Who’s Afraid of America First? What Asia Can Teach the World About Adapting to Trump

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To many countries in Europe, the return of Donald Trump to the White House is seen as a momentous, almost apocalyptic, shift that is likely to disrupt alliances and upend economic relations. Meanwhile, American adversaries such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia anticipate that the incoming administration will mark an opportunity to advance their anti-Western agendas. Yet there is another region of the world, one that includes many U.S. allies, partners, and friends, that views Trump’s return more calmly.

Across a large part of Asia, from Japan and South Korea in the north, through Southeast Asia—the linchpin connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans—to the Indian subcontinent in the south, a second Trump administration does not arouse the same strong emotions that it does among many in the West. For these countries, there is far less concern about Trump’s autocratic tendencies and contempt for liberal internationalist ideals. The region has long conducted relations with Washington on the basis of common interests rather than common values. Such an approach fits neatly with Trump’s transactional foreign policy because it involves balancing mutual benefits rather than sustaining the liberal international order. Indeed, much of Asia views the liberal order with ambivalence. When Asian countries talk about a “rules-based order,” the phrase tends to carry significantly different meanings than it does in the West.

For Asia, far more than a radical deviation from existing U.S. foreign policy, Trump’s return to power amplifies and accelerates a trend that has been underway since the Vietnam era. The United States is not in retreat and has not embraced isolation. Instead, it is expanding the geographic scope of the approach that U.S. President Richard Nixon first introduced in East Asia during the Cold War, by unilaterally redefining the terms of its global engagements and by becoming more circumspect about when and how it gets involved internationally. Having dealt with such a United States for almost half a century, Asia is not unduly agitated about a second Trump administration. This is not to discount important concerns in the region, including about tariff policies and Taiwan. But it does mean that Asian countries are more accustomed to Trump’s transactionalism, and their experience holds important lessons for other U.S. partners and allies as they adjust to Washington’s recalibration of the way it works with the world.

HESITANT HEGEMON For many Asian states, Trump’s “America first” approach echoes the strategy Washington has used toward much of Asia for more than five decades. In 1969, as he attempted to disengage the United States from an unwinnable war in Vietnam, Nixon unveiled a new strategy aimed at U.S. allies, partners, and friends in the region. “Except for the threat of a major power involving nuclear weapons,” Nixon said, in announcing that summer what came to be known as the Nixon Doctrine, “the United States is going to encourage and has a right to expect that [military defense] will be handled by, and responsibility for it taken by, the Asian nations themselves.”

As Nixon saw it, the Vietnam War was a sobering lesson for American policy. Rather than getting dragged into other Asian quagmires, Washington would maintain stability as an offshore balancer, without deploying troops on the ground. This meant that the United States would provide a nuclear umbrella of extended deterrence, as well as a military presence centered on air and naval bases in Japan and Guam, but countries in the region—with the partial exception of South Korea because of the unique threat from North Korea—would be expected to provide for their own security. No longer could they count on Washington to directly intervene as it did in Vietnam.

That approach has mostly characterized U.S. policy in Asia ever since. From the Asian perspective, the post-9/11 “war on terror” and the long U.S. war in Afghanistan pursued by the George W. Bush administration were stark exceptions to the general orientation of the United States in the region. Whereas critics of U.S. foreign policy see a quasi-imperialist, trigger-happy hegemon, Asian observers tend to see a fundamentally cautious power that is reluctant to deploy military power and that will calculate its own interests carefully before acting. The United States is vital for maintaining stability, but Asian countries do not consider it completely reliable because, as an offshore balancer, its decisions will always cause the region to doubt its intentions: if Washington decides to get involved, Asian leaders may worry they will be pulled into larger geopolitical struggles; if it decides not to, they may fear abandonment.

Since the early years of this century, the United States has begun to apply this approach to other regions, as well. Neither President Barack Obama nor Trump during his first term succeeded in disengaging from Bush’s nation-building adventures, but President Joe Biden was able to cut the Gordian knot when he ordered the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. More recently, in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the United States has provided overall deterrence and military support to allies but committed no American forces on the ground. Of course, Joe Biden has been more consultative as president than Trump ever was or will likely be, and he has taken steps to strengthen U.S. alliances in Asia through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, and the AUKUS defense agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom. But Biden consults allies and partners to determine what they are prepared to do to advance the United States’ agenda and has not made new U.S. security guarantees to defend them: call it polite transactionalism.

Trump with China's President Xi Jinping in Osaka, Japan, June 2019 Kevin Lamarque / Reuters More readily than other parts of the world, Asia will accept Trump’s approach to foreign policy because the region has already dealt with the United States in this way. Indeed, the distinction between offshore balancing and naked transactionalism is one of degree rather than kind. Trump will be less consultative, more unpredictable, less generous in providing assistance, and will demand that allies and partners pay more for American protection, but the result may not be so very different. There is only one United States, and it will remain vital for maintaining stability regardless of who occupies the White House. Most Asian countries will therefore accept what is possible under the incoming administration, particularly since they did not regard the pre-Trump United States with unqualified confidence. Nor did they experience the first Trump administration as all bad.

Consider the differences toward the region between Trump and his immediate predecessor, Obama. Throughout his time in office, Obama made eloquent speeches about the United States’ commitments to Asia, but many leaders in the region saw him as weak when it came to confronting American adversaries, particularly China. In 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping stood next to Obama at the White House and publicly promised not to militarize the South China Sea. But the next year, Beijing proceeded to do exactly that—and Obama did nothing. U.S. partners across the region took note. On the other hand, in 2017, many Asian leaders quietly cheered when, at their first summit, Trump told Xi during dinner that he had ordered a cruise missile attack on Syria that night after the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons. This was in stark contrast to Obama’s unwillingness to respond after Assad had used chemical weapons in 2013.

Some of Trump’s actions during his first term suggest that his emphasis on peace through strength aligns with the instincts of many Asian governments. The issues that could lead to conflict in the region have no definitive solutions, but they need to be managed through firm deterrence and adroit diplomacy. When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to target Guam with his missiles in 2017, Trump responded by threatening to rain “fire and fury” on Pyongyang, effectively putting an end to North Korean testing of long-range missiles on any trajectory near Guam. In doing so, Trump restored the deterrence that had been lost during the Obama administration, when Washington let the North Korean situation fester for eight years and called it “strategic patience.” Then, in 2018, Trump met Kim in Singapore, opening a diplomatic track as well. Ultimately, that summit, and a subsequent meeting in Vietnam, did not lead to a breakthrough because Trump lacked the patience to persevere with his own strategy and failed to set realistic goals. The Trump administration was mistaken to think that North Korea would ever give up its nuclear weapons, but it was not wrong to try to manage the threat through deterrence and diplomacy. The firmness was there, but not the adroitness.

Viewing the president-elect from this perspective, leaders in East Asia and Southeast Asia have no strong reason to fear Trump 2.0. The main pieces of U.S. policy toward the region are already in place, some of them with strong bipartisan support as the Biden administration extended and expanded the approach of the first Trump administration on priority issues such as dealing with China. Any new policies in these areas are unlikely to be fundamental shifts of direction. Of course, even marginal changes can be disruptive, and this does not mean that the new Trump administration won’t have a significant impact on the region or isn’t cause for concern. Three issues in particular bear close monitoring: Taiwan, tariffs, and regional leadership.

THE TAIWAN CONUNDRUM Breaking with the United States’ decades-old “strategic ambiguity” policy, Biden on four occasions said that the United States would defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression. Trump will not repeat such statements. During the 2024 campaign, his comments on Taiwan suggested that it falls within his general views on allies and trade: the island, he has said, is a long way away from the United States and difficult to defend and should pay more for U.S. protection, and he has accused Taipei of stealing America’s semiconductor industry. The danger is that he may come to see Taiwan as a mere pawn in a larger game with China. Trump will certainly want to cut trade deals with Beijing using tariffs and the threat of a trade war as leverage. This could be extremely disruptive. But the dangers and uncertainties will multiply exponentially if he mixes trade and security by throwing Taiwan into any possible deal.

Trump has also promised to end the war in Ukraine. How he tries to do so will be closely watched throughout Asia, and particularly in China. Nevertheless, it is important not to draw a straight line from how Trump treats Ukraine to what Beijing may conclude about how he will treat Taiwan. The geopolitical circumstances of Ukraine and Taiwan are not identical, as China itself has pointed out. More crucially, Taiwan lies at the core of the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimating narrative, and a failed or stalled Chinese military venture against it would shake the foundations of party rule. Precisely because “reunification” with Taiwan is so important to them, China’s leaders will not gamble with it, particularly since recurring corruption scandals at the top of the Chinese military have cast doubts on its competence and capabilities. Military action is not Beijing’s preferred option for “reunification,” even if the Chinese leadership continues to try to advance China’s capability to use force in order to achieve that goal.

Biden’s unambiguous statements in support of Taiwan have fanned a growing sense of entitlement in Taipei—the conviction that the United States and its allies will have to defend the island from Chinese aggression. It has also reinforced Taiwan’s overblown assessment of its own strategic significance in the world economy, rooted in an exaggerated belief in the indispensable role of its chip industry, particularly the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. TSMC is undoubtedly a remarkable company that dominates advanced semiconductor fabrication—but it is, after all, only a contract manufacturer. The fact that it can produce chips better than any other company does not mean that no one else can produce them. In any case, TSMC has been shifting some of its activities from Taiwan to the United States and Japan and may also explore relocating some parts of its operations to India, Europe, and Southeast Asia. These moves may lessen the economic importance of Taiwan itself in the long run.

If Trump pulls back from Ukraine—for example, by conditioning further U.S. backing on Kyiv’s willingness to negotiate with Moscow—or if his administration takes serious steps to improve America’s own semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, it would signal to Taipei that it cannot count on unlimited support from Washington. Such steps could prevent Taiwanese domestic politics from drifting in a potentially destabilizing direction, perhaps by taking a more overtly pro-independence stance that would force Beijing to react by stepping up military exercises around Taiwan or moving against the South China Sea island of Taiping, which is occupied and administered by Taiwan.

The effect of the war in Ukraine on other countries in Asia should not be overstated. Australia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea have taken strong and clear positions of principle against Russian aggression in Ukraine. But most of the region is ambivalent. The Muslim-majority states of Southeast Asia, in particular, see double standards at work in Washington’s denunciation of Russia, pointing to U.S.-initiated or -supported wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon, among other conflicts. Many Asian states will also seek to protect their national interests by calculating costs and benefits. If that balance seems right, they will do what they must to maintain relations with the United States, with Trump’s attitude toward Taiwan and Ukraine remaining second-order considerations. Of far greater concern is China. That issue alone has driven even traditionally nonaligned countries such as India, Indonesia, and Vietnam to move closer to Washington, a trend that began during the first Trump administration and grew under Biden.

LOOKING FOR A LEADER For many Asian countries, trade policy is perhaps the most worrisome element of Trump’s return. Trump has boasted that “tariff” is his favorite word, and foreign governments would be wise to take him seriously, particularly if more trade hawks, such as Jamison Greer, whom Trump has nominated as U.S. trade representative, are given major roles in U.S. trade policy. Trump will use tariffs as leverage with China, probably starting from the premise that China had not fulfilled its commitments under the trade deal reached at the end of his first term. The Trump administration seems certain to impose new tariffs on China and very likely also on other countries that have significant trade surpluses with the United States, including Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Beijing will retaliate in some way since it will not want to appear weak. China’s own troubled economic condition may constrain it, but herein lies another concern. Beijing’s economic problems are essentially driven by collapsing confidence in the country’s economic management. This is a political crisis, as well, because it stems from doubts among many in the Chinese business and intellectual elite, as well as its middle class, about the direction that Xi has taken the country. By privileging political control and security over economic efficiency, he has moved the state in a more Leninist direction, slowing growth and straining China’s post-Mao social compact, according to which Chinese were given more space to pursue economic and other activities, as long as they did not openly defy the party.

Coupled with a new Trump trade war, the resulting economic slowdown could create a vicious circle. Across China, local governments have incurred massive debt underwritten by a real estate bubble that has now burst. The collapse of the real estate sector has eroded consumer confidence, making it difficult to boost domestic demand. As a consequence, Beijing has relied on state-directed investment to drive growth, causing overcapacity in key export sectors: Chinese companies are flooding markets with cheap electric vehicles and batteries, increasing trade tensions with the West and raising the prospect of more tariffs and geopolitical tensions. These tensions add to China’s economic problems and make it more difficult for Beijing to make significant policy changes without appearing weak. By exporting its overcapacity, China also increases the likelihood that the United States and other countries will impose tough tariff regimes on it, thus further undermining consumer confidence and causing even greater reliance on state-directed investment and exports. If this cycle locks the Chinese economy into a long-term slowdown, how a frustrated Beijing chooses to react will have security as well as economic consequences across Asia and, indeed, the world.

For many Asian countries, trade policy is the most worrisome element of Trump’s return. Mutual nuclear deterrence makes it highly improbable that friction between China and the United States will lead to military conflict. But there is also little that anyone can do to mitigate Washington’s intensifying competition with Beijing. Amid these rising tensions, few Asian governments see relations with the United States or China as a binary choice: they will instead try to work more closely with each other to hedge against the uncertainties generated by Xi’s economic policies and Trump’s return. But in doing so, they face another issue: Who will effectively lead the region?

Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a shock to U.S. allies and friends that still reverberates across Asia. But the region quickly adapted after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rallied TPP members to go ahead without Washington and transform the trade pact into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Abe also moved swiftly to establish a close personal relationship with Trump, which probably also helped soften the American president’s approach to Japan and other U.S. partners in East Asia during his first term.

Today, however, the three most important U.S. allies—Australia, Japan, and South Korea—all have politically weak leaders. The new Indonesian president, Prabowo Subianto, wants to take Indonesian foreign policy in a more activist direction, but he has yet to establish himself regionally or internationally. When Prabowo visited the United States in November after the election, he spoke with Trump by telephone. “Wherever you are, I’m willing to fly to congratulate you, personally, sir,” Prabowo gushed. Trump responded positively to this display of deference, but no meeting occurred. The region clearly needs someone to step forward and lead as the late Abe did, but there is no obvious candidate.

AMERICA WAS ALWAYS FIRST Asia’s long experience with Washington suggests that Trump is not sui generis. Large, continent-sized countries such as the United States tend to look inward more than outward. Trump’s reluctance to involve the country in foreign commitments reflects a strand of thinking that has been present in U.S. foreign policy since George Washington warned against permanent alliances in his 1796 Farewell Address. Before World War II, the United States engaged in external affairs only episodically, and none of those episodes lasted very long. It took a direct attack on American soil at Pearl Harbor in 1941 to force Washington to confront the threats posed by fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan; after World War II, the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union led the United States into the Cold War. The 50 years between 1941 and 1991, when the Soviet Union imploded, was the longest period of sustained external engagement in U.S. history.

Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the United States has not faced such an existential threat. China is a formidable peer competitor and Putin’s Russia is dangerous, but neither poses the same kind of threat that the Soviet Union did. So why should Americans, in the famous formulation of President John F. Kennedy, “bear any burden or pay any price” to uphold international order? Consequential as it was, the half century when the United States had no choice but to consistently and continually engage itself abroad—and the era of the “war on terror” in the early years of this century—may be exceptions rather than the rule. Indeed, with the Nixon Doctrine, U.S. policy toward much of Asia had already reverted to a less interventionist stance even during the later decades of the Cold War.

Rather than hankering after the imagined common values of a bygone age, then, U.S. allies and partners would do well to regard the foreign policy of Trump’s second administration as a return to the natural position of the United States. Emulating their Asian counterparts, Western countries should learn to deal with Washington not as a superpower with almost unlimited willingness to defend them but as an offshore balancer that will use its forces discriminatingly to advance American interests first.

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