Time for East Asia to prepare for Trump shakedowns

English original of article published today in Japanese and English by the Mainichi Shimbun

“What happens in Ukraine today could happen in East Asia tomorrow.” This line from then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s speech in June 2022 at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue of defence ministers in Singapore has just become disturbingly apt, but for new reasons. His warning was about a territorial invasion. Today’s reality is that the betrayal of Ukraine just exhibited by President Donald Trump could easily happen also in East Asia.

Trump’s supporters may say that he is simply trying to bring peace at the end of three years of a deadly war. Yet while seeking peace sounds admirable, what he is also doing is seeking a bargain with the country that made the invasion, in effect rewarding it for its aggression, and at the same time he is acting like a gangster boss towards the victim, Ukraine, demanding it hand over vast amounts of its mineral rights in return for past military and financial support.

This has exhibited two core characteristics of Trump and the “Make America Great Again” regime that he has created. The first is that he sees geopolitics in a very old-fashioned way, with territory and deals to be thrashed out between the great powers and their leaders, rather than in multilateral forums of any kind. The second is that he defines power as leverage, and believes that leverage can and should be used especially against weaker countries. This is geopolitics as shake-down.

In East Asia, there is a superpower for him to bargain with, and plenty of candidates for the shake-down treatment. Nonetheless, we must also consider the counter-argument, the case for believing that what is happening to Ukraine will not happen in East Asia. This is based on two very rational points.

One is that unlike in Europe, East and South-East Asian countries have generally based their relationship with the United States on interests, rather than values, so that although Trump’s America clearly holds a different view of values (such as human rights, democracy, justice and sovereignty) than his predecessors, America’s interests remain the same. So why should dramatic change or shocks happen? Like him or not, from this point of view, Trump should be manageable.

The second idea, which serves to reinforce the first, is that most Republicans around Trump and in his administration believe that China represents the biggest worldwide threat to American power and security, and consider the contest with China to be the one on which the Trump administration needs to concentrate.

Indeed, some of these China hawks have argued against continued military support for Ukraine on the grounds that America needs to focus all its resources and attention on China. Trump himself has not tended to make that argument, but he has certainly sounded like he believes in being tough on China. Among his threats to impose import tariffs, the only one so far implemented has been an extra 10% tariff on goods from China.

If these two points hold true, then the potential East Asian targets for a Trump shake-down, which are Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan, can relax. In the confrontation with China, even Trump’s America will need the support of its traditional Asian allies.

Let us hope that this proves to be the case. But hope, or “wishful thinking” as it might better be termed, is not a good strategy. The evidence from Europe, and from America’s neighbours of Canada and Mexico, is that no one is immune from the Trump treatment. And, even more worryingly, Trump’s appetite for grand bargains with countries he deems to be America’s fellow superpowers seems now to be even stronger than in his first term in office, in 2017-21.

Some of those who are looking for grand strategic intent behind Trump’s sudden overtures to Vladimir Putin have tried to rationalise this by arguiing he might be trying to do a reverse Nixon-Kissinger: those statesmen’s overtures to Mao Xedong in 1972 served to separate China from the Soviet Union, so perhaps Trump’s plan is to seduce Russia away from China, so as to increase America’s chances of suppressing the Chinese threat?

Perhaps. But this historical parallel does not look strong: China in 1972 had already split away from the Soviet Union, but in 2025 Russia and China remain closely aligned, still in the “strategic partnership without limits” that Putin and Xi Jinping signed up to on February 4^th 2022, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Whatever deal America might now do with Russia, it stretches credulity to think it could be large or profound enough to break Russia’s ties with China. Putin is evil but certainly not stupid and would not trust Trump sufficiently to sacrifice the ties with China and North Korea he has built up.

This means that although the potential dangers for East and South-East Asia may not be as great as for Ukraine and Europe, they cannot be ignored. Unlikely is it may seem to normal geopolitical strategists, President Trump is perfectly capable of believing that some sort of grand bargain with Xi Jinping could be achievable, and if the price of that were to be to throw allies under the metaphorical bus, he is capable of paying that price.

The China hawks around him would argue strongly against any such bargain. But some close advisers, most notably Elon Musk with his big Chinese Tesla car business, might prove much more pro-China. It would be foolish right now to place confident bets on how this balance might turn out.

The bigger and more immediate danger, however, is of Trump repeating his gangster-like shake-down behaviour in East Asia. Taiwan is the most obvious target, given the many false statements he has made in the past about how Taiwan “stole” the semiconductor business from America. Its dependence on American military protection against China makes it very vulnerable. The same is true of the Philippines, whose navy is engaged in a daily struggle with Chinese coastguards and naval ships in the South China Sea. China might well seek to test Trump soon by taking even more aggressive action against the Philippines. South Korea and Japan both know from his first term that they too are vulnerable.

The right way to respond is, first, to make sure that American political figures of all kinds are fully aware of the contribution that Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea make to America’s military posture in the region, and to show that that contribution is only going to increase. And second, sad to say, countries need to plan retaliations against potential threats from Trump, in conjunction with regional allies, so as to convince him that they are not going to be easily bullied. You can hope for the best, but it is important to prepare for the worst.