MICHAEL HEAZLE AND ANDREW O’NEIL  |

Concern over the possible decline of US power and the resilience of its commitment to underwriting security in Asia is not new. In the post-1945 period, doubts over Washington’s commitment to maintaining a leadership role in the region have followed President Nixon’s shift to the Guam Doctrine in 1969, eventual defeat in Vietnam in 1975, the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, and the Bush Administration’s preoccupation with the Middle East post-9/11.

With China’s capacity to project economic and military power growing daily, and Beijing’s apparent goal of challenging US strategic preeminence in Asia, these concerns have once more been raised. They have emerged as a feature of foreign policy debate in the US and throughout Asia, including in Canberra and Tokyo.

What makes this latest round of concern different to that of prior decades is the sharply unconventional, unprecedented, and highly unpredictable thinking of US President Donald Trump. As Michael Fullilove has observed, ‘the leader of the free world has a narrow conception of leadership and may not even believe in the free world’. Indeed, Trump is the first post-1945 president not to clearly endorse the long-standing US commitment to maintain the liberal international order it has relied on both for the pursuit of its own interests, as well as a wellspring of legitimacy for US leadership.

The persistent ambiguity over what the Trump Administration is committed to in its foreign relations (other than putting ‘America first’, whatever that might mean) has caused major conniptions in various capitals, but there are some signs that normal service may be resuming in the White House (at least in Trump’s thinking on Asia, if not yet on Europe). His reaffirmation of the ‘One-China’ policy and soothing assurances for Japan and South Korea have been welcomed. But many remain rightly suspicious of Trump and the ability of the US political system to rein in his maverick behavior over the next four years. So far, built-in checks and balances seem to be mostly working, but for how long remains uncertain.

Read the full article, “Why Australia and Japan need a Plan B” article in the Lowy Intepreter by Griffith Asia Institute Associate Professor Michael Heazle and Griffith Business School Dean of Research, Professor Andrew O’Neil.