In the past few days, the US has ordered its last aircraft carrier out of Asia and sent it to shore up its fleet in the Middle East, and President Donald Trump told his defence department to “substantially reduce” military exercises this week with South Korea. Despite the latter being a US treaty ally and home to about 29,000 American troops, Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social: “These exercises are not only costly, but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a country that, as long as Donald J Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.”
The reference was to North Korea, a communist nuclear-armed country with which the South is still, technically, at war, and which then-US president George W Bush named as part of the “axis of evil” in 2002.
Many are asking whether the “Pivot to Asia” is now dead in the water. This policy, which began during the administration of former president Barack Obama, aimed to strengthen US ties in the Asia-Pacific, later re-termed the “Indo-Pacific”, particularly by American allies, and counter the rising influence of China. With various permutations, it continued under former president Joe Biden and both Trump presidencies. A little more than a week ago, US Under-Secretary for Defence Elbridge Colby told an audience in Manila that “America’s interests are more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific, and … we at the Department of War are concentrated on ensuring those interests are stoutly defended”.
Not everyone was convinced, however. The departure from Asia of the USS George Washington and the curtailing of the exercises with South Korea followed the removal of parts of the Thaad missile interceptor system from the same country in March as well as that of an elite marine unit from Japan – both to support the US-Israeli war on Iran. US military presence and security guarantees were the pre-existing foundations of the “pivot”. If they are no longer reliable, what’s left of it?
It had already been hugely undermined, of course, by one of Mr Trump’s very first acts after taking office in January 2017, when he signed an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the mega trade deal that was supposed to be both the substance and legacy of Mr Obama’s Asia pivot.
Threatening to bomb friendly countries like Oman and undermining trust in key allies like South Korea are, however, on another level. By contrast, Mr Trump has been saying very nice things about Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un – men the traditional Washington foreign policy establishment regards as foes. Perhaps a generous interpretation would be to call that a new kind of pivot to Asia?
We should not by now, though, be surprised by seeming contradictions in the Trump administration’s approach. Mr Colby, whose name was floated as a possible national security adviser, made his reputation with his 2021 book The Strategy of Denial, which argues that the US should shrink its presence in the Middle East and concentrate instead on the Asia-Pacific. In the past year or so, the US has appeared to do the exact opposite – but not necessarily as a clearly thought-out strategy.
Mr Trump’s downgrading of the exercises with South Korea, for instance, appears to have been retaliation for Seoul’s refusal to support his hostilities with Iran. Still, allies are jittery. “How much can Japan continue to rely on a regional security architecture vulnerable to sudden changes in Washington?” read a commentary in Japan Times this week.
To answer the original question: in short, the Trump administration’s actions are incompatible with the original pivot, which would have had Pacific nations draw closer on trade while being further reassured on mutual defence and security matters. Mr Trump binned the original TPP, imposed often crippling tariffs on the region, and left friends in serious doubt that the US would come to their aid if necessary. In that sense, the pivot is over.
There is no doubt that confidence that America will keep to its word has plummeted in the region. However, critics of Mr Trump’s approach to the Asia-Pacific nearly always warn that this will leave US allies weaker in the case of a “potential showdown with Beijing”, or words to that effect, and this is why an end to the pivot is a bad thing.
But what if Mr Trump doesn’t see it that way? What if he doesn’t see war as being inevitable, as the hawks do? Despite all his tirades against China over the years, the US President often states that the two countries can, and must, have a constructive relationship. “We’re two very powerful countries,” he said during his visit to Beijing in May, “I call it the G2.” Addressing Mr Xi as “my friend”, he said: “We are going to have a fantastic future together. I have such respect for China, for the job you’ve done. You are a great leader.”
Further, for Mr Trump Taiwan is not the flashpoint it was for Mr Biden and others, although he has advised the island that China considers to be a renegade province not to declare independence. “We’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war,” he said during the same visit. “I’m not looking for that.”
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a speech in Singapore, also in May, that America sought a Western Pacific where war would be “deemed irrational”. True, he did add that this would be conditioned on a “strong denial defence” in which allies and partners must share the burden properly – and those same “allies and partners” are now feeling rather shaky about US resolve in the region.
But there is definitely a different, and I believe crucial, emphasis. In his Manila speech, Mr Colby even went so far as to say: “The United States is now taking a page from the Asean Way” – which he defined as “pragmatism, an openness to dialogue, respect for counterparts, proud nationalism, and a focus on economic prosperity”.
This pragmatism and respect for difference was absent from the Obama and Biden-era Asia pivots. Security – and an exaggerated sense of the threat from China – may have come first, but ideology and alignment with American values and democracy came a close second. So pause a second before bewailing the end of the “Pivot to Asia”. It doesn’t mean that America is moving out of the region, not by any means.
And for all his faults and caprice, if it has come about because Mr Trump is comfortable treating China as an equal, and not as a foe with which armed conflict must be fought, might that not be a refreshing change in an American president?
