often said during his campaign, Asian countries will have to prepare for change. The result won't be overnight Chinese hegemony, as has long been the fear of some, but make no mistake that Beijing's clout regionally would be amplified. The ambit of China's One Belt, One Road set of economic connectivity initiatives would expand. We would soon learn just how invested China is in the existing global order, which has benefitted its rise tremendously. It's not unimaginable that Beijing may soon be calling on a Trump-led United States to act as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system, echoing Robert Zoellick's 2005 counsel to Beijing.

Ultimately, a Trump presidency in the United States presents a wide range of possible trajectories for the future of order in Asia. More so than with a usual president, Trump's propensity for spontaneity and unpredictability create considerable space for crisis.