November 23, 2016
Deciphering Trump's Asia Policy
What "America First" Will Mean for Regional Order
Scholars who claim to know with any certainty how U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy will crystalize are engaging in tenuous prophecy. As they and the United States’ international partners strain to determine the contours of his plans, however, there are at least two groups of source material on which they can draw. The first is Trump’s statements on foreign policy during his campaign; the second is the writings of his closest national security advisers.
When it comes to the president-elect’s approach to Asia, these two sets of evidence point in different directions: one toward retrenchment and the other toward unilateralism. Yet these divergent visions have something important in common. Neither calls for a foreign policy centered around the system of alliances, rules, and norms that have underpinned the United States’ leadership of the international order since 1945. Together with the deep uncertainty surrounding Trump’s objectives for Asia and the tools he has suggested he will use to pursue them, the absence of principled and predictable U.S. leadership could lead to a destabilizing shift in the regional balance of power in the near term.
Read the full piece at Foreign Affairs
More from CNAS
-
China to Play Significant Role in Helping Iran Rebuild: Analyst
Video
Richard Fontaine, CEO at Center for a New American Security, says China will help Iran rebuild due to its close economic relationship, and because Iran can be used to contain ...
By Richard Fontaine
-
Repairing the Breach
Reports
U.S.-India relations stumbled badly during the second half of 2025. Differences between U.S. and Indian officials over how a ceasefire was reached between New Delhi and Islama...
By Lisa Curtis, Keerthi Martyn & Sitara Gupta
-
Video
Indo-Pacific Security / Middle East Security
Iran U.S. War Latest Updates | ‘U.S., Israel Making Gains’: Lisa Curtis On Week 3 of Iran WarThree weeks into the Iran conflict, Lisa Curtis, senior fellow and program director at the Center for a New American Security, says the United States and Israel are making tac...
By Lisa Curtis
-
Reports
Defense / Indo-Pacific Security
U.S.-Japan-Philippines Trilateral CooperationExecutive Summary Growing challenges from the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) massive military modernization, rapid technological advancement, and coercive military activ...
By Lisa Curtis & Ryan Claffey
