Disaster for Trump at the Polls May Weaken Alliances with Asian Countries

Asia’s most powerful nations see the repudiation of President Trump in America’s midterm elections as a shock that may undermine security alliances and raise doubts about agreements on tariffs and trade.That’s not necessarily bad news for Communist China, looking for weaknesses and holes in the network of alliances that Washington has formed with nations around its Pacific rim, ranging from Japan and Korea to Thailand and the Philippines.“The hegemonic nature and extreme selfishness of Washington’s foreign policy have never changed with the rotation of parties,” said the Global Times, the English-language offshoot of the party mouthpiece, People’s Daily. “While the midterm elections may reshape the landscape of the US Congress, they cannot alter the trajectory of the decline of the US alliance system.”The view that America’s responsibility to its friends is fading pervades the outlook of America’s most powerful Asian ally, Japan, always concerned about the depth of President Trump’s commitment. The fact that China and Japan view each other with increasing suspicion, reflecting their historic enmity, adds to Japan’s need for assurances from Washington.“Tokyo will once again need to assess how Washington’s next moves could affect both the Japanese economy and its broader security planning,” said the Japan Times analysis. “For Tokyo, the central question is whether Trump will prioritize near-term economic agreements with Beijing at the expense of broader U.S. strategic objectives in the region.”Mr. Trump, lame duck though he may appear after losing both houses of Congress, will still be able to give some strong signs of where he’s taking American policy in Asia when he goes to the Chinese city of Shenzhen for the gathering this month of APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group.There he’s expected to meet China’s President Xi Jinping and Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who’ve been on almost hostile terms. Mr. Trump should give some clues as to his desire to get along with Mr. Xi, whom he entertained at the White House in September, and try to reasure Ms. Takaichi of Washington’s enduring support.In between handshakes, speechmaking and tete-a-tetes with more than 20 leaders, including possibly a representative of Free Taiwan, the island province that Mr. Xi vows some day to take over, Mr. Trump will also be awaiting a clue as to whether North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, will see him.The odds of that happening are extremely long but not totally out of the question. South Korea’s left-leaning unification minister, Chang Dong-young, took heart from the comment of Mr. Kim’s younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, that Pyongyang was open for dialogue if talks “served its interests.” Ms. Kim, he said, had even acknowledged that “dialogue is necessary for peace.”Mr. Trump can still wield power over tariffs as a bargaining tool, but would Mr. Kim, in a display of camaraderie, consider seeing him again? A former senior American diplomat in Seoul and Tokyo, Evans Revere, doubts it. Mr. Kim “is feeling no pressure these days from either the U.S. or South Korea,” he tells The New York Sun. “He is well placed to ignore the overtures he is receiving from both, thanks to the support he is receiving from Moscow and Beijing, and also thanks to the willingness of South Korea and the United States to offer rhetorical blandishments and concessions and look the other way as the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) threatens the international community.”South Korea, getting nowhere in its own quest for dialogue with North Korea, is caught in the middle. Mr. Trump may not bargain so hard on tariffs now that he knows Congress won’t back him, but he still has to deal with the touchy issue of OPCON, transferring operational control to Seoul in time of war.In Seoul, the sense is that Mr. Trump will not order a reduction in American troop strength, now about 28,500, while wrangling on OPCON goes on between American and Korean military people. The Korea Times quoted a former chief of staff of the National Security Council, Fred Fleitz, as observing that “the primary mission of USFK (U.S. Forces Korea) is to deal with the threat from North Korea” — “not to deal with China or Russia.”Andrew Yeo, a politics professor at the Catholic University of America, surmises that the Democratic majorities in Congress “may take some of the pressure off of Koreans when it comes to tariffs, but may complicate South Korean “objectives,” including OPCON.For other Asian countries, the deals Mr. Trump has made, or will make, with both China and Russia are inevitably interwoven with tariffs and trade. “Since the era of tariffs and trade wars had meant a setback to the era of predictability in the global economy,” says the Indian Express, one of India’s national newspapers. “This is something that Delhi and other world capitals will be watching.”

Disaster for Trump at the Polls May Weaken Alliances with Asian Countries

Disaster for Trump at the Polls May Weaken Alliances with Asian Countries

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