Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 07/Jan 00:45

Bracing For Hurricane Trump In 2025 – Analysis

By Yves Tiberghien Over the past five years, the Indo-Pacific has witnessed intensifying great power competition and a series of social and political disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the ripple effects of conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. The coming of an unconstrained and revolutionary Donald Trump 2.0 administration is likely to trigger even more disruption. Ultimately, it will be the choices made by China in response to the opening salvos of the Trump 2.0 administration, as well as the constraining and balancing choices made by large middle powers in the region that will define the outcomes in 2025. Events are driven by the confluence of three trends — the shift from a unipolar world to a hybrid bipolar and multipolar world; the exhaustion of the liberal globalisation experiment; and the disruptive pressures stemming from the shocks of climate change, green tech and the AI revolution. These trends have turned the United States — the superpower at the heart of the current global order — into an insurgent against the system it created. After seven decades building a tight economic and security order that delivered prosperity and freedom for an ever-growing majority, the United States is now bent on destroying key pillars of that order. The policy fireworks following 20 January 2025 in Washington DC will not be minor adjustments. Rather, Trump’s promised wholesale trade war and US withdrawal from international institutions represent a frontal attack on the post-1919 efforts to promote peace and prosperity through international law, institutions, norms and cooperation. Trump’s calls for massive increases in military spending and threats against friendly countries represent a return to 19th century might-is-right diplomacy. Institutional inertia may initially constrain the Trump administration’s efforts, as they did in 2016–20. In Trump’s first term, the US–China trade war did not lead to the unravelling of globalisation because of the critical role played by connector countries. But the president-elect is certain to have a lot more leeway this time around. The more serious constraint will be the core divide at the heart of the incoming administration between trade and burden-sharing hawks and bipolar security hawks who are considering a Ronald Reagan-like military surge to defeat China. US policy toward key allies such as Japan and South Korea and toward strategic middle players such as Vietnam, will be fiercely disputed between the two groups. Incoherence may well hamper the thrust of revolution in US strategy. Elites in Indo Pacific countries struggle to predict and wrap their heads around the coming Trump storm. Most leaders in the Indo-Pacific remain committed to a liberal and rules-based order. They seek stability and only incremental policy change, even in the face of a Chinese revisionist agenda. US allies in the region wish to push back against Chinese threats, but in a way that maintains a global rules-based order. Leaders in the region are struggling to adjust psychologically to what is coming as it goes against decades of known interactions with the United States and habits of US leadership in building international institutions. Policy elites around the region are puzzled as to why the United States would want to destroy the greatest system of institutional and soft power that the world has seen. For the Indo-Pacific, the question is whether the region can hold on to its extraordinary gains from prosperity in the face of a US insurgency and a dangerous escalation in US–China relations. Clearly, the incoming US administration will be the first mover with salvos of trade tariffs, additional technology embargos against, demands to lift military spending by reluctant allies and possible new military deployments. Trump and some of his core business supporters, such as Elon Musk, Stephen Schwarzman or Peter Thiel could ultimately seek a deal with China. But given his foreign and security team and the positioning of the US system relative to China, this is unlikely The second mover will be China. China has three options — deflect, escalate or hedge. China’s ultimate choice is hard to predict, and may evolve according to the intensity of threat perceptions. The first option would be to take a page from Sun Tzu, the famed Chinese strategist, and avoid taking the bait. Instead, China could absorb the punches, lie low, stand for the liberal economic order and pursue diplomatic options. There would be tactical and political costs, but potential long-term strategic gains. Second, China could do what it did in 2018–22 and face off with the United States at every move. This would include security confrontation around key hot spots, more trade measures on critical minerals and key technologies and an escalation of diplomatic confrontation. Under Trump 1.0, this approach played well politically at home in the short-term but led to disastrous diplomatic outcomes. Indeed, through its wolf-warrior diplomacy, aggressive maritime deployments in the region and a senseless border war with India, China’s soft power was diminished greatly. Third, China could take indirect risk management actions through alternative institutions and bilateral engagement around the region, backed by a vast fiscal expansion at home to protect its economy. China’s recent actions, including the critical breakthrough in the border standoff with India, indicate that this might be the dominant approach that China is currently pursuing. China’s choice will be critical, as will be the response of third movers, namely the increasingly powerful middle powers of the Global South, such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and others in Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Meanwhile, allied middle powers such as Japan, Korea, Australia and Canada will face great constraints under Trump 2.0 given their security dependence on the United States. But they may find ways, collectively, to restrain the more extreme impulses of the new administration.  The stakes are high. Major unconventional moves by the United States or pre-emptive moves by China could well trigger a mega crisis in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, East China Sea or on the Korean Peninsula. The outcomes are unknown. The United States will call the opening shots. China will set the nature of the game through its response. But third countries, as well as financial markets, will have a big influence on the shape of the post-Trump world, should they choose to use the leverage they now have. About the author: Yves Tiberghien is Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, a Harvard Academy Scholar and Visiting Professor at the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science. He is also an Adjunct Chair Professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Source: This article is published by East Asia Forum and part of an EAF special feature series on 2024 in review and the year ahead.