EDITORIAL – DEC 2024 – Facing up to flashpoints
Dancing with many partners
The Asia-Pacific is peppered with smouldering issues that strategists warn could erupt at any time. Among them are Taiwan, the Sino-Indian border, the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea.
These same flashpoints were there when President Donald Trump was last in office. But he moves back into the White House next month facing a far more dangerous and polarised world.
More and more debate revolves around avoiding global conflicts. The question is how attempts to de-escalate will differ between a Trump and Biden administration.
The Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestinian wars are evidence of the unfolding threat.
The Global South, led by nations like India, South Africa and Brazil, makes a point of not choosing sides, while the deepening alliance between China, Iran, North Korea and Russia is forming what could become a real enemy bloc to Western democracies.
It is worth noting, however, that, despite three of these combatant nations being Asian states, the region has escaped the type of tension enveloping Europe and the Middle East.
Much of this is down to America’s successful policy over the years which has created a collaborative network of alliances and partnerships, anchored in high levels of trade and investment, regardless of which administration has been in power.
The US has mentored Asia’s three economically developed democracies, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. More recently, it has encouraged and shepherded the Quadrilateral Dialogue – Australia, India, Japan and the US – as a balance to Chinese expansion.
President Biden continued previous initiatives ranging from projection of military power to brokering better relations between Japan and South Korea.
Significantly, he made a point of keeping most of Trump’s China tariffs which launched a trade war in 2018 and has introduced additional ones to include semiconductors and electric vehicles.
National Security Adviser-designate Michael Walz made clear that Trump and Biden were in broad agreement about Asia-Pacific policy. ‘For our adversaries out there, that think this is a time of opportunity, that they can play one administration off the other – they are wrong,’ he told Fox News. ‘We are hand in glove. We are one team.’
Earlier assumptions, however, that economic interdependence and strong diplomacy can keep things in place, are increasingly being proven wrong, and Asia-Pacific governments and Western democracies are long overdue for an adjustment of traditional mindsets.
There remains a high degree of the unknown in Trump’s long-term thinking and in his reaction to unexpected events.
One indicator are his appointments of Walz as National Security Adviser and Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, both hawkish against Beijing, who will need to work closely with key advisor Elon Musk, who had massive business interests in China.
Here we see the makings of transactional balance that could knock reality into ideologues in Beijing and Washington.
Another indicator lies in the regional mood, best exemplified by populous Indonesia, whose new president Prabowo Subianto went first to Beijing, then to Washington, stressing to both presidents that his government will adhere strictly to a policy of non-alignment.
Trump insists that his trade and security policies will be closely linked, imposing tariffs according to the quality and depth of a country’s relationship with the US. Any that Washington places on Japan, for example, are likely to be a fraction of those facing China.
It is likely that tariffs will also be used to prise governments away from Beijing. Those who manufacture in China will be subject to higher tariffs than if they moved their factories to Bangladesh or Thailand.
On the flip side, should Trump prove to be too impulsive and undisciplined, the region might opt to strengthen ties with China on the basis that authoritarian predictability is preferable to democratic chaos.
The challenge, however, for China with this scenario is to prove that it can be both a responsible and capable leader in a new global order. As of now, with few sophisticated and enduring alliances, Xi Jinping is far from ascending to that status.
It is no coincidence that three American carrier groups are being deployed to this theatre for the January 20th presidential inauguration, when China is expected to create incidents to test America’s resolve.
While transactional trade may be Trump’s weapon of choice to bolster American power, the smouldering issues remain with little indication of how he would react should a flashpoint erupt.