Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond

by Gideon Rachman

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Ever since 1945, all American presidents have shared a commitment to an international order built around

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two central pillars.

The first is the promotion of international trade. The second is a global security system b...

Trump threatens to pull down b...

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“Easternization”—

shift of power and wealth from the West to Asia.

China had become the world’s largest economy—ranked by...

China had also become the world’s largest merchandise exporter—

The Trump drive to restore American greatness threatens to create conflict between the United States and the rising powers of Asia—above all, China.

With Trump and Xi in power in Washington and Beijing, the stage is set for a potential clash between American and Chinese nationalism in the Pacific.

The most obvious potential conflict is over trade. If Trump follows through on his threat to impose swinging tariffs on Chinese goods, he would certainly provoke retaliation. A trade war would ensue, poisoning commercial relations between the first and second largest economies in the world and destabilizing the global economy.

Much of this book is concerned with the slow but steady increase in geopolitical rivalry between America and China during the Obama years.

The arrival of Trump in the White House threatens a significant acceleration in this process.

Even before taking office, the new U.S. president demonstrated his willingness to antagonize Beijing—by speaking directly to the president of Taiwan, something that all U.S. presidents have refused to do since the normalization of relations between the United States and China in the 1970s.

Tillerson likened the island building to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and said that the Trump administration intended to let Beijing know that “your access to those islands is not going to be allowed.”

Conventional economic theory has long held that the growing wealth of Asian nations is a good thing for the United States, since it creates larger markets for American companies and cheaper goods for American consumers. But Trump and his advisers emphatically reject this idea. They blame the stagnation of the living standards of American workers

“globalism”—

international trade and i...

“The globalists gutted the American working-class and created a middle-class in Asia.”1 In his view, the increasing wealth of Asia—far from being the mutually advantageous process envisaged by mai...

Manufacturing employment is now leveling off, even in China, as robots replace people on the production line and the really low-skilled jobs migrate to poorer countries in South Asia or Africa

protectionist drive

by the Trump administration is likely to raise living costs in the United States, without doing much to boost employment.

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Overt American protectionism aimed at China would also mark a fundamental break with the strategy that the United States has adopted over many decades to deal with the rise of China. This strategy was based around the assumption that burgeoning trade with China would ultimately bolster America’s global leadership by creating a Chinese interest in the maintenance of a global order, designed and maintained in Washington.

tilt toward protectionism

under the Trump administration would represent the final abandonment of the responsible stakeholder theory.

would also mean that the most important field of U.S.–Chinese cooperation—trade and investment—would ...

The threat to Chinese interests posed by Donald Trump came as an unpleasant surprise to the government in Beijing.

Many Chinese commentators also noted that Republican presidents, from Nixon to George H. W. Bush, have usually been easier for Beijing to deal with because they tend to focus on business and economics, rather than human rights.

Much Chinese military spending—in particular investments in submarines and missiles—has been designed to prepare China for a possible invasion of Taiwan.

When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, after securing victory in a civil war, the defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan. Ever since, Beijing has seen Taipei as a rival center of authority—and has sought to isolate the government there. When the United States and China restored diplomatic relations in 1979, Beijing successfully insisted that Washington break formal diplomatic ties with Taipei.

In recent decades, the nature of Beijing’s anxiety about Taiwan has changed. Rather than worrying that the government in Taipei is plotting to regain authority in mainland China, the Communist Party has fretted that Taiwan might instead declare independence from China. This would contradict the official doctrine that there is only “one China.” The version of history taught to the Chinese people stresses that, during a century of humiliation dating from the 1840s, China was weak, divided and exploited by foreigners. Since 1949, however, a strong Communist Party has stood up for China and regained the country’s lost territories—including Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau in 1999. The “loss” of Taiwan to pro-independence forces would profoundly undermine this official story. It would be a humiliation for the Chinese Communist Party that could well pose a threat to its continued rule. So, for President Xi Jinping, the stakes could not be higher.

Traditionally, the U.S. approach to Asia had maintained a rigid division between military and economic affairs.

Trump’s instinct seems to be very different. He sees military and security commitments as part of a connected set of issues that can be used as bargaining chips in a broad-ranging negotiation.

To America’s security establishment this approach is anathema. Military alliances are meant to be sacrosanct. If they are thrown into the mix as part of a negotiation, then American “credibility”—and the doctrine of deterrence attached to it—are gravely weakened.

The implications for allies such as Japan—and for the Taiwanese—of this new Trump doctrine are disturbing, since it implies that their security could be tr...

North Korean nuclear program was a consistent concern for the United States throughout the Obama years.

Yet the Chinese have always denied that they have the leverage to “deliver” North Korea. The real truth may be that they are loath to provoke a crisis in a dangerous and unstable neighbor—which also remains an ally, albeit an infuriating one.

The increasing dangers of the North Korean situation—and Trump’s own temperament—suggest that his administration may be much more inclined to try to force China’s hand over North Korea.

But gaining Beijing’s cooperation over North Korea could become impossible if the crisis on the Korean peninsula plays out against a backdrop of U.S.–Chinese row...

Faced with frustration over North Korea, Trump may be tempted to revisit some of the military options that were discarded b...

Trump’s unpredictability is a profound worry for America’s closest allies in East Asi...

Just four days after meeting the Japanese prime minister, Trump announced that he intended to renounce the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first day in office.

For the Japanese prime minister, the significance of the TPP was as much strategic as economic (see chapter 5). Like President Obama, he saw the negotiation of a giant new trade deal that included Japan and the United States—but very pointedly did not include China—as a way of heading off Chinese dominance of the Asia-Pacific region.

The Japanese government, like the Obama administration, understands that the likeliest route to a China-dominated Asia is commerce rather than conflict.

Now China is the most important trading partner for South Korea, Japan, Australia and most of the nations of Southeast Asia.

Chinese investment is also increasingly important and attractive to neighboring countries in Asia.

“One Belt, One Roa...

an effort to promote Chinese investment in infrastructure across Asia—has further increase...