US Studies Centre research fellow says it’s not clear if US president-elect will be isolationist, strongman or ‘mix of both’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Donald Trump’s foreign policy towards Australia and Asia is still uncertain but his unpopularity in Australia may make security cooperation with the US harder, according to US policy experts.

Analysts warn that Trump’s attitudes to alliances spell trouble for Japan and South Korea but say his security policy towards China remains unclear.

The executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, told ABC24 on Thursday that Trump’s comments about China during the election campaign were “at times openly contradictory”.

“I think what we will see with Trump is an attempt to present a strong America internationally, an America which will have increased defence capability but they ... will only deploy [it] when they see that direct American interests are involved,” he said.

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“That means that we may not see America being prepared to carry as much weight in the Pacific as they had in the past.

“They will be saying to us and the other allies ‘you guys need to do more heavy lifting if you want us to stay in an alliance partnership’.”

Jennings said he did not think Australia would be called on to increase defence spending as it already spent 2% of GNP a year on defence, which only five of the 28 Nato allies did.

“My view is we are well placed of all of America’s allies ... We are doing the hard yards in the Middle East and have for years.

“In Washington the general view about Australia is we are in good standing as far as our alliance credit is concerned.”

Jennings said Australia should not “drag the chain” in negotiating the cost-sharing of US marines stationed in Darwin and would need to persuade Washington Australia was “not one of the countries which is relying just on the American coat-tails to look after our security”.

Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre, told Guardian Australia it wasn’t clear yet whether Trump would be an isolationist or a strongman or “a mix of both”.

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“Trump argues that having a strong US navy is important, but hasn’t told us much about his China policy,” he said.

Although Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods and labeled the country a currency manipulator “it’s hard to say whether he will have a strong policy against China in the security space”.

Townshend said China might test Trump, as it had previous presidents, and might also challenge Japan and the Philippines on maritime claims.

“It seems Trump is not at all wedded to security commitments Obama made over Senkaku islands in the East China Sea.

“It’s hard to imagine him going to war over rocks ... of no strategic value to America and controlled, in the case of the Philippines, by an Asian ally that’s not particularly amenable to working with the US.”

Lowy Institute polling from before the election showed that Australians preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump by seven to one and nearly half wanted Australia to distance itself from the US if he were elected.

Townshend said this raised the problem of “alliance management” because it would make it more difficult for the Australian government to advocate for a stronger US presence in Asia and Australia when the president was so unpopular.

He noted Australia and the US were considering a greater US military presence in Australia, including the possible placement of an aircraft carrier in Western Australia and bombers in Northern Australia.

“But if Australians turn off the US because of President Trump, in ways not dissimilar to their dislike of President George W Bush, these arguments may fall on deaf ears.”

The assistant director of research, security and political engagement at Melbourne University’s school of government, John Langmore, said there was “too much uncertainty” to say what Trump would do with US bases and defence assets in Australia.

But joint exercises between the nation’s militaries would continue because both liked them, he said.

Langmore noted Trump had said American troops should be withdrawn from Japan and South Korea because those countries should defend themselves, even if that included getting nuclear weapons.

“It would be an enormously potentially damaging thing if he were so careless as to take action that would encourage Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons,” he said.

Townshend also nominated this as the most important concern for Australia, because it shows “we have a US president who is fundamentally questioning the interests that lie behind established principles of US foreign policy in Asia”.

Langmore said the pivot to Asia made strategic sense so Trump may persist with it and the president would be “constrained by past decisions”, particularly with respect to military procurement such as the joint strike fighter.

But making an assessment of how Trump would handle regional security issues such as the South China Sea was like “peering into a very deep fog”, Langmore said.