Trump Comes to Asia

Assuming he follows through on his travel plans, U.S. President Donald Trump’s upcoming visits to Vietnam, the Philippines, and possibly China will shine a potentially unforgiving spotlight on his administration’s approach toward Asia and appetite for a continued regional leadership role. According to Vice President Mike Pence back in April, Trump is scheduled to attend three multilateral summits in November. In order, these are the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Summit in Vietnam November 6-11; the U.S.-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in the Philippines November 10-14; and the East Asia Summit (EAS) in the Philippines November 13-14.

But Trump comes to Asia amid a sense of profound ambivalence in the region. Although the administration’s priorities at the outset and at these meetings are quite clear, there are also lingering questions about its approach and the role of the United States more generally in the region.
 

Clear Priorities

The Trump administration’s approach to the region so far suggest that North Korea, terrorism, and trade issues are likely to feature as the priority policy areas for the United States. North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs were the first issues to land on Trump’s desk as president, featured in President Barack Obama’s handover briefing. Trump has maintained a consistent focus on North Korea since becoming president, if punctuated by inflammatory remarks. Most recently, he addressed the UN General Assembly on September 20, promising to “totally destroy” North Korea if it attacked the United States or its allies.

Turning to terrorism, combating “radical Islamic terror” was a major issue in Trump’s campaign, and in his inauguration speech. The Middle East will remain center-stage in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). But as its battlefield defeat looms closer in Iraq and Syria, the opening of a potential new ISIS “front” in Southeast Asia is a mounting concern for the United States and regional governments alike, and will undoubtedly be highlighted at the U.S.-ASEAN and East Asia summits.

On trade, Trump has not carried out his reported intention to withdraw from the U.S.-South Korea (KORUS) free trade agreement. Trump’s hostile attitude toward free trade agreements is deeply rooted and well known. Washington’s battered reputation continues to suffer from Trump’s rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It is unlikely new trade deals will be made or amended on his trip; if they do not help America “win,” Trump will not publicize them. Conversely, the security imperative for cooperation on North Korea means that he will not risk disaffecting regional partners by pulling out of existing agreements.
 

Lingering Questions 

A little over eight months into the Trump presidency, things could be worse for the United States in Asia. America’s Asian alliance network remains fundamentally intact and Washington has managed to mobilize a significant amount of international support in its campaign to isolate North Korea. But there are also a number of glaring shortcomings and contradictions to the Trump administration’s Asia policy. Some failings are simply attributable to inexperience. The new and internally volatile administration is operating without the support of a sizable caucus of the Republican foreign and security policy establishment.

Trending Toward Moderation?

Assuming the administration is now entering a period of greater stability, under the steadying influence of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis – Trump’s most influential Cabinet member by far – its foreign and national security policy performance might also be expected to improve as it gathers experience and momentum.

Whether the mainstream figures in the Trump administration can exert a moderating influence on the president’s impulses and instincts remains to be seen. They are likely to enjoy policymaking freedom in certain areas, like the South China Sea, where the president is less personally invested. However, recent comments on North Korea across Trump’s national security front row reveal a continuing changeability and lack of coherence on this singularly important security issue. Trump himself has final say over U.S. policy toward Asia, particularly in areas where he has shown sustained interest, such as North Korea and relations with China. Given the powers of the presidency, his worldview will ultimately determine the character of regional leadership that the U.S. is able to provide under his term. For Asia, that includes Trump’s untested commitment to upholding Asia’s so-called “rules-based order.”

No Strategy

Some of the more partisan criticisms of the Trump administration’s approach to Asia tend to overlook the shortcomings of the Obama-Clinton pivot/rebalance strategy. That the rebalance to Asia also under-delivered on its ambition raises the deeper possibility that America’s postwar position in Asia was already in structural decline long before Trump and in need of fundamental re-calibration. Still, the obvious value of the rebalance was that it offered a coherent, positive narrative to unify the various strands of military, economic, and diplomatic U.S. engagement in Asia.

The Trump administration has by contrast failed to set a guiding Asia strategy, defining itself instead in oppositional terms, by noisily rejecting Obama’s signature policies for the region, including the TPP, “strategic patience” on North Korea, and the rebalance itself. The Trump administration knows that it is anything but Obama/Clinton, but has yet to articulate a coherent, positive alternative. This campaign-like rejectionist tenor to Trump’s foreign policy is troubling for America’s allies in Asia, as it is elsewhere, irrespective of smooth working-level ties at the alliance level.

Opposing North Korea’s accelerated development of long-range nuclear missiles would have been a priority concern for whoever won the 2016 election. In fairness to Trump, his administration had the misfortune of inheriting a collective policy failure on North Korea that happens to be reaching maturity on his watch, as Pyongyang rapidly readies the means to directly threaten the U.S. homeland with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Regional allies share this concern overwhelmingly. Japan and South Korea have lived under North Korea’s nuclear shadow for some time already. They are therefore more concerned about the threat of alliance “decoupling” posed by Pyongyang’s intercontinental capabilities, or the risk that the United States is edging toward a potentially nuclear conflict that could demolish Northeast Asia’s prosperity.

Trump’s singular focus on North Korea as a paramount security issue could be seen as unhelpful for U.S. strategy toward Asia, by reducing the region to a single issue while crowding out less urgent but important concerns like the South China Sea. The suspicion was voiced in the administration’s early months that a softer U.S. line on the South China Sea could be tacitly agreed as a trade-off with Beijing, in exchange for a tougher Chinese stance toward Pyongyang. Concerns about the “transactional” nature of the Trump administration are well developed (though alliances are transactional arrangements by their very nature). On the glass half-full side, North Korea may have helped to keep an otherwise disinterested U.S. president engaged in East Asia’s security, demonstrating to an arch alliance skeptic the benefits of U.S. security treaty partnerships in the region. By giving the United States and China an issue where they have some potential to cooperate, North Korea may inevitable compensate for trade disputes and other points of friction in Sino-U.S. ties.

Alliance Skepticism

It is fair to say that Trump’s alliance skepticism has not had the impact that might have been expected in Asia, based on his campaign rhetoric and particular animus toward Japan. The Abe administration has demonstrated particular acuity in staving off a potential crisis in U.S.-Japan relations by focusing from an early stage on building a personal relationship between the U.S. and Japanese leaders, stressing economic quid pro quos (jobs creation through inward Japanese investment in the U.S., for example). Tokyo has doubled down on the alliance, while stepping up its diplomatic game in across the region.

The U.S. alliance with South Korea has come under the clearest strain, in a developing security crisis. Yet it has so far escaped serious rupture. Trump’s first phone call as president-elect was notably to now-former South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Park was soon thereafter impeached, resulting in the May election of a left-leaning administration under Moon Jae-in, committed to pro-engagement policies with North Korea. Trump’s public questioning of KORUS in the midst of a security predicament on the peninsula revealed his “deal-making” penchant to link economic and security issues, but it is notable that the threat to withdraw was not carried out. Trump’s gambit of threatening to place a $1 billion price tag on THAAD’s deployment to South Korea, at the height of its presidential election campaign, was a similar act of unrealized brinksmanship.

Trump has kept up political pressure on Moon, recently accusing his administration of “appeasement” toward North Korea. He appears reluctant to describe Moon as an ally. But the two leaders have maintained coordination in the wake of subsequent North Korean tests, agreeing on further sanctions and displays of solidarity between the two defense forces. THAAD has notably retreated as a point of controversy within the alliance. At the same time, recent polls have shown a marked decline in South Koreans with favorable views toward the United States. Political and public opinion has also swung in favor of South Korea acquiring its own nuclear deterrent. Trump’s disparaging remarks aimed at Moon, as well his habit of engaging in unsupported bluster, may be worsening the alliance “decoupling” risk, undermining U.S. credibility and deterrence.

Australia’s alliance with the United States remains largely unaffected in practical terms, in spite of the attention shown to the Trump-Turnbull phone call. Australian public opinion as measured in the 2017 Lowy Institute poll demonstrates that personal wariness of Trump is a factor, but for now it is not detracting from continued high support levels for the U.S. alliance, as an institution.

Negative Perceptions Around the Economic Agenda

The administration’s economic agenda for Asia also suffers from being negatively framed around protection. The absence of a positive narrative for economic engagement, post-TPP, is especially damaging to perceptions toward the United States in comparison with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing’s win-win narrative has not convinced either Japan or India to participate. Chinese economic coercion has also been felt severely in South Korea, through Beijing’s campaign against the deployment of the U.S. THAAD missile defense system. But for much of the region, especially Southeast Asia and the region’s small island states, China’s emphasis on commercial incentives is contrasted favorably against America’s newfound hostility to trade agreements and baffling volte-face on the TPP, less than a year after Washington was championing it as the economic pillar of the rebalance.

The Rights Problem

Perhaps the thorniest challenge of all for President Trump’s foreign policy in Asia is the absence of U.S. leadership on values, or the liberal international order, because these are not beliefs he subscribes to. While all U.S. administrations have faced difficult choices in the values-versus-interests debate in Asia, the projection of liberal values should not be under-estimated as a source of attraction for the United States, as a power “resident” in Asia, but still geographically removed. If the United States, under Trump, abjures a values-based leadership role, and at the same time pursues “America first” outcomes in trade, it is no longer obvious what the regional U.S. role should be, other than its deterrent value as a military ally – something the president strongly believes has led to the U.S. being exploited in the past.

Zig-Zagging on China

Relations with China under the Trump administration have been characterized by a high degree of policy changeability. During the transition the administration-in-waiting started out by questioning the one China policy, the mainstay of Sino-U.S. diplomacy since relations were normalized with the People’s Republic in 1979. This prompted very obvious concern in Beijing. The U.S. president-elect then accepted a controversial congratulatory call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in early December, a further signal that one China was potentially up for grabs. Once in office, President Trump moved quickly to acknowledge the one China policy in his February 9 phone call with Xi Jinping.

It is not clear whether this reversal was more the result of Chinese pressure or hard bargaining in pursuit of economic trade-offs, but in May a 100-Day U.S.-China Action Plan on bilateral commercial relations was released. The Action Plan addressed a menu of market access issues important to the Trump administration. It also included conspicuous mention of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The administration has gone notably further than any of its predecessors to incorporate coded formulations beloved of the Chinese government into official U.S. statements, including those of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Meanwhile, beyond a $1.42 billion arms deal announced in late June, Taiwan has largely disappeared into an obscure position, similar to the one it occupied within U.S. Asia policy under the Obama administration.

Ambivalence on the South China Sea?

The attitude of the Trump administration toward the South China Sea has appeared ambivalent, certainly in comparison with North Korea, or the high profile it has commanded as a leading Asian security issue in recent years. The South China Sea featured only tangentially in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago summit with Xi Jinping. Securing Chinese cooperation to rein in North Korea has become the lynchpin Asian policy objective for Washington since January 2017, overtaking trade frictions in importance. This may explain why it took some time for the administration to undertake freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. Accounts of internal administration disagreements recalled the conflicted approach toward China sometimes evident under the Obama administration.

As Trump’s initial hopes for Chinese cooperation on North Korea have predictably given way to frustration and disappointment, as voiced by Trump, this has created a more permissive environment for FONOPs, and U.S. military engagement and capacity-building activities with Vietnam and other Southeast Asian maritime states, including naval exercises recently concluded with Malaysia. Mattis visited Vietnam in August and a U.S. aircraft carrier visit is planned for 2018. As of August, the administration had conducted three FONOPs in the South China Sea.

Lukewarm on Multilateralism

That the Trump administration has embraced Asian multilateral structures with less enthusiasm than its predecessor is only to be expected. Even a Clinton administration would have been unlikely to sustain the Obama team’s commitment to ASEAN-led diplomacy, in the face of patently diminishing returns on the South China Sea. In fact, the bigger surprise was such an early commitment on Trump’s part to attend APEC, the EAS, and to preside at an ASEAN-U.S. summit. Bilateralism remains the administration’s default diplomatic mode, however.

An Expertise Deficit?

One well-publicized limitation of the Trump line-up is its thinness of policy expertise on Asia, among other regions, notwithstanding the involvement of Henry Kissinger, who is apparently preparing Trump’s rumored visit to China. Many prominent Asia hands that might have been expected to serve in a Republican administration, like Mike Green and Kori Schake, effectively excluded themselves by signing letters pledging not to serve in a Trump administration. Continuity with past Republican administrations and policy norms has been interrupted to an unprecedented degree. Important ambassadorships and whole strata of the foreign policy and defense establishments remain vacant. At the same time, the administration is pushing ahead with deep cuts to the State Department. Decision-making delay and dysfunction is the preordained result.
 

Regional Dynamics and Dyads

Collective uncertainty about continued U.S. leadership and Asian engagement under Trump has some potential upside for advocates of cross-bracing or enmeshment among like-minded states in Asia. One question is at least being implicitly asked of U.S. allies, security partners, and neutrals that have benefited from the post-1945 U.S.-backed regional security order: To what extent are they willing to step up cooperation without the surety of a U.S. security blanket?

The existing ASEAN-based multilateral architecture does not appear up to the challenge posed by an increasingly confident, expansionist China. This leaves bilateral, trilateral, and mini-lateral levels, some of which include the United States while others do not. The relationship between India and Japan, which the Indian commentator C. Raja Mohan recently advocated should be upgraded to alliance level, has perhaps Asia’s greatest load-bearing potential in this new and uncertain context.

The most far-reaching question and criticism overhanging the Trump administration is essentially the moral one: How will America’s standing in the region be affected by the erosion of values-based leadership, the president’s disinterest and active skepticism about upholding the liberal international order, in favor of a domestically framed, zero-sum conception of “America first” interests?

Trump’s world view has been compared to a 19th century outlook by the Washington observer, Tom Wright. Particularly concerning, in Wright’s view, is Trump’s embrace of a “spheres of influence” approach to the global division of power. The more this power template intrudes into U.S. policy, the more it will fan fears among Asian allies about U.S.-China “deal-making” over their heads. While the prospect of a “G2” China-U.S. compact is not new, such anxieties are being fed anew by the transactional quality of Trump’s policy approach toward China, buoyed by his longstanding affinity for autocrats.

Sometimes, the frustration among Trump’s principals has appeared to show through. Mattis appeared to momentarily let his guard down at the 2017 Shangri-la Dialogue, when challenged, in the immediate wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement, about the U.S. commitment to the “rules-based global order.” Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, Mattis said, “Bear with us. Once we have exhausted all possible alternatives, the Americans will do the right thing.”

Uncertainty about the future of the United States in the region is also coinciding with increased “self-help” among major U.S. allies: Japan, South Korea, and Australia are all increasing their defense spending. This goes some way toward answering Trump’s skepticism about the inequality of U.S. alliance commitments. Japan is debating whether to acquire an autonomous strike capability to bolster deterrence against North Korea. The same applies to South Korea, as it again ponders the return of wartime operational control over its armed forces. Trump has talked about providing more potent defense capabilities to both countries, and the United States is also supplying new arms packages in the wider region, including to Taiwan and India. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Shangri-la Dialogue speech ushered in heightened Australian threat perceptions and a desire to see Asian countries increase security cooperation.

Southeast Asian alliances have not commanded the same attention from the United States, but official contacts with Thailand have been stepped up under Trump, notwithstanding democracy concerns. The U.S. relationship with the Philippines remains in a strange place under President Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte continues to seek economic benefits from China while flirting with Russia and China as alternative security partners. He earlier set the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), with U.S. forces, in his sights. However, official defense contacts between the U.S. and Philippines continue largely as before, and have even been stepped up since the battle against ISIS-sympathizers in Mindanao’s cultural capital, Marawi, broke out in May. Australia has also stepped up its counterterrorism cooperation with the Philippines, as part of the cross-bracing trend. Duterte’s wavering approach toward the South China Sea has made him unpopular among the segment of the Philippines security and foreign affairs establishment that fears China’s maritime encroachment. The U.S. president praised Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem,” according to a leaked transcript of their April phone call. Since the southern Philippines includes the largest areas of ungoverned space in Southeast Asia, the U.S. counterterrorism imperative is likely to mute U.S. criticism of human rights abuses under Duterte.

The Trump-Duterte dynamic is hard to read, but lacks the obvious combustibility of the Obama-Duterte pairing. The “strongman” symmetry has moderated Duterte’s anti-U.S. rhetoric, but Duterte also parried Trump’s invitation to the White House. This relationship will come under the spotlight assuming Trump follows through on his intention to visit Manila. Absent a strategy beyond enhanced counterterrorism, Southeast Asia is likely to remain in a holding pattern within U.S. policy, although some Southeast Asians leaders, including the Vietnamese and Malaysian leaders, have already visited the White House. The South China Sea also merited a single mention in Trump’s UN General Assembly address in September.
 

The Final Word

The Trump administration has exposed inconsistencies and contradictions in U.S. policy toward Asia, many of its own making. But it would be wrong to conclude that Obama bequeathed a spotless legacy on the pivot/rebalance, or that a Clinton administration would not have encountered a similar set challenges from China and North Korea. North Korea was always likely to pursue an accelerated set of missile and nuclear tests in 2017, framed by the double opportunity of catching flat-footed new political administrations in both Seoul and Washington. The TPP would have faced an uphill battle from a trade-skeptic Congress, potentially without presidential backing, given Hillary Clinton’s expedient nod to protectionist sentiment during the campaign. Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, has since published a Foreign Affairs article questioning, inter alia, “Obama’s pivot” on the grounds that China would perceive it as a threat and strengthen its “military posture in response.”

A Democratic line-up, with the benefit of policy continuity, would almost certainly have fielded a more coherent set of policies than the frequently amateurish Trump administration. But this may well have been in support of a fundamentally over-extended U.S. position. While the military leg of the pivot/rebalance was its firmest foundation, the litany of recent 7th Fleet collisions, including substantial loss of life aboard the USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain, provides a hint that U.S. forward-deployed capabilities in Asia are dangerously overstretched, under the strains of an operational tempo meant to ensure an enhanced U.S. naval presence and an expanded set of engagements, in the South China Sea and elsewhere, from a static or diminished defense resource base.

Given the stakes, the Trump administration’s Asia policy will probably be remembered for and judged by its handling of the North Korean situation, above all other issues. While it is cliché to suggest that there are no good options on North Korea, this perception helps to reduce expectations of U.S. policy. If the Trump administration manages to contain a thermonuclear and ICBM-capable North Korean regime short of war, without major disruption to the U.S. alliance network in the Western Pacific during its term, then it will have done surprisingly well.