The State – and Fate – of America’s Indo-Pacific Alliances

The United States’ Indo-Pacific security allies – Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand – have a major stake in the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. But the popular notion that the November 5 election, between former President Donald Trump and sitting Vice President Kamala Harris, represents an inflection point for U.S. foreign policy – i.e., the continuance of liberal internationalism versus isolationism and “America First” geopolitics – is vastly overstated, at least in the Indo-Pacific. Rather, U.S. foreign policy in this region is likely to remain consistent.

Although Trump and U.S. President Joe Biden disagree on most issues, one area of consensus is the Indo-Pacific. During Trump’s first term in office, in 2019 he and his team published the Indo-Pacific Strategy, which sought to maintain a “free and open” region primarily through strengthening alliances and partnerships to counter China. When Biden entered office in 2021, he doubled down on his predecessor’s approach.

Of course, Trump, being a more transactional and unpredictable leader, at times praised or threatened traditional U.S. allies, but overall, his administration not only left these alliances intact but, arguably, enhanced them as well. The Biden administration sought to repair what damage was caused by Trump and to vigorously upgrade alliances and partnerships across the board to assist in great power competition against Beijing. During her campaign, Harris emphasized continuity with the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

The prospect of continuity between the two main presidential candidates should be a welcome development for U.S. allies, who increasingly feel threatened by China’s growing economic and military power. Beijing’s rising assertiveness across the Indo-Pacific – against Taiwan in its air defense identification zone, the Philippines at territorial features within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea, or against India along the Himalayas at their disputed land border – is convincing allied capitals to bolster their security ties to the United States. Additionally, North Korea’s increasingly provocative threats and growing nuclear arsenal are of particular concern to Japan and South Korea.

These trends work independently of, and supersede, any political dynamics in Washington. In other words, whether under Trump or Harris, the China factor will foster the continued development of the U.S. alliance network.

The United States’ alliance with Australia demonstrates how domestic U.S. politics have been virtually irrelevant to foreign policy and threat perceptions of China most salient. During the Trump era, support for the alliance remained strong even as Canberra harbored deep reservations about the wisdom of relying so heavily on a less predictable United States. In 2017, for example, Australia agreed to revive the Quad, comprised of fellow democracies India, Japan, and the U.S., in part to find a collective means to counter China’s revisionist behavior throughout the region.

Canberra then further aligned itself with the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. Australia’s own growing bilateral tensions with China, including over Beijing’s harsh treatment of Hong Kong, bilateral trade disputes, and alleged Chinese political interference, contributed to Canberra in 2020 conducting a major strategic review that concluded China was Australia’s main security threat.

The Biden administration was able to further elevate the alliance in 2021 by inking the AUKUS (Australia-U.K.-U.S.) security deal. Headlined by the joint production of nuclear-powered submarines, the AUKUS framework further encompasses a range of other security cooperation activities, to include joint basing and advanced research into quantum computing and hypersonic technologies. In recent years, when Biden has met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, both leaders have expressed great satisfaction on where the alliance is today – not just historically strong based on shared values, but also shared interests, like the push to counter China. Indeed, the White House in 2023 referred to Australia ties as “an alliance for our times.”

The story is very similar when it comes to Japan. Trump and Japan’s then-prime minister, the late Abe Shinzo, had an excellent personal relationship that was unharmed by Trump’s ill-advised decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) multilateral trade agreement (of which Japan was a part) or his public musing about revising the Japan-U.S. mutual defense treaty. Instead, the two leaders remained focused on China.

Abe, for example, probably convinced Trump to shift from an Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific focus, that is, to include India and the Indian Ocean Region as part of a collective strategy to counter China. Japan was also an advocate for reviving the Quad. Tokyo made these moves because, during Trump’s tenure, it worried about its years-long standoff over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea (also claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu Islands). Japan was also concerned about North Korea, which in 2017 fired ballistic missiles over its territory. Since Biden came to office, Japan has shifted its attention farther south to the Taiwan Strait. Tokyo believes that a conflict there could impact the security of its southwestern Ryukyu Island chain.

Tokyo and Washington today are now more entwined than ever before, especially in areas like command and control and defense industrial production and maintenance. But Tokyo is still unsatisfied. It wants an additional collective security mechanism as another layer of protection. Notably, the new Japanese prime minister, Ishiba Shigeru, has called for the establishment of an “Asian NATO.” The Biden administration has unofficially declined to promote the idea, but a future administration could take it up.

In the Philippines, one of two U.S. security allies in Southeast Asia, the relationship has worked well during both the Trump and Biden terms. Trump overlapped with another transactional leader in Manila, President Rodrigo Duterte, who tended to appreciate Washington’s deprioritization of values because it allowed him to wage a counternarcotics war with impunity that alleged resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings. Although some in the Trump administration were squeamish about Duterte’s decision to pursue stronger security ties with China and Russia, they did not push the issue publicly. Rather, they sought to maintain a healthy and functioning alliance, and in fact, during Trump’s tenure, the alliance expanded and deepened.

Additionally, in 2020 when Duterte threatened to cancel the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) – which would have been a severe blow to the alliance because it would have reduced the U.S. military’s ability to enter and move within the Philippines – Trump responded: “I don’t really mind if they would like to do that. It will save a lot of money… my views are different than others.” The VFA issue was kept under wraps, and it probably helped save the alliance.

Biden overlapped with Duterte for a little over a year, but during that time, in 2021, Duterte decided – primarily because of the rising Chinese threat to Philippine sovereignty within its EEZ – to reverse his decision to cancel the VFA. Normalcy had returned to the Philippines-U.S. alliance. And then, in 2022, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, became president. By 2022, Biden and Marcos met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, followed by a bilateral summit at the White House in April 2023 and a trilateral U.S.-Philippines-Japan summit in April of this year.

It would be an understatement to say that Marcos is the exact opposite of Duterte when collaborating on geopolitics. Duterte refused to take a firm stand against China while Marcos has done everything within his power to bolster the Philippines-U.S. alliance to do just that. Marcos worries about China’s escalating use of gray-zone tactics, such as laser-blinding, firing water cannons, dangerous ship maneuvers, and ramming, in disputed waters and over disputed territories at places like Second Thomas Shoal, Scarborough Shoal, Sabina Shoal, and Thitu Island.

Accordingly, one of the major deliverables of Marcos’ time in office has been his decision to expand the number of Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites from five to nine. U.S. military personnel are allowed to temporarily deploy to EDCA sites – most of which are advantageously located in the north facing Taiwan or to the west facing the South China Sea – and may work with Philippine counterparts on an assortment of security projects.

Back in Northeast Asia, another U.S. security ally, South Korea, has been pleased overall with both the Trump and Biden administrations. To be sure, there have been hiccups along the way, such as Trump’s insistence that Seoul pay a fivefold increase in expenditures to keep U.S. military deployments on the peninsula during the Special Measures Agreement negotiations or his labeling of routine joint exercises as “war games,” feeding into North Korean propaganda.

However, Trump’s term coincided with that of President Moon Jae-in, who agreed on the need to not only deter North Korea, but to engage it as well. Trump moved far more quickly than any liberal South Korean president could have ever dreamed, meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore (2018), Vietnam (2019), and in North Korea’s side of the Demilitarized Zone (2019) – the first time a sitting U.S. president had ever set foot on North Korean soil. Although a deal on denuclearization remained elusive, Moon greatly appreciated Trump’s willingness to press ahead for peace.

Of course, had Trump overlapped with the next and current president, Yoon Suk-yeol, the story would have been the opposite, as Yoon is an uber hawk on North Korea. But this alignment fits well with Biden, who has essentially revived the Obama-era policy of “strategic patience” in dealing with Pyongyang, and as such, reinstated joint exercises and sought to deepen and expand the alliance. In 2023, Biden and Yoon, for example, inked the “Washington Declaration,” which pledged greater sharing of U.S. nuclear planning with Seoul for a future Korean Peninsula contingency.

And in a watershed moment, in August 2023, Biden met with Yoon and Japan’s then-Prime Minister Kishida Fumio at Camp David for the first-ever Japan-South Korea-U.S. trilateral summit. The three countries pledged to convene annually on matters of security and to improve their interoperability.

On the other threat in the Indo-Pacific, China, Seoul only recently re-normalized bilateral ties following Beijing’s attempt to crush sectors of the South Korean economy in response to Seoul’s 2016 decision to deploy U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense systems. The South Korean people have become increasingly anti-China, with a poll from July 2024 showing that 71 percent now hold an unfavorable view of Beijing. This plays into Washington’s hands and probably will contribute to Seoul seeking further involvement in the Indo-Pacific strategy.

Finally, Thailand, the other Southeast Asian nation that has a security alliance with the United States, is less concerned about China than the Philippines or perhaps any other U.S. ally in the region. However, that relationship has not withered and, at worst, simply remained stagnant.

Trump began laying the groundwork for this state of relations when, in 2017, he decided to meet with then-Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. This was controversial because Prayut in 2014 had led a military overthrow of the previous democratically-elected government. But Trump was committed to normalizing the Thailand-U.S. relationship, and after Bangkok in 2019 held an election that the United States deemed free and fair enough (it hardly was), the Trump administration used it as justification to pursue closer security ties.

The Biden administration continued to engage Thailand, although with little tangible impact for its broader Indo-Pacific strategy to counter China. The Biden team did sign an important communiqué in 2022 on “strategic alliance and partnership” with Bangkok to reaffirm and expand the 1962 Rusk-Thanat communiqué – the foundation of the security alliance. That same year, Biden hosted Prayut at the White House for the Special U.S.-ASEAN summit, and he also dispatched Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to Bangkok to maintain dialogue.

Today, Thailand has a new and more democratic government, led by Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, potentially presenting an opening for a refreshed Thailand-U.S. relationship. While attending the United Nations General Assembly proceedings in New York City in September, Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa met with Biden on the sidelines to reaffirm Bangkok’s readiness to work closely with and strengthen the alliance, once again underscoring that the relationship may not be in as bad shape as it may seem given Washington and Bangkok’s disagreement over the extent to which China poses a threat.

Overall, both the Trump and Biden administrations either elevated or at least prevented the worsening of U.S. security alliances. Indeed, U.S. alliance engagement has been exceptionally strong in recent years, and will be very difficult to undo no matter what a future administration might decide in the Indo-Pacific. And if threats from China and North Korea continue to rise, then allies will continue to look to Washington for assistance, regardless of the particular policy choices a future Trump or Harris administration. The only thing that could shift this dynamic is a decline in regional threat perceptions, but that seems to be a very remote possibility.