Policy Alert #157 | January 30, 2018

The release of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) at the end of 2017, the publication of an expose of the inner-workings of the Trump White House ahead of the anniversary of his inauguration, and startling results from a Gallup survey on global support of US leadership left columnists and policy experts abroad with plenty of food for thought as they ruminated on the US president’s performance in 2017 and how their governments should respond. In this RPI Policy Alert, we survey the Rising Powers’ report cards for Donald Trump’s first year in office.

 

CHINA

• In its review of Sino-American relations in 2017, the nationalist Global Times asserted that “Among all the major powers apart from the US, China has been standing the most steadily in the face of shock waves from Washington thanks to Beijing’s own strength and firm diplomatic principles,” and attributed the uncertainty in the international system in the wake of Trump to the over reliance on Western countries for leadership and decision-making.
• Zhang Tengjun, an assistant research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, analyzed the development of “Trumpism” and what it means for the rest of the world in an article for Global Times. “Trumpism is the most important transformation that the US has faced since the end of the Cold War and its influence will go beyond Trump’s four or eight year presidency,” Zhang explained. “How to understand the new norm of US politics and handle Trumpism will be a major research subject for the whole world.”
• In light of the recent Gallup poll that found global support of Chinese leadership had surpassed that of the US in 2017, the state-directed China Daily featured an analysis by three experts on the survey. Yang Mian, a professor at Communication University of China, was cautiously optimistic about the results, urged readers not to ignore the fact that “support for China’s leadership was only 1 percentage point more than that of the US, which dropped a record 18 percentage points” and reminded readers that “one survey result cannot be taken as gospel truth.” Wang Honggang, head of the World Politics Institute at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, attributed the drop in support for US leadership to a combination of the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis and Trump’s failure “to realize even part of his promise to make ‘America great again’, with the 69-hour government shutdown adding to the US administration’s woes.” Wang Fan, vice-president of China Foreign Affairs University, juxtaposed “China’s rising influence [in] its promotion of globalization” against the “US’ protectionist policies and withdrawal from multilateral mechanisms such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and the 2015 Paris climate accord.” Wang further advocated for China to “deepen its cooperation with other countries to improve global governance” and continue to improve its domestic economy in order to “contribute to the development of the world.”
• Ma Shikun, a senior journalist at the China Daily, criticized the labeling of China and Russia as “revisionist” and “strategic competitors” in the US’ National Security Strategy, instead arguing that “given his reckless rewriting and ‘re-evaluation’ of the international status quo in his first year in office, Trump himself could more rightly be called ‘revisionist.’”
• The independent South China Morning Post featured an op-ed by Will Saetren, a research associate at the Institute for China-America Studies, that reviewed Trump’s first year of “incoherent foreign policy” in the Asia-Pacific and its ramifications for security in the region. Saetren asserted that, “For decades, American power and prestige has been the bedrock of strategic stability.[…] In one year, Trump has taken a sledgehammer to these policies and shaken strategic stability to its core.”

INDIA

• The conservative, pro-government newspaper The Pioneer had kinder words for the US president, contending that “On the whole, the year of Trump has not been as bad as many would have you believe.” It noted that “the US’ relationship with India under Trump has improved, which may not have been the case under Hillary Clinton.” One example of this was another editorial that praised Trump’s first tweet of the year that targeted Pakistan, in which The Pioneer hailed, “President Donald J Trump is fast-emerging as the best thing that could have happened of India since readymade chapatis, as it were.”
• Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, found a silver lining to “the irony of America’s rising nativism and protectionism” that has left “around 1.5 million skilled workers and their families stuck in immigration limbo.” “With his constant tirades against immigrants […], Donald Trump is giving many countries the greatest gift of all: causing the trickle of returning talent to become a flood.”
• The center-right Times of India reviewed the National Security Strategy (NSS) to see what consequences the “most important American policy document of the year” has for India. The Times noted that that crucial to the actual outcomes is that “Trump is known to be unpredictable, and may not follow through on all elements of the NSS.” India would benefit from “cooperation between Washington and Moscow” despite the “tough line” against Russia in the NSS, while it would be against India’s interest “if Washington dropped the ball on pressuring Pakistan for nursing terror militias.”
• The liberal Indian Express found both promise and peril in Trump’s stands: “the policy challenge for Delhi is two-fold. One is to seize the opportunities that Trump is offering in countering terrorism and promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan and, more broadly, the Indo-Pacific. The other is to prepare for the unprecedented changes in America’s international relations under Trump.”

JAPAN

• The liberal Asahi Shimbun featured an editorial on Trump’s first year in office and its implications for Japan. The Asahi warned that, “America today is becoming a symbol of uncertainty and unpredictability,” and that, “Diplomacy that is conducted solely on the basis of the Japan-U.S. alliance is precarious at best. […] Japan had better establish its own view and philosophy of the world and hone its diplomatic skills as a peace-seeking economic giant.”
• The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun conceded that Trump’s foreign policy in the Asia Pacific region has “leaned in a more realistic direction” since his inauguration, and praised “strengthening the U.S. military by clearly expressing his intent to increase military spending under the slogan ‘peace through strength.’” Nevertheless, “Attention must be paid to the fact that Trump is from the business sector and lacks a consistent diplomatic strategy. Moreover, his awareness of the importance of respecting the international order and universal values such as democracy and human rights is low. Relevant countries need to keep an eye on possible ‘deal diplomacy,’” the Yomiuri cautioned.
• The Mainichi meanwhile took aim at Trump’s protectionist trade policies in the last year, namely the US’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trump’s threat to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Mainichi criticized Trump for his “abandonment of his responsibility as the leader of a major economic power to put the world economy on a stable growth track,” and expressed concern that the US’s “more important responsibility” of “leading international cooperation based on universal values including democracy and rule of law” is being neglected.

SOUTH KOREA

• The conservative Dong-A Ilbo focused on the allegations that Trump is unfit for office in the recent expose Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House alongside the US president’s “nuclear button” tweet exchange with North Korean President Kim Jong-Un. “[The] U.S. president is the most influential figure in the world who can choose between peace and war in all different areas on conflict. […] Do we have to worry about President Trump’s mental health as well as Kim Jong-Un’s?”
• Liberal-leaning Kyungghyang Shinmun asserted that amidst the tensions on the Korean Peninsula as well as the publication of the NSS, “Trump seeks a road toward confrontation seeing China and Russia as rival states,” at a time when “[t]he U.S. and China are likely to clash in their competition for hegemony in Northeast Asia.” In the wake of Trump, the Kyungghyang urged the South Korean government “to display strategic thinking and a sense of balance” in its own handling of North Korea.
• The liberal Korea Times echoed these concerns, and lamented that in his foreign policy in East Asia, “there has been much evidence the Trump administration has been favoring the military option and the likelihood is increasing.” Instead, “Trump needs to find a peaceful way to resolve the regional conflict without resorting to the military option which will lead to total disaster for all concerned.”

RUSSIA

• Government-backed RT contributor Alexandre Antonov offered a scathing review of Trump’s first year in office, but pointed out that the resulting decline of global support for the US may be beneficial to the rest of the world in the long term. “The world’s distrust puts in question whether Washington’s exceptionalism can be salvaged after the Trump presidency. America enjoyed free rein to topple foreign governments through subterfuge or outright military action, operate the dollar, decide on how global trade should work and much else besides on two presumptions. One – that its leadership was ultimately making the world a better place, regardless of the damage done in the process. And two – that it was an adequately competent leader,” he asserted.
  

 

RPI acknowledges support from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for its activities.