America Adrift

When U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis traveled to South Korea and Japan in February 2017, he was seen as a reliable messenger of the then-new U.S. administration's resolve to demonstrate a degree of continuity in U.S. Asia policy. In Seoul, Mattis affirmed the United States' commitment to South Korea; similarly, in Japan he shored up support for the U.S.-Japan alliance, even specifically clarifying the United States' assurance that the disputed Senkaku Islands would be covered under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty's collective defense clause.

At the time, Mattis' first trip to Asia was also seen by multiple commentators and analysts as an "apology tour" of sorts. By shoring up support for U.S. alliances early in Donald Trump's presidency, Mattis was making amends for his commander-in-chief's impolitic criticisms of these countries during the presidential campaign and transition. Trump had famously criticized both Japan and South Korea for inadequate host nation support payments for U.S. troops on their soil and even shrugged when asked if he would mind if Seoul and Tokyo pursued indigenous nuclear weapons programs should U.S. extended deterrence guarantees falter.

Some months passed and Mattis once again returned to Asia. This time, his flight touched down in Singapore for the 2017 iteration of the Shangri-La Dialogue, the region's most important security forum, just a day after Trump announced that the United States would be unilaterally withdrawing from the Paris agreement. Mattis also arrived in Singapore just a little more than a week after Trump, to the shock of many, refused to explicitly endorse Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's charter — the article codifying the transatlantic alliance's collective defense provisions.

As I arrived at the Dialogue myself, early conversations with other participants on the sidelines revolved around these two developments. Everyone knew that Mattis was back in Asia not only to offer a speech outlining the Trump administration's Asia policy in detail, but also to assure a room filled with everyone from skeptical security analysts, think tankers, and journalists to defense ministers and officials from friendly and adversarial states alike that the United States would remain a constant in the Asia-Pacific. In my conversations at the Dialogue, however, interlocutors from Australia to Vietnam to South Korea to India expressed uneasiness with Mattis' continued reliability as a credible messenger on behalf of his president.

The core dilemma that had become apparent at the five month mark of the Trump administration was that the president and his agents — including his most senior cabinet members — were operating on different wavelengths. Recall that in the lead up to Trump's hotly anticipated speech at the NATO summit in Belgium, Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster had all offered assurances to the United States' European allies that Trump supported Article Five. So, when the president delivered his remarks in Belgium — remarks that notably had seen input from members of his White House's more nationalist wing — that lack of an explicit endorsement of the article dealt a blow to the credibility of these messengers.

Back in Singapore, Mattis ultimately delivered a well-received speech that to many observers seemed to have been something that his predecessor, Ashton Carter, could have also delivered. Indeed, the content of his speech, divorced of the broader context surrounding the Trump administration, would have been greatly reassuring to U.S. allies and partners. Mattis, unlike his president, showed great interest in the uncertain future of the liberal rules-based order and the security architecture of the Asia-Pacific. He even evoked the July 12 ruling by a five-judge tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which found China's capacious claims in the South China Sea invalid under international law. Mattis punctuated his speech with sharp assurances that the United States would continue to stand up for regional norms like the freedom of navigation and overflight.

At the end of the day, for long-time watchers of Asian security like myself, this was just another speech by another secretary of defense at another Shangri-La Dialogue, hitting on familiar themes. But, immediately after Mattis had finished speaking, the question and answer session kicked off with a question about the elephant in the room. The director of an Australian think tank asked the secretary why, given the Trump administration's chaotic unilateralism on matters ranging from NATO to the Paris agreement to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, should his word be taken at face value?

Put differently: why should anyone in that room believe what James Mattis has to say about U.S. policy in Asia when the president is likely to continue shooting from the hip?

Mattis' answer instantly became a classic of this year's Shangri-La Dialogue:

…to quote a British observer of us from some years ago, "Bear with us. Once we've exhausted all possible alternatives, the Americans will do the right thing." So, we will still be there. And we will be there with you. 

That was far from a ringing endorsement of his president or his policies, but here was the U.S. secretary of defense telling a room full of defense officials and security gawkers that this, too, shall pass — that once the Trump administration had wrapped up its time in office, the United States would still be around and would still have enduring interests in the Asia-Pacific. As far as the mission of immediate reassurance went, however, this was not a comforting line. All around the room, there was nervous laughter at the idea that "the Americans will do the right thing" anytime soon.

But still, that quip contains perhaps more useful information about the nature of U.S. policy and strategy in the Asia-Pacific region in the Trump era than the rest of Mattis' carefully calibrated and honed speech. As the first six months of this administration have shown, the traditional assumptions of a certain degree of baseline continuity in U.S. foreign policy — a constant since really Harry Truman's administration — no longer hold. This meant that for all the detail contained in Mattis' speech, he ultimately failed in the core task of offering a degree of reassurance that the United States would continue to act as it had in the past under its new president.

For now, perceptions of the United States will remain uncertain and expectations for the future gloomy among partners and allies. For adversaries, however, a United States adrift will present immense opportunity.