Indo-Pacific Eyes Are on Washington and the Future of Alliances

Officials in Indo-Pacific capitals are watching the U.S. presidential election intently. They are particularly interested in three questions: What is the next president’s worldview? How will the next president approach China? And how will the next president treat the United States’ allies in the region?

On the first question, Donald Trump defines the United States’ interests much more narrowly than does Kamala Harris.

If Trump isn’t an isolationist, he is certainly iso-curious. He does not believe in the mainstream tradition of U.S. leadership. As he once said: “I’m the president of the United States—I’m not the president of the globe.” Kamala Harris has a different view. At the Democratic National Convention in August, she pledged to ensure “that America, not China, wins the competition for the twenty-first century, and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.”

Trump is also hostile to free trade. He has promised tariffs of 10 percent or even 20 percent on all imports to the United States, and even higher tariffs on Chinese imports. At the debate, Trump claimed that “other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world.” While Harris is more pro-trade than Trump, that isn’t saying much. She has previously criticised or voted against free trade agreements, and her campaign has pledged to “employ targeted and strategic tariffs.” New U.S. tariffs, and the retaliation they would provoke from others, would be extremely damaging for the trading nations of Asia.

Second, the way the next U.S. president manages relations with China is of great consequence to Indo-Pacific states. This is, after all, the most important bilateral relationship in the world.

Many are concerned that Trump would be overly combative with Beijing. Just as concerning, however, is the possibility that he would be attracted to the idea of a grand bargain with China, perhaps trading away the security interests of the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies in return for trade concessions. This is, after all, the man who fêted Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago with “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake.”

Harris would inherit from President Joe Biden a balanced policy of competing and cooperating with Beijing. But the Biden administration has been unusually focused on Asia. Typically, Democratic administrations have paid more attention to transatlantic relations than transpacific ones. It is hard to predict what kind of Asia policy a President Harris would adopt.

Finally, the two candidates would approach the United States’ Asian allies differently. Last time around, Trump treated allies not as friends, but as freeloaders. In fact, both China and Russia would dearly love to have alliance networks as powerful and cost-effective as those of the United States. Trump’s plans to “make America great again” neglect a fundamental pillar of American greatness: its system of global alliances.

President Biden has taken an allies-first approach to Asia. The administration has brought Japan and South Korea closer together, quickened the United States’ connections with India and Vietnam, stood up AUKUS (the trilateral security agreement among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), and convened both the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) and the Squad (Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States).

As Biden’s vice president, Harris has visited four of Washington’s five Asian treaty allies—Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand—with Australia being the exception. Questions remain on what she would she do as president and how she would further strengthen Washington’s relations with its allies and the relations between them.

Based on the two candidates’ worldviews and their likely approaches to China and to U.S. alliances, officials in most allied Indo-Pacific capitals would like Kamala Harris to beat Donald Trump in November. Of course, allies don’t get a vote.