For Japan, South Korea and other Asian security allies, the good news about America’s new National Security Strategy when it was published on December 5th was that they were not treated as shockingly badly as were the Europeans. Unlike the UK and the European Union, they were not attacked, were not warned that they were risking “civilizational erasure” by accepting immigrants and were not threatened with US interference in their domestic politics.
But the fact that the Trump administration did not treat its Asian allies with the same contempt does not mean they can relax.
The central truth about the Trump-Vance presidency, which this new document confirmed though did not initiate, is that this administration does not care about the grouping that used to be called the West and does not consider allies to be an important factor or asset in its foreign policy and diplomacy. The meaning of “America First” that has emerged during 2025 is one that is not at all isolationist but, rather, one that prioritizes a narrow interpretation of America’s national interests.
Under that interpretation allies are considered to be a burden and sometimes an obstruction to those interests, and as a result they are viewed in a very transactional way. Sometimes they are to be welcomed and supported, but at other times they can be disregarded or even swept aside.
This has been seen in the noticeably lukewarm support that Trump and his team have given to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in her dispute with China over Taiwan, and over the recent deliberately provocative behavior by the Chinese air force against Japanese fighter jets.
The outspoken Undersecretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, previously publicly urged Japan to be explicit about how its military would respond in the event of an invasion or coercion of Taiwan. Now that Prime Minister Takaichi has done precisely that, both he and – more importantly – President Trump have been silent.
The National Security Strategy did, it is true, convey an American stance toward Taiwan that was orthodox and aligned with the stance by previous administrations. It spoke clearly against any coercive attempt to change the status quo, and in favor of maintaining military deterrence so as to avoid conflict. The next policy document that is due from the administration, the Global Posture Review, which is said to be Colby’s responsibility, is likely to reinforce this stance and sense of policy continuity.
However, where continuity was notably absent in the National Security Strategy was in the broader depiction of the Chinese and Russian threats. Russia was barely mentioned at all as a threat; the document simply called for the re-establishment of something it called “strategic stability” with Russia, without noting that it has been Russia’s invasion of its former colonial possession, Ukraine, that has destroyed such “strategic stability” in Europe.
This is sadly not surprising given the conduct of the Trump administration in recent months: Having announced what turned out to be entirely fake sanctions on a few (but not all) Russian oil companies, it then produced a supposed peace plan for Ukraine much of which had, essentially, been written by the Russians themselves. Thus, Russia is being treated more as a hoped-for future ally than as a threat.
The language concerning China acknowledged the strategic competition that is under way between the world’s two leading superpowers, and acknowledged the critical importance played by the western Pacific and the island chain that runs from Japan down through Taiwan and into the Philippines. But the National Security Strategy nonetheless defined China chiefly as an economic threat, not as a military one.
This may reflect the fact that Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping are in the midst of negotiations over trade and technology, which are expected to be concluded at a pair of summits in China and the US next spring. But that emphasis must still count as a concern for all America’s long-term security allies in Asia.
The Global Posture Review may reveal further plans to deploy powerful military assets in Asia, with a role of preserving the Free and Open Indo-Pacific that the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasized and of denying China the opportunity and the hope of taking control of that vast and crucial area.
That is certainly what Colby advocated in his 2021 book The Strategy of Denial before he entered office.
The big and currently unanswerable question concerns what priority President Trump and Vice-President JD Vance really assign to confronting, “denying” (using Colby’s words) and deterring China. While military capabilities and deployments are a necessary part of such efforts, they are not sufficient: Political will is also required. It is the absence of that political will over Japan’s tensions with China about Taiwan that has been most concerning.
Asian allies also need to think carefully about the language used in the National Security Strategy concerning America’s strategic interests in the Western Hemisphere, by which Americans mean the Caribbean Sea and South America. That language referred back to the 19th century “Monroe Doctrine,” named after the American president in the 1820s who declared that the then-young nation of the United States considered the Western Hemisphere to be its own sphere of interest.
This was designed to discourage further interference in that region by the European imperial powers, especially Great Britain. In the early 20th century President Theodore Roosevelt declared what became called the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine when he threatened the use of military force to enforce those interests.
Chinese leaders will have noted that the National Security Strategy’s stated intentions of American control over the Western Hemisphere represent Trump’s own version of that “Roosevelt corollary.” And they will have noted the similarities with what China has been trying to achieve in the South China and East China Seas: strategic control over the whole area inside the island chain connecting Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines.
The Trump administration’s foreign policy has never been noted for its consistency or coherence. So it is entirely possible that Trump will consider protecting America’s own sphere of interest to be perfectly compatible with seeking to prevent China from controlling its own strategic area at the expense of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and others.
But the other possibility now also has to be taken very seriously indeed: that Trump will allow China and Russia both to establish their own spheres of interest, in ways that would be very hard for future administrations to reverse. The discouragement of any such move now needs to be the top diplomatic priority for every country and organization in the region, whether as national governments or as the Association of South-East Asian Nations.
This is the English original of article originally published by the Mainichi Shimbun in both Japanese and English. It can also be found in English on Bill Emmott’s Global View Substack. It is republished with permission.