Shifting Perceptions of America in Asia

January 2019 marked the two-year milestone for the Trump administration. The United States is now halfway through what may be the first of two terms of a president that, in 2017, introduced a radical rethink of what had stood as the fundamentals of American foreign policy for some 70 years. Trump’s long-standing disdain for U.S. alliances and leadership at multilateral institutions wasn’t just talk. The United States followed through on the president’s inclinations, withdrawing from a range of international agreements – from the 2015 Paris Accords on climate change to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program, signed that same year. Trump’s “America First” doctrine – articulated in his inaugural address – was more than just talk.

Optimists have pointed to the easily observable fact that the U.S. foreign policy apparatus is greater than the personage of the president. American foreign policy is implemented by a massive bureaucracy after all, comprising professional civil servants and appointees at the Departments of Defense, State, Commerce, and Treasury, among others. But while that may hold some truth, the broader narrative about the nature of the United States in global affairs has primarily moved in a negative direction. Recent survey work by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center takes stock of just how far perspectives in U.S.-allied and partnered states has shifted in the Trump era.

The data is not encouraging for supporters of U.S. global leadership. Across the board, with just one exception – Poland  – respondents in U.S.-allied and partnered states view the “power and influence” of the United States as a greater threat in the Trump era than before. Among Asian countries, Japan and South Korea – the two most important U.S. treaty allies in the region –  are standouts. In 2018, 67 percent of South Korean respondents and 66 percent of Japanese respondents answered in the affirmative when asked if they see American power as a threat to their countries. In South Korea’s case, the number was a modest increase from 2013, when 66 percent answered in the affirmative when Barack Obama was president. With Japan, however, the researchers found a 17 percentage point increase.

Japan isn’t an outlier in this regard. The shift is most dramatically visible in Europe, where countries like Germany and France saw a 30 and 29 percentage point increase in affirmative responses between 2013 and 2018. Indeed, the Trump administration has yet to make a move in Asia similar to its unilateral decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which directly exposes Europe to vulnerability at the hand of Russia’s treaty-violating missiles. Berlin and Paris have broader concerns, too, with the administration’s eagerness to encourage far-right parties in their countries.

A few other results in the Asian region are notable. Another key ally in the Indo-Pacific region that posted a remarkable shift between 2013 and 2018 was Australia, which, like Japan, saw a 17 percentage point jump in the proportion of respondents that view American power as a threat to their country. A less surprising – but equally notable – outcome is to be found in the Philippines. Among the most pro-American countries in the world, the Philippines remains so even in the Trump era. Just 29 percent of Filipinos see U.S. power as a threat – a 4 percentage point increase from 2013. That this remains true in the Philippines nearly three years into the term of a vocally anti-American president, Rodrigo Duterte, speaks to the enduring fundamentals of the alliance there.

Together, these shifts in how the United States is perceived among friendly countries pose a long-term challenge. As Washington acknowledges a new era of great power competition with China, primarily, but also Russia, it risks abdicating its greatest asymmetric strength: its network of allies. Especially in democracies, shifting views of the United States are likely to feed into local politics of unilateralism.

South Korea and Japan – the two countries that put up the highest showing in the Pew surveys for skepticism about U.S. power – continue to have leaderships that are publicly committed to working with the United States and with Trump personally. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, for instance, has not only agreed to renegotiate his country’s free trade agreement with the United States, but in February also agreed to increase his contributions to allied burden-sharing. Similarly, Japan’s Shinzo Abe has been an outlier among the G-7 in his approach to Trump. Ever since he rushed to New York City days after Trump’s election to greet the then-president-elect of the United States with a gold golf club, the Japanese prime minister has ensured that his country’s interests continue to inform American decision-making.

What may be encouraging looking ahead is that, in the Indo-Pacific, concerns about China continue to outpace any concerns about the United States. Respondents in South Korea and Japan – the very countries that rank the U.S. as a threat – find China to be even a greater concern. The concern is greatest in South Korea, where a whopping 82 percent of respondents cite China as a great threat. (The only greater threat to South Korea in the survey was climate change, which 86 percent of respondents cited.) Japan similarly saw 69 percent of respondents concerned about China, with the Philippines and Australia in tow with 56 and 51 percent respectively.

What does all this mean, in the end? For starters, with the American presidential campaign season kicking off already for 2020, the opposition to Trump on the Democratic side of the aisle will have to think about a new approach to American foreign policy should one of them win. Approaching Asia – and the world – cannot be business as before. On one hand, there would have to be an “apology tour” of sorts, rebuilding confidence in American leadership. But more seriously, the next U.S. president would need to assure American allies that even if it doesn’t share the Trump administration’s Manichean view of zero-sum great power competition, it will take the challenge posed by authoritarian competitors like Russia and China seriously.

Meanwhile, there remains the prospect of a second Trump term and it should be taken seriously. Incumbency is a powerful force for sitting presidents – even one as besieged domestically as Donald J. Trump. In recent travels to U.S. allied states – including South Korea, Japan, and Germany – interlocutors have confided that this would, in effect, change everything. The hedging in many of these capitals has already begun. Germany has been out in front more so than Seoul and Tokyo, where conversations remain hushed. Berlin has already started to speak of an “alliance of multilateralists” that might pick up the pieces of the liberal international order if American retreat becomes an eight year experience instead of a four year one.

What’s clear above all is that the damage is already done in the Trump era. What comes next in American foreign policy after Trump will require a rethink of the shibboleths that largely held between 1945 and 2016.