If former President Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election this November, it will have significant implications for U.S. foreign policy, including in Washington’s priority theater: the Indo-Pacific. Of course, there is still much uncertainty surrounding just how a second Trump administration might handle the region, mostly due to Trump’s own capriciousness.
One possibility is that the new Trump team simply dusts off its old Indo-Pacific strategy from 2019, which is mostly aligned with the Biden administration’s strategy, and proceeds with waging great power competition against China and strengthening alliances and partnerships. But another possibility is that the U.S. under Trump 2.0 turns its back on the Indo-Pacific to focus on an “America First” agenda, potentially emboldening foes and imperiling key allies and partners.
The evidence so far suggests that although a second Trump term would likely continue to prioritize great power competition, it might simultaneously intensify its transactional – or, more charitably, realist – approach to Indo-Pacific allies and partners. For example, Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance, an avid supporter of competition with China, suggests strategic competition will be a defining feature of Trump’s strategy. But Trump’s comment last month, in which he said Taiwan “should pay us for defense” adds fuel to the idea that he will continue to view allies and partners purely through the prism of how they can help the United States and not necessarily the other way around. These concerns are most acute in Eastern Europe, where Trump has similarly questioned U.S. support of Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia.
For the most part, the nations of the Indo-Pacific have remained mum on Trump’s potential return to the White House. This is mostly out of respect for the current occupant and a general aversion to commenting on American domestic politics because it opens the door for Washington to do the same to them on their internal matters. But that does not mean the Indo-Pacific is not considering the very real prospect of a second Trump term; it certainly is. And the responses from across the Indo-Pacific to a second Trump administration are likely to be mixed, with the determining factor being whether the country in question maintains a close relationship with the United States. Typically, those who do will be most worried, but those with less dependence on Washington, including rivals, will be either indifferent or welcoming.
Indo-Pacific receptivity to a second Trump term will be important to monitor as it will contribute to the success or failure of American efforts in the region. Although officials from the first Trump administration like to tout their achievements, in reality, the Indo-Pacific was on edge during those four years and craved a more predictable and stable U.S. policy. The Biden administration certainly has not been perfect, but has at least offered these things and hence markedly strengthened America’s position in the region. A second Trump administration could equal or surpass the Biden team’s efforts were it to assuage concerns about abandoning or undermining U.S. alliances and partnerships, while maintaining the pressure on China in order to demonstrate American resolve and staying power.
Northeast Asia would be a good place to start. It is highly worrisome that Trump’s most avid supporter there is North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. During his first administration, Trump met Kim three times, and even became the first sitting president to step over the DMZ into North Korea, in a risky gambit to convince Kim to pursue denuclearization. To be sure, Trump’s efforts at diplomacy should be lauded, but while they met in 2018 and 2019, Kim secretly continued building his nuclear arsenal.
Since then, Trump has ignored this point and persists in portraying the relationship as positive, recently remarking about Kim, “I get along with him, I think he misses me” – a claim North Korean state media recently denied. Regardless, Kim would like to see Trump in power again to resume diplomacy, with the end goal being sanctions relief and retaining his nuclear weapons. Trump offers that opportunity.
But America’s two longstanding security allies in Northeast Asia, South Korea and Japan, are concerned that Trump might accommodate Kim at their expense. South Korea is strenuously trying to deter a North Korean attack or invasion and seeks denuclearization. And yet, during his first administration, Trump referred to U.S.-South Korea military exercises as “war games,” aligned with North Korea’s provocative descriptions of the alliance’s deterrence activities. He further sought a 400 percent increase in 2020 in Seoul’s expenditures to keep U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. If Trump were to become president again, then South Korea would seek to preserve the progress made in healing the alliance and to focus on North Korea as its primary threat.
An emboldened North Korea could also impact Japan, which on several occasions has endured Pyongyang firing ballistic missiles over its territory. But that did not stop Trump from at one point publicly musing about whether the U.S.-Japan alliance should be revised to ensure Japanese support if the U.S. were ever attacked. This could open the door to changes in other parts of their Mutual Defense Treaty that might impact Japanese security. In June, however, Trump’s interlocutors fortunately signaled to both Japanese and South Korean officials that he would retain a Biden-era annual trilateral summit to help maintain these alliances.
Japan is further concerned over China’s rising assertiveness throughout the Indo-Pacific. Much of its focus has been on the years-long standoff over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, but in recent years, Tokyo has shifted its attention farther south to the Taiwan Strait. Following Trump’s comment on whether it would be worth defending Taiwan from Chinese attack, a Japanese government spokesperson pointedly noted that “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait was “hugely important not just for our own security, but for the entire international community.” As with South Korea, Japan will look to keep the U.S. not only engaged in the region but also supportive of its interests.
Taiwan also has qualms about a second Trump administration. Trump’s comment on the island essentially reconfirms for Taipei his aversion to expending American resources and personnel for an overseas conflict unless it directly impacts U.S. national security. In response, the Taiwanese premier underscored that “Taiwan has steadily strengthened its defense budget and adjusted the conscription serving period to strengthen resilience in our society to demonstrate our responsibility as one of the members of the international community.” At the end of the day, Taiwan wants to avoid falling into the same category as Ukraine, in Trump’s eyes.
Finally, within Northeast Asia, China’s response to a second Trump administration will be quite interesting. It would seem that Beijing has mixed perspectives. On the one hand, because Trump might intensify great power competition, this could present new challenges for China. On the other hand, if he were to walk back U.S. alliances and partnerships both bilaterally and multilaterally (like in 2017 when he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement), then this could actually support Beijing’s objectives, such as “reunification” with Taiwan or its establishment of control over the South China Sea. For now, at least, Beijing’s position on Trump is a mystery, but Chinese leaders will likely welcome him if he rethinks U.S. alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific.
In Southeast Asia, many nations remain neutral about the prospects of a Trump 2.0 scenario. Last month, for example, Singapore’s defense minister, in an interview with Foreign Policy, noted that “we’ve worked with the Trump administration before…I’m not so much concerned.” During a trip I took in May to Indonesia, one of the world’s largest democracies, virtually nobody expressed concerns about a second Trump administration. Similarly, U.S. security ally Thailand has refrained from commenting.
The same is true for Brunei and Timor-Leste. Vietnam – a key strategic partner of the United States with ongoing territorial and sovereignty disputes with China in the South China Sea and along the Mekong River – has much to lose if a future Trump administration were to reduce its support. And yet, Hanoi has remained quiet. Its silence, however, should not be interpreted as acceptance, and its level of receptivity will be highly dependent on the extent to which Washington engages and helps the country achieve its objectives.
There are other nations within Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, that might welcome Trump’s transactional approach. These authoritarian states despise what they perceive to be American lectures on human rights and the need for democracy, and a new Trump administration might avoid these types of engagements in order to cooperate more closely with them on great power competition. However, in his first term, Trump attempted to reset U.S.-Cambodia ties by writing then-Prime Minister Hun Sen a letter in which he called out the importance of a return to the “path of democratic governance,” So it is unclear whether a second Trump administration would be a net positive for them.
Perhaps the biggest loser in Southeast Asia from a second Trump administration would be the Philippines. Manila in recent years has expanded and deepened its security alliance with Washington to help counter Beijing’s rising gray zone tactics in the South China Sea, especially at the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, Scarborough Shoal, Sabina Shoal, and Thitu Island. What is worrisome is that Trump, during his first administration, seemed to be uninterested in the U.S.-Philippines alliance. When then-President Rodrigo Duterte, for example, attempted to cancel the Visiting Forces Agreement – a key part of the alliance – Trump replied, “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.”
But today’s President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., is the opposite of Duterte – pro-U.S. and anti-China – and thus seeks sustainable commitments from Washington. Without U.S. support, the Philippines would be mostly left to fend for itself against the growing Chinese encroachments into its exclusive economic zone.
Separately, Malaysia is likely to oppose Trump, primarily based on his support of Israel in its war against Hamas. Officials from the Muslim-majority nation have come out in staunch support of both the Palestinians and Hamas, and thus would oppose Trump if his pro-Israel policies remain intact.
Trump would likely receive mixed reviews in South Asia as well. In the largest nation in the region and the world’s largest democracy, India, Trump’s return would be welcomed. Although Trump has criticized India in the past over U.S. job losses, his personal relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi is strong and New Delhi generally appreciates a transactional approach to cooperation. The first Trump team also successfully looped India into its Indo-Pacific strategy to counter China, most notably by reviving the Quad, a multilateral security group including Australia and Japan. Washington supported New Delhi with intelligence during its land border clashes in May and June 2020 against China and was willing to look the other way on its longstanding defense relationship with Moscow.
Smaller and medium-sized countries in South Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, probably view Trump neither as a threat nor as a positive contributor to their interests. But like in much of Southeast Asia, this will be entirely contingent upon the actions he and his administration take within the region. Of the six, Afghanistan would probably feel the least threatened given that Trump is the same president who negotiated the deal for the U.S. military to withdraw from that nation. Bangladesh, which experienced a student-led coup earlier this month, will first have to get its own house in order before it can think about foreign policy and how to respond to Trump being back in the White House.
Pakistan is set to suffer the most in South Asia from a second Trump administration. Trump during his first term accused the country of “deceit” and harboring terrorists. In 2018, Trump accordingly canceled security assistance to Pakistan, and though he pursued a reset the following year, it was only because Islamabad was willing to facilitate the peace process in Afghanistan. The new Trump administration would further look to keep U.S.-India ties strong, and cooperating with Islamabad undermines that goal.
Finally, Trump’s return to the White House would be highly worrisome for most if not all nations in Oceania. Despite being a U.S. security ally, Australia strongly contemplated the need for greater self-reliance during the first Trump term because it came to feel that it could not fully trust Washington. And now, the stakes are even higher, especially because of the need to maintain the AUKUS security pact, inked under Biden, to counter China. New Zealand in recent years has shifted from an independent and neutral foreign policy to one that now prioritizes a closer security partnership with the United States. But Wellington might pivot away from this approach if Trump comes back, primarily due to the consequences for fellow Pacific Island nations (more on this in a moment), which could prompt it to reconsider joining the non-nuclear submarine portion of AUKUS, known as Pillar 2.
Pacific Island nations – for example, the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau (collectively known as the Freely Associated States) as well as countries like Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu – would be disillusioned by a second Trump administration. This is primarily because of Trump’s denial of climate change as a scientific phenomenon. For Pacific Island nations, climate change is not only real, but an existential threat as many are already observing rising sea levels that threaten their territories, and warmer waters that negatively impact their fishing stocks. Trump would have to recognize the reality of climate change and take substantive steps to roll it back or mitigate its worst effects to gain trust with Pacific Island leaders.
But interestingly, the first Trump administration’s revived focus on the Pacific Islands region as a new theater of great power competition was not uniformly dismissed in the region. Indeed, the FAS generally welcomed the additional American attention, suggesting that waging great power competition in the Pacific, though not the priority of the majority of its residents, could still resonate somewhat there as well.
Going forward, a future Trump administration would have to consider where it stands in nations across the Indo-Pacific, and make adjustments to its policies and strategies accordingly. For the moment, at least, Trump can reasonably claim to have strong ties with countries like North Korea, Vietnam, India, and the FAS, but his second administration would have a long way to go on key U.S. allies and partners, especially Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. It certainly is not impossible to improve these relationships, but it would also require a discernible shift toward a less transactional and more predictable and stable American approach to the region.
