The specter of former President Donald Trump returning to the White House in January portends a cataclysmic shift in American foreign policy, with repercussions from Europe to Northeast Asia.
Let’s assume the former president would at least try to make good on his claim to be able to reach a deal for ending the war for Ukraine “in a day,” most likely by letting the Russians keep the territory they’ve taken in Ukraine. The other NATO nations, bereft of passionate U.S. support, would be on their own, diffused, divided and uncertain how strongly to prosecute the war.
The implications for Ukraine would parallel what might be far more devastating for Asia, where Trump still thinks he can make a deal with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. It’s not likely that Trump would be deterred by the words of a recent North Korean commentary, obviously dictated by Kim, declaring that if “the political climate” in the U.S. “does not change,” then “we do not care…The U.S. had better make a proper choice in the matter of how to deal with” North Korea.
Although another Trump-Kim summit would break the wall of silence between North Korea and the U.S., there’s no way Kim would give up his nuclear program. He would go on attacking his enemies rhetorically and demanding Trump cancel U.S.-South Korean war games, as Trump did after his first meeting with Kim in Singapore in June 2018.
More dangerously, Kim would also extract from Trump an agreement to reduce the number of U.S. troops in South Korea and, if possible, close vital American bases. South Korea’s armed forces are vastly stronger than they were 10 or 20 years ago, but their numbers are still less than half of the North’s 1.2 million troops. And the new defense treaty that Kim and Russia’s Vladimir Putin signed in June portends the Russians joining the North Koreans, were a second Korean War to break out.
We have no assurances, from all Trump has said, that he would rush to South Korea’s defense as Harry Truman did when Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, ordered the North Korean invasion of the South in June 1950. In fact, it’s more than likely he would go on telling Kim Jong Un, “Let’s make a deal” — you can keep what you’ve got.
That’s a frightening prospect for South Koreans, whether conservatives longing for the good old days of quasi-dictatorial rule during and after the Korean War or leftists advocating an “end of war” statement that would kill the historic U.S.-South Korean alliance and leave the South at the mercy of Kim and the two huge powers on whom he relies for survival, China and Russia.
The scenario, in an era of Trump rule, gets worse moving southward around the Chinese periphery: it’s highly uncertain Trump would rise to the defense of Taiwan if Xi Jinping tries to make good on his threats to take over the island province. The Chinese are getting the message that Trump would not risk a war for Taiwan, which they’ve been vowing to “recover” ever since the Nationalist Chinese forces of Chiang Kai-shek fled there as Mao Zedong’s Red Army was taking over the mainland in 1949.
“Trump always claimed that he was the only U.S. president since the Cold War who had not been involved in a new war,” said Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, in an interview with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. “Trump really does not want to go to war with China in the Taiwan Strait. He will be more cautious than Biden in terms of preventing a war across the strait.”
But what about Biden’s avowed “commitment” to defend Taiwan, and what about the arms Taiwan is importing from the U.S.? The U.S. and Taiwan have never had diplomatic relations. They are represented in each other’s capitals by officially non-governmental “institutes,” but Washington remains committed to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act, enacted in 1979 as President Carter withdrew recognition from the Taiwan regime and formally recognized Beijing as the capital of all China — Taiwan included.
Don’t count on Trump and his vice presidential candidate, JD Vance — if anything more eager than Trump to shed military obligations abroad — to rush to Taiwan’s defense when Chinese fighter planes and ships stage intimidation flights and cruises around the island. Taiwan leaders need to realize the Americans in a new world order may not be on their side.
The chances of an abrupt shift in American policy get even worse in the South China Sea, which China claims as its own territory.
Chinese coast guard vessels have been drenching Filipino boats with water cannons when they try to reach fish-rich shoals in the sea or resupply an old vessel permanently moored out there in a pathetic effort at protecting the Philippines’ claim to its own waters. Chinese and Filipino officials have reached a deal enabling Filipino vessels to resupply the small contingent of troops on board, but the Chinese are not going to abandon their claim to the sea.
U.S. navy ships have been defying the Chinese, sailing through the South China Sea while Air Force planes zoom above. So far, the Americans and Chinese have not come to blows, but conflict is always possible. Again, nobody expects Trump to defy the Chinese and aggressively stake the right of ships and planes of all nationalities to share the open sea and skies while the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and others retain control of islands and shoals claimed by China.
Finally, in a new Trump era, what is to become of AUKUS, the Australia-UK-U.S. alliance that’s been one of the major achievements of the Biden presidency? It’s not likely that Trump would simply jettison the alliance, any more than he would outright pull out of NATO. He might, however, be no more enthusiastic about engaging in joint military exercises with AUKUS than he is about playing war games with the South Koreans.
In this evolving admixture, it’s possible to underestimate the role of Japan. The Japanese are alarmed by signs of North Korea’s increasing strength as a close ally of Russia, which promises to provide the North with the technology needed to launch missiles of all kinds: short-range, perfect for hitting targets in Japan as well as South Korea, and long-range, theoretically capable of exploding nuclear warheads anywhere in the U.S.
Japan cares deeply about Taiwan, which it ruled from 1895, after defeating China in the Sino-Japanese War, until the Japanese defeat in World War II in 1945. Japanese and South Korean forces have been staging air and naval exercises since the famous summit last August at which President Biden hosted Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Korea’s Prime Minister Yoon Seok-yul at Camp David.
Neither Kishida nor Yoon appear eager for a war with North Korea, much less China or Russia. The Japanese, however, might finally abandon or totally circumvent Article 9 in their “no war” constitution, rammed through in 1947 during the American occupation, authorizing military force only in self-defense and banning Japanese troops from waging war overseas.
The Japanese defense budget is now edging up from the longstanding barrier of 1 percent of gross national product and is likely soon to reach 2 percent. The Japanese military, supported by 53,000 American troops, most of them at marine and air force bases in Okinawa, is capable, well trained and reliant on weapons made in Japan.
It’s not difficult to imagine Japan’s revival as a major military power, determined to keep South Korea and Taiwan out of the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese in the vacuum created by withdrawal of American forces.
Donald Kirk has been a journalist for more than 60 years, focusing much of his career on conflict in Asia and the Middle East, including as a correspondent for the Washington Star and Chicago Tribune. He is currently a freelance correspondent covering North and South Korea, and is the author of several books about Asian affairs.