The primary 12 months of U.S. President Donald Trump’s international coverage in Southeast Asia has been demonstrably combined. On the one hand, Trump unexpectedly strengthened U.S. multilateral engagement by working with the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). His administration additionally deepened key bilateral relationships with the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia—and even sought improved ties with Cambodia, regardless of its document as a serial human rights abuser. Then again, these achievements have been considerably offset by the lengthy shadow of Trump’s extremely unpopular tariffs on the area’s exports to the US.
Extra broadly, Trump’s transactionalism—although it may be a useful asset in Southeast Asia at instances—additionally jeopardizes Washington’s long-term affect within the area. Along with his trademark unpredictability and volatility, Trump has fueled confusion, frustration, and a rising mistrust of U.S. intentions. These issues had been bolstered on Jan. 3, when Trump launched a army raid to forcibly oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—prompting Singapore, a detailed and dependable U.S. accomplice—to notice that it was “gravely involved” in regards to the preservation of worldwide legislation. Furthermore, the discharge of Trump’s new U.S. Nationwide Safety Technique final month barely even mentions Southeast Asia. The doc frames the area largely as a car for advancing U.S. financial aims quite than as a strategic accomplice in its personal proper.
The primary 12 months of U.S. President Donald Trump’s international coverage in Southeast Asia has been demonstrably combined. On the one hand, Trump unexpectedly strengthened U.S. multilateral engagement by working with the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). His administration additionally deepened key bilateral relationships with the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia—and even sought improved ties with Cambodia, regardless of its document as a serial human rights abuser. Then again, these achievements have been considerably offset by the lengthy shadow of Trump’s extremely unpopular tariffs on the area’s exports to the US.
Extra broadly, Trump’s transactionalism—although it generally is a useful asset in Southeast Asia at instances—additionally jeopardizes Washington’s long-term affect within the area. With his trademark unpredictability and volatility, Trump has fueled confusion, frustration, and a rising mistrust of U.S. intentions. These issues had been bolstered on Jan. 3, when Trump launched a army raid to forcibly oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—prompting Singapore, a detailed and dependable U.S. accomplice—to notice that it was “gravely involved” in regards to the preservation of worldwide legislation. Furthermore, the discharge of Trump’s new U.S. Nationwide Safety Technique final month barely even mentions Southeast Asia. The doc frames the area largely as a car for advancing U.S. financial aims quite than as a strategic accomplice in its personal proper.
It’s exactly this kind of cold-blooded realism—one which overtly treats Southeast Asia as a method towards the finish of larger U.S. energy—that dangers creating a big strategic rift within the area. Some international locations, principally authoritarian or semi-authoritarian, have welcomed Trump’s method as a result of they’ve lengthy been suspicious of Washington’s motives and now see it as extra clear about its nationalist and egocentric priorities. Others, nevertheless—together with U.S. allies and shut companions whose safety is determined by a sustained and predictable U.S. dedication to discourage China—are more and more uneasy. These states usually tend to search strategic alternate options, whether or not with China, Russia, or numerous energy configurations involving Japan, Australia, India, South Korea, the European Union, or the UK.
The underside line is that as a result of Southeast Asia can now not totally depend on the US as a dependable great-power counterweight to China, the following a number of years are prone to witness a gradual rewiring of regional partnerships. Conventional U.S. associates could domesticate nearer ties with China, whereas international locations traditionally aligned with Beijing could discover a new strategic outlet in Washington that permits them to flee overdependence on China. The web impact will probably be larger strategic ambiguity inside ASEAN, significantly when negotiating delicate sovereignty disputes corresponding to these over the South China Sea.
One space of intense focus for the Trump administration is sustaining the integrity and safety of economic delivery lanes. The NSS, for instance, argued {that a} Chinese language assault on Taiwan can be devastating to U.S. nationwide pursuits partially as a result of the island “supplies direct entry to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters.” Quite than emphasizing the geopolitical or human penalties of such an assault, the doc underscored that “[g]iven that one-third of world delivery passes yearly by means of the South China Sea, this has main implications for the U.S. economic system.”
This blunt framing is probably going unnerving to ASEAN members pushing again in opposition to China’s expansive maritime claims. Whereas sustained U.S. consideration to the South China Sea is welcome in precept, the motivations behind it matter. If Washington is patrolling the area primarily for its personal financial pursuits, then how do the pursuits of regional states—particularly treaty allies—issue into U.S. decision-making? What if U.S. financial pursuits change, maybe on account of accelerated decoupling from or engagement with China?
The Philippines supplies a stark check case. Beneath an “America First” international coverage, one may argue that it isn’t inherently in Washington’s curiosity to assist Manila defend its unique financial zone in opposition to Beijing’s intrusions. As a substitute, the Philippines ought to shoulder that burden itself. Taken to its logical conclusion, this method raises critical questions on whether or not the US would assist Manila if a taking pictures battle erupted over contested options corresponding to Second Thomas Shoal or Scarborough Shoal.
To make sure, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had a profitable assembly with Trump on the White Home in July, and U.S. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth later introduced the creation of a Process Drive Philippines to strengthen maritime safety cooperation to discourage China. Nonetheless, it stays unclear how excessive defending the Philippines below the 2 international locations’ mutual protection treaty ranks amongst Trump’s priorities, particularly when weighed in opposition to competing financial and political issues, together with his need for a grand financial discount with Beijing.
Vietnam faces related issues, although with out the safety of a proper safety treaty with the US. In 2023, Hanoi elevated ties with Washington, then below the Biden administration, to “complete strategic”—the very best standing in Vietnam’s official diplomatic hierarchy, on par with China and Russia. That transfer was meant, partially, to additional enmesh U.S. and Vietnamese pursuits, together with within the South China Sea. But Washington’s narrowly outlined priorities below Trump recommend it could be much less prepared to assist Vietnam’s protection of its maritime claims if doing so doesn’t clearly advance U.S. pursuits.
Past maritime safety, Trump has devoted rising consideration to securing provides of crucial minerals. In the course of the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur in October, his administration signed mineral agreements with Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Throughout bilateral commerce negotiations with Indonesia, U.S. officers reportedly expressed robust curiosity in securing entry to Jakarta’s huge reserves of nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper—sources crucial to U.S. industrial provide chains and to lowering Chinese language dominance.
In a extra controversial wrinkle, the Trump administration has additionally proven curiosity in Myanmar’s uncommon earth minerals—the world’s third-largest producer—regardless of the nation’s ongoing civil battle. Choices reportedly into consideration embody participating each the army junta below Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and insurgent organizations such because the Kachin Independence Military, probably buying and selling sanctions reduction for useful resource entry. Though progress has been restricted, the episode underscores the extent to which transactional logic is reshaping U.S. regional engagement.
Provide chains associated to synthetic intelligence characterize one other point of interest. Final month, the administration introduced a brand new initiative dubbed “Pax Silica” that goals to safe the provision chains for silicon and different crucial minerals which can be important for superior semiconductor manufacturing. Notably, the rollout named just one Southeast Asian nation—Singapore—as a key accomplice, alongside U.S. allies Australia, Japan, and South Korea, with Taiwan included as a visitor. The exclusion of most of Southeast Asia raises but extra questions on which international locations Washington deems strategically useful—and which it doesn’t.
In some respects, this fixation on entry, routes, and sources will not be new. Previous U.S. administrations pursued related aims however sometimes did so with larger subtlety and with an accompanying emphasis on alliances, partnerships, and values. The Trump administration has departed sharply from that method, overtly signaling that until Southeast Asian states can show clear strategic profit to the US, Washington feels no obligation to maintain engagement. As the brand new Nationwide Safety Technique bluntly acknowledged, “The times of the US propping up the complete world order like Atlas are over.”
Put otherwise, Trump’s near-exclusive emphasis on a slim conception of nationwide curiosity over values and even broader strategic objectives may make the US behave extra like China. Beijing’s personal transactionalism—“pragmatism,” as Chinese language leaders choose to name it—has paid dividends in Southeast Asia, the place many governments admire China’s aversion to lecturing on democracy or human rights. However it’s far harder for the US to tug off the identical method, given its historic function since World Warfare II because the chief of the liberal, rules-based worldwide order.
Neither is Washington prone to pull it off effectively. The USA will not be China, and Southeast Asia doesn’t anticipate it to behave as such. For many years, Washington’s affect within the area has rested not solely on energy and entry, however on reassurance—on the assumption that U.S. commitments, whereas imperfect, had been in the end sturdy, predictable, and rooted in one thing past slim achieve. By discarding that basis in favor of express transactionalism, the Trump administration dangers eroding the very benefits which have distinguished the US from its chief strategic competitor.
Southeast Asian states are pragmatic, not sentimental. If U.S. engagement is decreased to a steadiness sheet—delivery lanes protected right here, minerals extracted there—then regional governments will reply in variety, diversifying companions, diluting U.S. leverage, and hedging ever extra aggressively towards China. Over time, this is not going to yield larger U.S. affect, however much less: a area much less prepared to align, much less assured in U.S. resolve, and fewer inclined to take dangers on Washington’s behalf.
In searching for to flee the burden of management, the US could in the end uncover that it has surrendered its best strategic asset in Southeast Asia—the belief that after made Washington’s energy not simply formidable, however preferable throughout a lot of the area.
