Contrary to Hugh White’s argument that we’re better off appeasing China than risk going to war with Donald Trump, we are likely to see a recalibrated version of US offshore balancing in Asia under Trump that will impose added burdens on allies, but will not mean either the careless provocation of China, or a total US drawdown in the region.
My crystal ball went on the blink during the election campaign, but there are good reasons to believe that President Trump will be a different proposition to candidate Trump on US foreign relations at least. It’s still a little early to start building bunkers in the back yard, or to just give up on a regional order that so clearly benefits Australia (and, by the way, China too).
What we witnessed in the US election was an extension of the Brexit backlash against the political establishment, primarily due to deep unhappiness among many voters with globalisation and in particular the progressive liberal values that have shaped its meanings and effects to date. Where this ‘turning back the clock’ process is going to end and how far it will go in changing political values and priorities in the liberal democracies of the US, Europe, Australia and elsewhere is very unclear. What does seem very likely is that this fundamental shift in popular thinking about what liberal democracies do and represent has a way to go yet.
That said, even though the GOP went from widely predicted disaster and irrelevance to control of Congress and the White House quite literally overnight, it remains to be seen how well Trump and Republicans in Congress will get along.
Please click here to read the full “Don’t give up on the US in Asia just yet” article in The Lowy Interpreter by Griffith Asia Institute Associate Professor Michael Heazle.
