Trump’s Victory Will Lead Asian States to Rely on Middle Powers Instead

As the relationship between the United States and China continues to deteriorate, and as Donald Trump’s victory scrambles foreign policy throughout Asia, countries in Southeast and South Asia are increasingly worried about having to choose between the two giants—a possibility that a second Trump administration may push, as they tire of Asian countries hedging between the two giant powers. As I noted in a recent Japan Times article, the Trump administration, in particular, may try to push Southeast Asian states to emulate the Philippines and specifically stand behind the United States, a position the nine other countries of ASEAN (and South Asian states) do not want to replicate—or at least did not want to do so in the past, for fear of alienating China, the dominant economic presence in the region and one being aggressively courted by Asian states ranging from Malaysia to Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal to Bangladesh.  

In some ways, the growing tensions and the perception among some Southeast and South Asians that the Biden administration has not focused enough on the region has led to polls and some articles suggesting the region is already leaning toward China. President Biden, for two years in a row, did not appear at the East Asia Summit, the region’s flagship gathering. An extensive annual survey released earlier this year by the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a leading regional think-tank, showed that a majority of survey respondents from Southeast Asia preferred China over the United States, a dramatic reversal from the survey’s findings even five or ten years ago.

Given their fears about being caught between the two major powers and getting little security from their own Southeast Asian regional organization, the toothless Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Southeast Asian states—and some in South Asia and the Pacific— are instead turning to regional powers to expand their trade opportunities, find other sources of defense and strategic links, buy arms, and solicit aid and investment.

This trend began well before Trump was elected for a second time, as Southeast Asian and some South Asian states grew increasingly worried about the United States’ long-term commitment to the region, and as Washington had no real ability to lead a trade agenda in a region home to fast-moving and extensive regional economic ties. But the second Trump victory has sped up this trend of looking to regional powers to fend off binary choices between Beijing and Washington, and to create a more multilateral Asia that could force the two giants to be enmeshed in regional multilateral institutions.  

Indeed, many South and Southeast Asian states are exploring another route to avoid being completely caught up in U.S.-China tensions. Instead, they are building more robust ties with Asia’s major regional powers—most notably, a much more economically and strategically assertive Japan—but also with Australia, South Korea, the European Union (which is of course not in Asia but is playing a much bigger role there in recent years), and to some extent India, among others. For more on this middle power strategy, even more critical to South and Southeast Asian states in a region ripe for upheaval, see my new World Politics Review column.