Economist

13-9-18

Donald Trump still has no proper Asia policy

But Asia hands in Washington are not working against him

HOW is Asia policy made in Washington? The trite answer is by Donald Trump’s Asia hands waking up each day and checking the president’s tweets. The answer from Mr Trump’s officials is that not all Mr Trump’s pronouncements on Asia should be taken literally. They say the old alliances with Japan and South Korea still stand (despite Trumpian grumbling), and that America still believes in upholding an international order in which Asia has prospered. And despite the president’s infatuation with strongmen, America—they say—really doesn’t think leaders should gun down suspected drug-dealers. An anonymous official wrote last week in the New York Times of a “steady state” pushing back against chaos and misrule in the White House. Many Asia hands would consider themselves such defenders of stability.

There is not much those hands can do about the president’s dealings with North Korea. Since his summit in June with Kim Jong Un, Mr Trump has been trying to do things his way. His people see Mr Kim pulling the wool over his eyes by promising “denuclearisation”. Mr Trump dreams of a dramatic peace deal, preferably before congressional elections in November, and a Nobel prize. Both men want to deal capo a capo. Even Mike Pompeo, Mr Trump’s secretary of state, is little more than the desk officer on North Korea matters, as Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment, a think-tank, puts it.

Yet do not exaggerate how much the Asia hands work in opposition to their president’s preoccupations. Among the policy experts, a consensus is hardening over confronting China. Mr Trump’s key Asia officials, including Matt Pottinger, a former journalist and marine who is in charge of Asian affairs at the National Security Council, and Randall Schriver, the point man for Asia at the Pentagon, are China hawks. (So is the likeliest candidate for the still unfilled post of chief diplomat responsible for East Asian and Pacific affairs, General David Stilwell.) The hawks deplore China’s growing military footprint in the South China Sea, its pressure on Taiwan and its pursuit of what they call “debt-trap diplomacy” through the Belt and Road Initiative. Their latest concern is China’s mass detention of Muslim Uighurs in the far western region of Xinjiang, surely the world’s most egregious example of hi-tech dictatorship in action.

The hawks believe China is trying to make the world, in their language, a “safe space” for authoritarians. They advocate pushing back on every front. The administration lambasted China last month when El Salvador became the latest Central American country to fall for blandishments and threats and switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. Last week America recalled its senior envoys from El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Panama for “consultations” following those countries’ dumping of Taiwan (even though America itself broke off official relations with the island in 1979). As for the South China Sea, President Xi Jinping broke the promise he made to Barack Obama in 2015 not to militarise China’s installations there. Mr Obama was far too soft on China, Trump people say. Some want a greater show of force by America in the disputed maritime area.

It is not clear that these matters interest Mr Trump much. But trade, and China’s surplus with America, certainly do. So a hardening towards China, including Mr Trump’s latest threat to impose tariffs on most of China’s trade with America, is all of a piece, even though trade policy is run not by Asia hands but by the United States Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, who backs the president’s approach.

Tariffs, restrictions on Chinese investments and strong-arming American firms in China to bring production home: Chinese leaders claim this increasingly feels like cold-war containment. Once upon a time in Washington the arguments of China hawks were met by those calling for “constructive engagement”. But in frustration or alarm over China’s state capitalism, corporate espionage and technology theft, no one calls for that now.

A consensus, then—yet the administration’s confrontation with China looks as much like a gorilla beating its chest as a considered Asian strategy. For a start, it is not clear what concrete measures the administration wants China to take.

As for the “free and open Indo-Pacific” policy unveiled by Mr Trump at the annual APEC regional summit last year, intended to show his commitment to Asia as China rises, his experts have struggled to get him to mention it since. In fact, he is not even attending this year’s meeting. As they say at these Asian gatherings, showing up is half the battle. Mr Trump’s aides can’t seem to get him to do even that.