U.S. grand strategy under the new Trump administration remains unsettled. There are strong indications Washington is moving toward a nascent hemispheric retrenchment approach. It is not yet clear, however, whether that would include a withdrawal of US strategic influence from the Asia-Pacific region. If so, the consequences for the region will be dramatic.
According to media reports, the Trump administration’s soon-to-be-released National Security Strategy breaks with recent practice by prioritizing homeland security and threats within the Western Hemisphere over countering China. This follows months of other statements and actions suggesting a desire to consolidate the United States’ control over its own geographic region, including interest in annexing Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal; renaming the “Gulf of America”; and dispatching U.S. Navy vessels to waters near the coast of Venezuela to intimidate the Maduro government.
The White House has also backed away from the United States’ accustomed postwar leadership role in Europe by distancing itself from NATO and showing little willingness to meaningfully punish Russian aggression against Ukraine. The U.S. government has decided to stop funding programs for building Europe’s capacity to defend against a possible attack from Russia. The movement toward a permanent NATO-U.S. separation is not based solely on policy disagreements, but also stems from an ideological schism.
In the Middle East, the Trump administration’s approach involves mostly diplomacy and economic deals. Despite the air strikes he ordered against Iran, the Trump team favors reduced U.S. military commitments. Indeed, his MAGA base is highly sensitive to any apparent departure from the promise to avoid another “forever war” in the Middle East.
Much of this is consistent with an intention to hunker down in the U.S. home region, stop playing global cop, and leave the management of strategic affairs in other regions to local major powers. But what about Asia, where the “prioritizers” insist the United States should continue to compete for strategic pre-eminence even while shedding commitments elsewhere?
U.S. policy in Asia still displays much continuity with the recent past. Security cooperation with friends and allies continues, including efforts to build their capacity to contribute to a coalition to oppose territorial expansionism by China. New agreements with Japan, South Korea, and Australia will help offset weaknesses in the United States’ shrunken defense industrial base. Senior officials including Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby have said the U.S. must continue to block Chinese attempts to dominate Asia.
Weaknesses are visible, however, in the Trump administration’s willingness to enforce the U.S.-sponsored regional order in Asia. Allies and security partners in the Asia-Pacific are potentially valuable strategic assets in this project. Yet the Trump administration often treats them as economic or strategic liabilities. Trump frequently speaks of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as defense freeriders, but he rarely if ever acknowledges them as contributors to U.S. security.
He has spoken of increasing South Korea’s host nation support payments tenfold, believes South Korea-U.S. military exercises are a waste of money, and reportedly wants to withdraw all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula. He seems anxious to remove any reason for North Korea to aim missiles at the United States.
Trump has also suggested that Taiwan is indefensible and that he would not send U.S. forces to intervene if China attempted to invade.
High tariffs against Asia-Pacific allies suggest a prioritization of economic interests over strategic considerations in U.S. grand strategy. Washington imposed a 10 percent base tariff rate on Australia despite a U.S. bilateral trade surplus, and rebuffed Canberra’s request for exemption from a 50 percent tariff on imported steel and aluminum. Japan and South Korea drew 15 percent tariffs, while Taiwan got 20 percent. All are countries Washington is pressuring to spend more money to strengthen their armed forces. Imports from the Philippines, which recently agreed to open four new military bases for U.S. use and to host two advanced U.S. missile systems, get charged a base 19 percent tariff. All of these U.S. tariff rates are much higher than the average rate of about 2 percent that prevailed immediately before Trump re-entered the White House.
Washington’s abrupt squabble with India trashed years of careful cultivation of a strategic partnership with a country that takes pride in its nonalignment but also sees China as a serious potential threat. For no apparent commensurate gain, the United States badly damaged the recently-revived Quad and literally drove Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi into the welcoming arms of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.
The U.S. government announced in June that it is reviewing the AUKUS agreement, signed by the Biden administration, for fidelity to the “America First” agenda. Under the agreement, the United States will build nuclear-powered attack submarines for purchase by Australia. The Australian government has already delivered a non-refundable down-payment of $1.6 billion in investment in U.S. shipbuilding capacity. Colby is leading the review. He is on record as saying the United States builds so few submarines that it cannot spare any for Australia.
Most importantly, a withdrawal of U.S. strategic influence from the Asia-Pacific region is possible because of Trump’s desire to reach a blockbuster bilateral trade agreement with China, something he tried but failed to do with his “Phase One” deal in 2020. Dangling the possibility of ending U.S. practices such as “freedom of navigation” patrols in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, surveillance flights near the Chinese coast, and especially arms sales and other forms of support for Taiwan would give Trump huge leverage to demand concessions from China that he could sell to his domestic supporters as a major victory for the United States.
If the hemispheric retrenchment policy prevails over prioritizing China, some results are foreseeable.
The most likely and immediate result would be China annexing Taiwan within a few years, either by Taipei agreeing to Beijing’s demand for a negotiated unification or by Taiwan succumbing to Chinese military pressure, most likely a long and gradually escalating blockade. This outcome, a tragedy for Taiwan, would also accelerate other states in eastern Asia concluding that the era of U.S. leadership was over and that accommodating China was their best option.
The next most likely outcome would be the discontinuation of the South Korea-U.S. alliance, loss of confidence in the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and Seoul opting to develop and deploy its own nuclear weapons arsenal. A majority of the South Korean public already favors taking this step. South Korea would face significant barriers, including large financial costs, international criticism for proliferating, and a possible cutoff of the imported fuel for reactors that produce one-third of the country’s electricity. Nevertheless, existing under a permanent and unanswered nuclear threat from North Korea – which recently declared that it now considers South Korea a separate, enemy state and is no longer interested in reunification – would prove intolerable.
The decision by Seoul to acquire a nuclear arsenal would open a window of even higher tensions with North Korea. The circumstances would require Pyongyang to consider a preventive strike to set back or dissuade the South’s march toward a nuclear capability. With the U.S. nuclear umbrella gone, the North Korean government might conclude it could strike with impunity. The likelihood that South Korea getting nukes would compel Japan to follow suit would compound Pyongyang’s motivation to strike first.
Finally, regardless of the state of inter-Korean relations at the time, the withdrawal of a U.S. commitment to help defend Japan would almost certainly result in Japan going nuclear rather than accepting total Chinese escalation dominance.
Chinese Communist Party rhetoric maintains that Asia would be more peaceful after a withdrawal of U.S. military influence. There is a possibility of that proposition being tested in the near future. The aim of a grand strategy of hemispheric retrenchment would be to prevent the United States from paying for other countries’ security. Other regions would sort out which countries dominate and are dominated, while Americans would focus on commerce rather than using military power to shape the global strategic environment beyond the (expanded) homeland. The assumption is this approach would result in a world peaceful enough for unhindered trade and unlikely to threaten the U.S. homeland.
Given what happened last century, that gamble is problematic.