Last week, we sat for a couple of hours in a symposium sponsored by the Taiwan Asean Studies Center which had a curiously interesting topic: “US-Southeast Asia Relations in a New Administration: A Return to Benign Neglect?”
The main speaker was John Brandon, senior director of the International Relations Program of the Asia Foundation. Two discussants were Prof. Chen-Dong Tso of National Taiwan University and Ms. Christy Hsu, directress of the Taiwan Asean Studies Center at the Chu-Hua Institute for Economic Research. Chair and moderator of the program was retired Taiwanese diplomat Ambassador Benjamin Jyh-Yuan Lo.
Ambassador Lo prefaced the symposium by saying that Donald Trump is a president “different” from all others before him. No past president has been as unpredictable as Mr. Trump, and he hoped the invited speaker would make us understand what the six-month-old POTUS is all about.
Well, Brandon failed to give an apropos description of the man 63 million Americans elected as their president. Deciphering the Donald is indeed well nigh impossible.
He embarrassed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by demanding that the member countries “pay-up” for the costs of securing Europe. Before that, he declared from Washington DC that Nato was “obsolete,” but at the end of the day, he conceded that it had some real use in a world confronted by terrorism, but demanded that European nations pay for the huge costs of the military alliance.
A more mature, or more informed head of state of a nation such as the US of A would have been more discreet in his avowed message of collection.
He likewise threatened to cut off military assistance to Japan and South Korea, until he realized that first, these countries pay. In the case of Japan, with two billion dollars annually. And if American soldiers were to leave these countries, what jobs would Trump give them back home?
So he praised the military alliance, especially in the light of the deranged antics of North Korea’s boy-king.
He quickly dissolved the Trans-Pacific Partnership that countries like Mexico, Taiwan and Vietnam enthusiastically joined, swallowing its conditions (as usual in the American paradigm) and now left their expectant economies in the lurch. He prefers bilateralism, but how would this sit with Asean, which has been trying to promote centrality and consensus among its ten member nations?
In the campaign of 2016, Trump called China all the “bad” descriptives he could muster. When Pres. Xi visited him at his fabulous Mar-a-Lago, he called the Chinese supremo a “good guy.” And then, as an aside after their friendly meeting, he informs Xi, matter-of-factly, that he had just ordered the bombing of Assad’s Syria.
There is a pattern of Unpredictability plus Uncertainty which leads to Insecurity that pervades nations around the globe who have to deal with the United States under a Trump presidency.
And these observations reinforced by Trump’s pronouncements and actions of the last six months seem to consign the US of A as Unreliable.
Unpredictability plus Uncertainty plus Insecurity equals Unreliability.
At the end of the discussions, what everyone agreed upon was that for the American president, “everything is a transaction.”
He would lie; he would bluster; he would hustle, just so he would get what he thinks is the “best bargain” for his “America First and America Only” core policy.
So what will happen to Asean-US relations, or for that matter all of Southeast Asia vis-à-vis their major politico-military ally and traditional economic market for the next three and a half-years of America under the Donald?
“In the end, China will win”, as they say. By default.
* * *
At present though, the United States is in the throes of another possible impeachment scenario, much like what happened to Richard Milhous Nixon who opted to resign rather than face impeachment trial. And it is not a peccadillo or liaison dangereuse as Bill Clinton faced in the wake of Monica Lewinsky’s accusations.
It is something more serious, because it involves the possibility that Trump and his boys “consorted” with the Russian “enemy.” The parallelism with Nixon’s predicament lies on whether or not there were tape recordings of the conversation between POTUS and his dismissed FBI Director, and what actually transpired during that fateful meeting. James Comey and most Democrats think it was damning, leading to possible obstruction of justice. Trump meanwhile pooh-poohs.
The denouement could lead to a very short-lived presidency for the man the world finds too difficult to decipher. And if it does lead to the end of Trump’s political career, there would be no need for anybody to try deciphering the Donald.
* * *
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the man who trumped everyone else in French politics just about a month ago, is on the way to winning close to a clear majority of Parliament for his confederates in a new party, La Republique en Marche.
Emmanuel Macron, who won by proudly trumpeting his centrism, his belief in the European Union, in the free market, as against those who cling to the outmoded and failed policies of the Left, or those who wrap themselves up in the colors of the flag to proclaim a closeted sense of nationalism, is fast becoming what the BBC calls “the anti-Trump.”
France, one recalls, sided and aided the revolutionaries in America who fought for liberation from the English sovereign in 1776.
Now, will France with its new leader, step up to the plate and continually denounce, perhaps begin to “un-make” the leadership of it’s historic ally whose descendants seem to have made the gargantuan mistake of electing Donald Trump their president?
We live in interesting times.