Asia, explained.
An energetic campaign of Australian engagement, led by the Prime Minister and senior ministers, with other US allies in the region, could help align positions and provide a stronger sense of collective determination (Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images)
Trump's unpredictable foreign policy opens the door for energetic Australian diplomacy to strengthen regional alignment.
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Can Australia rally the Indo-Pacific allies?Can Australia rally the Indo-Pacific allies?
The selection of Japan’s Mogami class frigate for the Royal Australian Navy is a perfect springboard from which Australian diplomatic leadership could help rally America’s shaken Indo-Pacific allies in support of a favourable regional balance of power.
Trump’s remaking of America’s role in the world raises a thousand questions for Australian foreign policy, but none more consequential than for the nation’s highest priority – a stable Indo-Pacific in which the United States upholds peace and Australia has sufficient strategic and economic space to prosper.
The amount of policy this single large objective consumes is breathtaking, whether contesting China in the Pacific, boosting relations with Southeast Asia, balancing economic interests with security concerns in China, supporting the United States to build the fabric of deterrence in the region, or plans for an Australian Defence Force with greater reach and offensive fire power.
Still, seen from Canberra, the obstacles piling up in front of this singular strategic objective must be sobering.
Some six months in, US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy resembles a rogue catherine wheel, turning madly with a great hissing sound, charges firing off in all directions. Friend and foe alike duck desperately for cover and occasionally get whacked in the head or choke on the smoke and burnt gunpowder drifting over the field of diplomacy.
The United States has been making itself steadily less influential in Asia for some years, including through its narrow security focus on China, patchy commitment to regional institutions and determined absence from large plurilateral free trade agreements.
Trump now regularly contributes other acts of self-harm, large and small. This includes the drawdown of USAID and the disembowelment of Radio Free Asia. Evan Feigenbaum, one of the sharpest observers of the US in the region, worries a “de-Americanised” Asia is in sight.
Whatever plans the Pentagon might have, Trump’s mercurial nature, comfort in a spheres of influence world, and interest in a grand bargain with Xi Jinping, cloud prospects for success.
Trump’s tariff wars aren’t helping. The American market is not replaceable for the biggest Asian economies, but the sketchy, uncertain “deals” announced by Trump in Southeast Asia, to the extent they stick, look anything but fair to regional publics. Nor is Southeast Asia, economically tied to China as it is, enthusiastic about US efforts to isolate Beijing, including by shutting down transhipment.
Then there is the way in which US tariffs have strained America’s North Asian alliances and the strategically vital relationship with India. As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius observed recently, China seems to be faring better with Trump’s challenge to global order than traditional allies, who often find that the reward for being a loyal partner is a “punch in the nose”.
None of this necessarily precludes a US-led military balance of power in the region that deters China from the use of force. But even here, whatever plans the Pentagon might have, Trump’s mercurial nature, comfort in a spheres of influence world, and interest in a grand bargain with Xi Jinping, cloud prospects for success and raise the risk of Chinese miscalculation.
Compensating for this uncertainty is no easy task. Foreign Minister Penny Wong appeals to Southeast Asia to recognise that the “stability of our region can only be secured through collective responsibility”, an ASEAN-friendly approach that helps burnish Australia’s Southeast Asia credentials, but which is very unlikely to cut through the region’s immense lack of agency and worry about being caught between Beijing and Washington.
At the other end of the spectrum, Ely Ratner, a senior official in the Biden Administration, has proposed a new collective defence pact that would, in the first instance, bring the United States together in a single security arrangement with “the three partners that are most strategically aligned and have the fastest-growing and most robust combined military cooperation: Australia, Japan and the Philippines”.
It is not clear this proposal interests the Trump administration, which generally evinces weariness with alliance entanglements. In any event, given the quiet but nonetheless evident loss of confidence in America under Trump, it is hard to see Tokyo or Canberra signing up. Then there would be the tedious and immensely distracting task of dealing with Chinese apoplexy at the emergence of an “Asian NATO”.
There is nonetheless scope for creative Australian foreign policy. For example, an energetic campaign of Australian engagement, led by the Prime Minister and senior ministers, with other US allies in the region, could help align positions and provide a stronger sense of collective determination and deterrence. This would fit neatly with the government’s emphasis on “more diversified relationships”, an approach clearly designed to offset Trump’s ruthlessly self-interested America First foreign policy.
Such diplomacy could help coordinate responses to US requests for allies to bear more of the security burden in the region, align messaging to Washington on issues such as China and Taiwan, and support economic openness in the Indo-Pacific. It might also help with the task of ensuring disagreements between allies and the Trump administration on both trade and security don’t, as the strategist Raja Mohan worried recently, “slide into outright rupture”.
The art of the possible here will rest to some extent on the shifting sands of Japanese domestic politics and the interest of partners like South Korea and the Philippines. Still, accepting that Asia will be harder, Trump has already provoked this kind of regular leader-led diplomacy in Europe, with a productive focus on managing the US relationship, trade differences and great power competition.
About the author
Richard Maude
Richard Maude is Distinguished Policy Fellow, Asia Society Australia, and Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute.
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