The recurring Trump nightmare: Can Asia manage what’s coming?

Donald Trump has regained power in the United States, riding a wave of fear and anti-incumbent desire for change. Americans now face the greatest test of the democratic and constitutional order since the Civil War.

But for the rest of the world, it is a no less traumatic moment. The United States is now poised to retreat from its leadership of the postwar liberal order. What does Trump’s return mean for Asia and for American allies in Japan, South Korea and the Pacific?

Japanese and Korean leaders may be reassured by soothing words from some American security experts, including would-be advisors to Trump. Nothing will change in the Indo-Pacific under Trump, those experts counsel.

“US foreign policy in this region is likely to remain constant,” Derek Grossman, a RAND specialist on Asian security and former intelligence official, wrote in The Diplomat just before the vote.

Trump, in Grossman’s telling, may be “a more transactional and unpredictable leader” but he left alliances in the region intact. No matter what happens, “the China factor will foster the continued development of the US alliance network.”

Such views ignore the abundant evidence, mostly in Trump’s own words, of his intention at the end of the first term to abandon a large portion of those alliance commitments.

As his former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and National Security Advisor John Bolton documented in their memoirs, Trump planned to withdraw US forces from South Korea; to complete the unfinished bargain with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, which would leave Kim’s nuclear forces intact; and to demand massive payments from Japan to pay for the American defense role.

The soothing assessments also brush past Trump’s repeated intention to impose massive across-the-board tariffs on foreign goods – tariffs aimed not only at China but also at allied nations in Europe and Asia.

More importantly, the idea that foreign policy in Asia can be distinct and separate from what happens elsewhere, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, is an illusion.

As Japan’s own National Security Strategy document made clear, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally altered the security situation in East Asia. It has created a close military alliance between Russia, China and North Korea, threatening the stability of the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and all of East Asia.

Trump made it repeatedly clear, as did his running mate JD Vance, that he intends to cut off military aid to Ukraine and push Kyiv to accept the surrender terms offered by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

He also threatened to abandon the security commitment to NATO. That would open the door for Putin to retake control of parts of the Soviet empire, beginning with the Baltic states and threatening Poland.

“Trump will feel like he has an electoral mandate to do these crazier things,” predicts Michael McFaul, former US Ambassador to Russia and director of Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies.

“When it comes to things like NATO or our allies in Asia, he thinks that the American people support him in saying to Putin, ‘Do whatever the hell you want.’ I think history shows that when we are strong, the United States of America when we exhibit peace through strength, we have more peaceful outcomes. When we signal weakness, when we try to appease dictators, that’s when bad things can happen.”

Trump was constrained from pursuing those goals during his first term, in large part due to the presence of responsible figures from the Republican national security elite and by his own incompetence and unfamiliarity with the levers of power. Those restraints will no longer be present.

“In his first term, he relied on traditional Republicans to fill his foreign policy team,” people like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and national security advisors HR McMaster and John Bolton,” McFaul told the Kyiv Independent.

“They most certainly stopped Trump from doing some of the craziest things that he proposed – pulling out of NATO being at the top of that list. What’s going to be different this time around is that none of those people are going to be in the Trump administration; he’s disparaged all of them.”

What about China? And North Korea?

Despite these concerns, it is assumed Trump will at least continue to see China as the principal adversary of the United States, particularly in the realm of trade and economic policy. For that reason Japanese policymakers and, to a lesser extent, those in South Korea believe the alliances in Northeast Asia will continue to have value to a Trump administration.

Even if that is true, it does not mean smooth sailing for Tokyo or for Seoul. It may lead to increased demands on both allies to spend vastly more on defense and to join in export controls and other curbs on trade and investment with China that would cause potentially severe consequences for their economies.

“The Trump administration is going to twist a lot of arms,” says Tobias Harris, the founder of Japan Foresight, a respected advisory organization, and the twistees had “better be ready for that.”

Trump’s advisors have already pushed Japan to increase its defense spending greatly beyond the 2%-of-GNP target and to be responsible for its own defense.

The Trump tariff policy may pose an even greater problem, argues Harris:

If Trump follows through, even partially, on threats to impose off-the-board tariffs on US imports, plus significant imports on US tariffs from China and Mexico, it will have a significant, immediate impact on Japan’s largest manufacturers, prompting them to consider whether to shift manufacturing to the US, back to Japan or to other markets. Japanese companies may also have to grapple with greater pressure from Washington on technology export controls with China – though, as Trump’s vocal opposition to Nippon Steel’s bid for US Steel suggests, they will also have to navigate political and national security considerations if they opt to shift investment into the US in response to the Trump administration’s policies.

It may be premature, however, to assume that Trump will want to line up Japan and South Korea for a grand confrontation with China. Some analysts suggest that Trump may opt instead for a grand bargain with Xi Jinping, one that could even include abandoning Taiwan.

The President-elect made several comments during the campaign about Taiwan, complaining that its firms have destroyed the US semiconductor industry and questioning whether the US should come to its defense.

“Making China a key target or centerpiece of his second incarnation is unnecessary and possibly unlikely,” a former senior intelligence official and long-time China hand told me.

“There is likely to be little immediate payoff for him or his minions. He will bluster, threaten tariffs and brag about his relationship with Xi, but probably not come out swinging.”

Trump’s new primary backer, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has extensive business ties in China, where over half of the company’s global car production takes place at its massive Shanghai factory.

Trump-Kim bromance

The other target of Trump’s affection may be North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Trump continues to speak about his warm relationship with Kim and lament the missed opportunity to forge a peace deal with him.

That bargain was almost reached at their second summit meeting in Hanoi, but faltered due both to Kim’s overly grand demands and to opposition from within Trump’s own administration, backed by the intervention from Japan’s then-prime minister Shinzo Abe.

There will be no such resistance within the new administration. And Japan’s current prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, does not have any such relationship with Trump as the late Abe had, nor is he likely to be able to create one. The most serious obstacle to a deal, one which would seal in North Korea’s nuclear capability and the missile systems that can reach Japan, may come from Kim himself.

Trump may claim Kim is waiting for him with open arms, but the North Koreans have since forged a close military alliance with Russia, marked by the deployment of 12,000 troops to the Ukraine front. An opening to North Korea likely would have to follow a Trump-Putin embrace, and even then Kim probably would use his new power to ask for a far greater payoff from Trump.

A more likely development on the Korean Peninsula would be a breakdown in US-South Korean ties, featuring demands to renegotiate defense cost-sharing payments from Korea and the beginning of the withdrawal of the approximately 28,500 US troops based there.

“Trump has given no indication he values South Korea as an ally, and quite the contrary, seems set to redefine it either through withdrawal or demanding South Korea take more responsibility for its own defense vis-a-vis North Korea as US forces are reoriented to directly confront China,” Benjamin Engel of Seoul’s Dankook University told NK News.

Whither Japan?

For Japan, the shocking events in the US came just after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in last month’s election. Prime Minister Ishiba is facing the unusual task of forming a minority government. As a veteran observer of Japan put it to me, “internal political paralysis in Tokyo is limiting the ability of Japan to navigate this new, extremely dangerous situation.”

Ishiba promptly congratulated Trump and, as one would expect, expressed hope for the continuation of the postwar security alliance as a foundation of the US-Japan relationship.

But suppose Trump goes deeply down the road of undermining that alliance or even forcing an unwanted confrontation with China. In that case, Japan may be compelled to look for alternatives, including improving ties with Beijing while flattering the newly powerful American autocrat.

“Japanese are not going to end the alliance,” says Japan expert Harris. “But they are going to have to learn how to do things on their own more.”

This article was originally published by the Oriental Economist. It is republished with permission.