Donald Trump’s inauguration as president signals the start of a new chapter in U.S. policy toward Asia, particularly in its approach to China and regional allies. With a focus on reasserting American strength, his administration is likely to emphasize economic decoupling, military modernization, and alliance burden-sharing in the Indo-Pacific. This shift could redefine the strategic balance in the region and intensify competition with Beijing.
Michael Beckley — Trump’s New Presidency and the Future of U.S. Policy in Asia
Donald Trump’s return to the presidency ushers in a new era for U.S. engagement in the Indo-Pacific, with policies likely to reshape regional dynamics and redefine America’s strategic priorities. His administration’s approach will center on countering China’s growing influence, strengthening military capabilities, and pushing allies to take on greater responsibility. These changes will have far-reaching implications, not only for the balance of power in Asia but also for the future of U.S. alliances and partnerships. As these policies take shape, the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s (FPRI’s) Asia Program is committed to analyzing these shifts and providing actionable insights for policymakers.
The shifting dynamics of the Indo-Pacific under Trump’s presidency require a nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities ahead. Our fellows offer critical perspectives on how these challenges can be addressed. Commentaries in this series explore key issues such as reforming the defense acquisition process to address inefficiencies and ensure military readiness, recalibrating alliances to strengthen cooperation with partners like South Korea and Japan, and managing the balance of power with China through strategic innovation and engagement. These analyses provide insights into how the United States can adapt its policies to maintain stability, promote democratic values, and enhance its strategic position in the region. By combining expert analysis and forward-thinking solutions, the FPRI Asia Program aims to help shape U.S. policy that supports stability, innovation, and resilience in the Indo-Pacific.
Connor Fiddler — Breaking the Cycle of Defense Acquisition Failures
The U.S. defense acquisition system is slow, inefficient, and ill equipped to address modern threats. Decades of incremental reforms have failed to resolve its fundamental flaws, resulting in delayed projects, cost overruns, and outdated capabilities. This broken process undermines military readiness and stifles innovation when it is needed most. The Pentagon continues to struggle with dwindling stockpiles, over-budget projects, acquisition delays, fragile supply chains, limited production capacity, and an inability to embrace new technologies.
During his first term, President Trump demonstrated an uncommon interest in defense acquisition, often personally involving himself in acquisition strategies, contract negotiations, and platform designs. Rather than personally intervening in the acquisition process, Trump should leverage his interest by empowering his team to drive swift, bold, and transformative reforms to the defense acquisition system.
When President Franklin Roosevelt confronted the dual threats of Nazi expansion in Europe and Japanese aggression in the Pacific, he relied on business leaders like Bill Knudsen and Henry Kaiser to mobilize the “arsenal of democracy.” Trump’s emerging team of entrepreneurs and tech executives could bring similarly transformative private-sector expertise to overhaul the current acquisition system.
To successfully reform defense acquisition, Pentagon leaders must overcome entrenched interservice rivalries, align capital markets with defense priorities, modernize and simplify the budgeting process, scale technological innovations, and pursue sweeping regulatory reforms to enhance collaboration with allies and partners. These daunting tasks are essential to address the growing threats facing the United States and will require the full support of the president. If Trump truly aims to build the greatest military in the world, he must empower his team to make the hard but necessary reforms.
Yong Suk Lee — U.S.-Korean Relations: Look South, not North
The second Trump administration’s immediate priority on the Korean Peninsula is South Korea. The challenge for President Trump and his Korea policymakers will be to help bolster Seoul’s strategic credibility, while giving it a safe space to put its house in order. The United States can do this by working with the interim government in Seoul to schedule a large, joint field training exercise in the first half of 2025, demonstrating alliance resolve and cohesion. For the first time in four decades, a South Korean president is openly defying the country’s legal and constitutional processes. While South Korea’s democracy remains resilient, these troubles come at a time when North Korea is flexing its muscle in Ukraine, solidifying its alliance with Russia, and burnishing its strategic credibility as a nuclear power that can project influence overseas, even if it comes at a heavy cost. The latest turn of events in South Korea also underscores why operational control of the South Korean military should rest with the United States during wartime. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s extrajudicial use of the military to prevent the National Assembly from meeting, and the confused and divided reactions from military and civilian defense leaders, shows that South Korea’s civil-military culture needs to further evolve and mature.
June Teufel Dreyer — Key Issues for the Trump Administration with Japan
In dealing with Japan, Trump must confront an administration that, although committed to the U.S.-Japanese alliance, differs on aspects of what form that cooperation should take. The immediate issue is the proposed merger between U.S. Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel which both President Joe Biden and President-elect Trump opposed on grounds that it would be a threat to the nation’s security. Nippon Steel has begun legal proceedings against the Biden administration’s ruling.
A second contentious issue is the status of forces agreement between the two countries. The U.S. bases in Japan are not under Japanese control, a sore spot in a proud sovereign state and particularly in view of the need for closer cooperation by the two militaries in response to an increasingly aggressive China. A summer 2024 upgrade addressed some but not all of the problems.
Finally, there is the matter of Japan’s defense budget. Japan has committed to raising its allocation to two percent of gross domestic product, with sources in the nascent Trump administration feeling that three percent would be more appropriate. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, whose party lost its majority in the October election, is in a weak position to try to push through such an increment.
Ishiba, despite long experience in government, has little experience in international negotiation and has sought the counsel of such luminaries as former prime minister Taro Aso, who advised that he “begin with his conclusions,” and head of SoftBank Masayoshi Son, who told him to “answer briefly and concisely.” Ishiba has said that he plans to engage with Trump while thinking of hm as a businessman rather than a politician. The crucial question is whether he can engage successfully with the self-proclaimed master of the art of the deal. Trump may have the upper hand in at least one aspect of their negotiations: unlike his very successful predecessor Shinzo Abe, Ishiba is not a skilled golfer.
Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein — How President Trump Should Handle Korea
Korea was never going to be an uncomplicated foreign policy area under the incoming Trump administration, no matter what. The unforeseen and in many ways bizarre developments in South Korea since President (albeit with suspended presidential powers) Yoon Suk Yeol’s unprecedented declaration of martial law in early December 2024 make matters even more complicated. It might be an unrealistic ask of a president who has shown almost complete disregard for democratic principles in foreign policy, but Trump would do well to express strong support for democratic procedures and the rule of law in South Korea. Even setting principles aside, well-functioning democratic procedures are the best guarantor for South Korea to be a stable partner to the United States in the region. The new administration will likely double down on Trump’s past demands that South Korea pay up more for its own defense, but it should do so cautiously and avoid fueling the political forces in South Korea that advocate closer ties with China at the expense of the West.
Despite the Trump–Kim Jong Un track record, avenues for progress with North Korea are not all closed. Some have claimed that closer ties with Russia mean that North Korea does not need the United States any more, but North Korean foreign policy is above all opportunistic. Pyongyang wants to balance its foreign relations and not depend entirely on one or two big powers. Moreover, Russia might cast North Korea aside when the war in Ukraine ends. Should Trump decide to engage with Kim, a healthy dose of realism is needed. Full denuclearization will never be on the table for North Korea. Should Trump be prepared to enter negotiations with this in mind, perhaps with the aim of controlling and limiting rather than abolishing North Korea’s nukes, Kim would likely be interested.
Aaron Glasserman — “America First” Shouldn’t Mean Defunding the United Nations
The incoming Trump administration should pursue a two-pronged approach to the United Nations (UN): promoting reform and burden-sharing.
At the top of the agenda should be UN Security Council reform, which is both urgently needed and increasingly popular around the world, albeit for different reasons in different countries. The Trump administration should build on the Biden administration’s call to expand and diversify the body by supporting permanent representation for liberal-democratic allies such as Germany and Japan as well as countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Even without modifying the veto system (much harder to accomplish), supporting UN Security Council expansion can benefit the United States. If China and/or Russia block expansion, they will lose credibility as champions of the developing world and opponents of Western hegemony. If they go along with expansion, their influence may be diluted, since they have far fewer close partnerships than the United States, United Kingdom, and France and are thus less likely to have a close partner gain a permanent seat.
The Trump administration should also pressure allies and partners to increase their financial support for the UN. The United States is by far the largest donor to the UN, in terms of its required “assessed” contributions and its (much larger) voluntary contributions. The first Trump administration succeeded in getting many North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to increase defense spending. A similar push could be made to increase UN spending and other foreign aid, with the goal of more evenly distributing America’s burden.
Members of the former and incoming Trump administration have justifiably complained about waste, dysfunction, and hypocrisy at the UN. But the optimal solution is not, as some have suggested, threatening to unilaterally cut funding. Rather, the United States should shape UN reform to advance American interests and secure greater financial commitments from allies and partners.
Jaehan Park — Business as Usual: In Search of Stability Amidst Chaos
The Republic of Korea is in a political quagmire. As of this writing, President Yoon Suk Yeol has been impeached and arrested after his botched declaration of martial law last December; Prime Minister Han Duck-Soo, who served a short stint as an acting president, was impeached primarily on the grounds that he opposed the appointment of constitutional court justices recommended by the National Assembly who would review Yoon’s impeachment case. Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-Mok, although no doubt a capable man, is only third in the line of succession and thus has a temporary and limited mandate to conduct the nation’s foreign policy.
The future of the executive branch is up in the air. If the constitutional court rules to remove Yoon, there will be a snap election within sixty days. Although the law allows the court up to six months to deliberate, the court made its decisions within two to three months in previous impeachment cases. There is no easy path forward, however. Opposition party leader Lee Jae-Myung, who is likely to emerge as the strongest presidential candidate, is in his own legal trouble. Of importance, his election law violation charge, which can potentially disqualify him from running for office for five years, is currently under review by the appeals court. Theoretically, the second and third trials are supposed to be completed within three months. In short, timing is everything.
Understandably, the incoming Trump administration will want to wait and see how things pan out. In these circumstances, Washington’s best bet for now is perhaps “business as usual”—that is, maintaining a robust deterrence posture on the Korean Peninsula so that neither Pyongyang nor Beijing can take advantage of the political vacuum in Seoul. “Negotiations” on substantive issues, from burden-sharing to trade, can wait for a few months.
Jessica Teets — Civic Engagement and Global Alliances: Strengthening Democracy in a Trump Era
U.S. watchers in China have been discussing what Donald Trump’s win means for the strength of democracy in the United States (and around the world) as well as how it might impact China over the next few years. Regarding democracy, these analysts have joked that Trump must have learned from Mao Zedong how to mobilize the countryside to conquer the urban elites. While this is a joke, the lesson also points out the weakness in democracies around the lack of citizen mobilization (or what we would call civic participation and engagement). If citizens feel that democracy does not perform to make their daily lives better, their alienation and cynicism result in isolation from their communities and the political system. As Robert Putnam and Hannah Arendt have both pointed out, this is dangerous for a democracy. At the state and local level, we need to encourage civic engagement and participation, like volunteering programs, not just voting to strengthen democracy from the inside.
The second topic of conversation has been about Donald Trump’s impact on China. In Chinese, his name means “strong country,” but the joke is that he will strengthen China (not the United States) by alienating allies and destroying the democratic consensus that has enabled coordinated actions against China. It is of vital importance that this not happen—diplomats and others in the government who regularly interact with our allies must ensure that whatever happens in social media does not infect real world alliances, information sharing, and policy coordination. These jokes among U.S. analysts in China can remain only jokes as long as the incoming administration and state/local officials work to strengthen civic engagement domestically and alliances abroad.
Felix Chang — Strategic Transparency in Geopolitics: Strengthening American Alliances in Asia
The United States faces a formidable challenge from China, a powerful adversary attempting to reshape Asia’s geopolitical landscape. To respond effectively, the United States needs strong and reliable regional allies. While Washington’s efforts over the last decade to expand its diplomatic and military engagement with the region’s leaders and governments have boosted ties, these relationships can be fragile without additional effort. Elections can lead to changes in leaders and governments and, sometimes, dramatic shifts in policy, as has been evident in the erratic nature of U.S.-Philippine relations.
Improving public understanding of U.S. foreign policy in Asia could help build more stable, long-lasting alliances. In many Asian countries, especially in Southeast Asia, foreign policy discussions frequently take place out of public view, despite growing public interest in national issues due to modern communications. Unfortunately, the public and media in many Asian nations often lack a clear understanding (or even awareness) of the reasons behind U.S. actions. This issue extends even to close U.S. allies like Japan. For example, the Japanese public may learn about U.S. military aircraft accidents during training exercises but is rarely exposed to the reasons why these aircraft, training, or exercises are crucial for the security of both nations.
Traditionally, to address such issues, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Public Affairs could be expected to host more press conferences at its embassies in Asia’s capital cities. Today, however, it needs to prioritize engaging local media, podcasters, and influencers, while creating opportunities for non-governmental experts to deliver long-form explanations of the merits of U.S. policies. The Indo-Pacific Command and Special Operations Command Pacific can help too by offering hard-to-access open-source data and imagery, while organizations like Voice of America can amplify coverage. By advancing such “strategic transparency,” the United States can strengthen alliances and more effectively counterbalance China’s influence.
Source: Foreign policy.com January 2025
