Grading the Trump Administration’s Asia Strategy

Just a week before Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, Donald Trump’s National Security Council declassified and published its strategy for Asia.

Called the “U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific,” the formerly classified document outlined the administration’s objectives and priorities for the region and spelled out how the rest of the U.S. government should align and coordinate its activities and policies. While containing few surprises if one followed the Trump administration’s policies and decisions, the unusual early declassification move probably makes it harder for the Biden administration and the United States’ partners in Asia to maintain policy continuity from anything it might want to hold over from the Trump White House. 

Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington think tank, and a former China director on the National Security Council staff during the Obama administration, said that by declassifying and publicizing the strategy, the Trump administration “[treats] the document as their own intellectual property, rather than as an enduring [U.S. Government] framework for the Biden administration to build on,” cheapening the National Security Council and giving China the impression that it can simply wait out strategies that it does not like.

The framework contains plenty to question, examine, and criticize. One of the first things listed are nine “end states” or regional objectives that are intended to drive all other government decisions and policies. Regardless of whether one agrees with those end states, they provide an opportunity to grade the Trump administration against its own criteria for success in the Indo-Pacific. The end states are listed below in italics as they appeared in the framework, along with an assessment of how far the Trump administration came to meeting them.

“North Korea no longer poses a threat to the U.S. homeland or our allies; the Korean Peninsula is free of nuclear, chemical, cyber, and biological weapons.”

North Korea’s nuclear program has been an intractable challenge for four U.S. presidential administrations and denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula was a fantastical goal even before Trump came into office. But as he leaves office, North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is even more capable and advanced than most observers thought possible.

In 2017, Trump may have brought the two countries closer to war (“much closer than anyone would know,” as he told an interviewer) than any point since the armistice was signed in 1953. He then set up a series of high-profile summits with Kim Jong Un that delivered no more than photo opportunities in the end.

Capability-wise, North Korea is now a far greater threat to the U.S. homeland than when Trump took office. In the last four years North Korea unveiled at least four new ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. In January it displayed yet another new missile that appears to be the largest road-mobile ICBM in the world, giving Kim Jong Un at least three missiles that can strike the continental United States.

Unquestionably this is the worst-handled aspect of the Trump administration’s Asia policy.

“The United States maintains diplomatic, economic, and military preeminence in the fastest-growing region in the world; most nations in the Indo-Pacific view the United States as their preferred partner; U.S. economic strength and influence increase throughout the region.”

The United States probably remains the “preferred” diplomatic partner in Asia despite the Trump administration’s neglect and occasional ostracization of important regional relationships. But this is only because China’s overt bellicosity and coercion, such as its recent ban against Australian coal imports over the latter’s support for an international investigation into the origin of the COVID-19 virus, was a greater threat than Trump’s transactional caprice.

The U.S. State Department did pay more attention to oft-forgotten partners such as Micronesia and Palau, where China has focused growing funds and diplomatic attention. But the United States antagonized other, larger partners. Trump skipped major regional summits in Asia and other U.S. delegations were downgraded, earning the United States reciprocal snubs when Trump traveled to Southeast Asia in 2019. 

Trump antagonized South Korea and Japan, both critical to the United States’ forward presence in the Pacific, with shakedown demands for more money to keep U.S. forces stationed there. As leverage, Trump threatened to pull troops out of both countries while his administration simultaneously warned that China’s growing military clout required greater forward presence and investment in new and more advanced military kit.

It has probably been a long time since the U.S. military enjoyed unchallenged “preeminence” in the Pacific, and it is debatable whether getting it back is either affordable or strategically necessary. But during the Trump administration China’s navy grew decisively larger than the United States’ and oft-repeated plans out of the White House and Pentagon to build a larger and more powerful U.S. fleet were never paired with a budget to get the job done.

“Regional countries uphold the principles that have enabled U.S. and regional prosperity and stability, including sovereignty, freedom of navigation and overflight, standards of trade and investment, respect for individual rights and rule of law, and transparency in military activities.”

The country that the United States is most concerned with abiding by these principles is China. The Trump administration significantly increased the frequency of naval and air patrols to assert navigational freedoms, particularly in the South China Sea. Most of these were aimed at China’s maximalist claims around its nine-dash line and the artificial islands it built up in the Spratly Islands, but the United States also made similar patrols against excessive claims by nominal partners such as Vietnam as well.

It isn’t clear that these patrols increased China’s or anyone else’s respect for navigational freedoms, but they maintained the United States’ interpretation of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The United States also made strong condemnations of China’s human rights abuses and violations of trade and legal standards. This at least prevents the appearance of assent by silence, but other actions, such weakening the World Trade Organization’s arbitral body and making capricious use of tariffs and trade sanctions, weakened the United States’ position as a champion of those principles it wants to hold the rest of Asia to.

“Free markets are the mainstream of Asia, and the U.S. economy generates jobs and growth as a consequence of its interaction with the Indo-Pacific region.”

It is difficult to claim that the Trump administration took this end state seriously since among Trump’s first acts as president was to kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive free trade agreement negotiated by the Obama administration. The Trump administration did revise its free trade agreement with South Korea, though it is not clear that the agreement required re-negotiation, or that the new agreement made any significant changes to trade between the two countries. 

“Regional disputes are resolved lawfully and without coercion.”

None of the Indo-Pacific’s myriad disputes moved appreciably closer to resolution during the Trump administration. One of Asia’s longest-simmering disputes, over the Himalayan border between China and India, unexpectedly boiled over last summer, resulting in deadly clashes at Ladakh and China advancing and reinforcing the area it controls.

In 2020 the United States clarified and strengthened its policy positions on the South China Sea to align with the rulings of the 2016 U.N. arbitration panel, denying China’s right to maritime claims emanating from the Paracel and Spratly Islands that overlap the Philippines’ claim. This could position the United States to push back more effectively against China’s maritime coercion but is undermined by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s contradictory stance on the arbitration ruling, alternately embracing and dismissing it in cyclical attempts to gain favor with Beijing.

“Southeast Asia is bound more tightly together in business, security, and civil society – including through a strengthened Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – and works closely with the United States… to uphold the principles identified above.”

The United States’ ability to impact intra-ASEAN politics either negatively or positively is fairly limited. It will likely never be as cohesive as the United States may desire, nor a unified bloc aligned with U.S. preferences when it comes to dealing with China. Trump only attended one U.S.-ASEAN summit during his term and no East Asia Summits. President Barack Obama attended most of those summits during his eight years in office and sent appropriately senior officials to those that he did not. The officials Trump sent to represent him were far more junior than any other delegation and signaled to the region that Southeast Asia was not a genuine priority to the White House.

“Southeast Asia is capable of managing terrorist threats with minimal assistance from non-ASEAN states.”

The United States provided significant counterterrorism assistance to Southeast Asian countries in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Much of that effort has since been scaled back, although it has not disappeared. The greatest test to this end state was separatist violence in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The Duterte government imposed martial law there for two years while Trump was in office but received minimal military assistance from the United States.

“India’s preferred partner on security issues is the United States. The two cooperate to preserve maritime security and counter Chinese influence in South and Southeast Asia… India maintains the capacity to counter border provocations by China.”

India and the United States conducted expanded military exercises together during the Trump administration and signed an agreement to enhance defense technical and communications interoperability in 2018. China’s deadly border skirmish with Indian troops last summer raises questions about India’s ability to withstand future provocation in the Himalayas without risking more serious military escalation. India’s pursuit of Russian-made S-400 air defense missile systems and joint Indo-Russian cruise missile development strains the defense relationship with the United States but is unlikely to dampen the common interest to cooperate on maritime security issues.

“India remains preeminent in South Asia and takes the leading role in maintaining Indian Ocean security, increases engagement with Southeast Asia, and expands its economic, defense, and diplomatic cooperation with other U.S. allies and partners in the region.”

This goal can be seen in the administration’s attempts to reinvigorate the Indo-Pacific “Quad” concept with India, Australia, and Japan (though to a mixed reception by the other members) and work to strengthen the U.S. military’s defense ties and cooperation to India. It also reflects India’s economic and military heft compared to its neighbors. However, it reads awkwardly as a specifically identified goal for the region that the United States needs to encourage. 

India is unlikely to be surprised that it has the United States’ favor and making it public seems bound to create needless diplomatic challenges for the Biden administration when working with other partners and countries in South Asia. India may also now be reticent to expand its security engagement with East Asia lest it be viewed as being at the behest of the United States instead of for its own sake and on its own initiative.

“The United States and its partners on every continent are resistant to Chinese activities aimed at undermining their sovereignty…”

China seeks to exert influence on governments and societies everywhere, sometimes openly, sometimes through covert means, and sometimes through overt coercion and intimidation. It is not clear that many of these activities seek to undermine the sovereignty of those states. So-called “debt diplomacy” may come close, with Chinese investors seizing control of significant infrastructure projects such as airports and ports built through the Belt and Road Initiative when impoverished countries prove unable to repay the construction loans. Most of these countries nevertheless have proven able to preserve their sovereign control against Chinese moves, but it is not clear that the United States did anything to shore up their positions.

Graded against its own objectives, the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy and policy was broadly a failure. The end states in the best shape turn out to be the ones that the United States had the least influence over. For those reasons alone, it is unlikely that the Biden administration will similarly reveal its classified regional objectives when its term comes to an end.