This article was orginally published by Pacific Forum. It is republished with permission.
Just days away from what appears to be an extremely close US election, pundits are hastily trying to make sense of both major candidates’ potential foreign policy platforms. In the battle between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, each has sought to portray the other as somehow weak on China in an effort to out-hawk the opposition.
Trump has called for 60% tariffs on all of Chinese imports, thereby threatening global financial markets that are still reeling from Covid-19 pandemic recovery and struggling to adjust to US-China decoupling in critical technology sectors.
Harris has insisted that her goal as president would be “making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century.”
To some national security commentators watching from Asia, there is little difference between two candidates. Both, after all, view American power as indispensable and see their country locked in zero-sum competition with China.
That view is at odds with and keeps them and their political parties from coming to terms with two difficult truths, recognition of which is prerequisite to construction of a more successful Asia strategy:
- The United States no longer enjoys unrivaled status as the world’s sole superpower.
- China is not universally viewed with suspicion – let alone hostility – throughout the region.
True, by most objective measures the United States’ position in Asia at the end of 2024 is more secure than it was in 2020.
The Biden administration has secured access to nine bases in the Philippines as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement put on hold under Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022). In the span of one month in 2023, the administration established a new US-Japan-South Korea trilateral with its two East Asian allies and concluded a double upgrade in the US-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
The Lowy Institute’s newly released Asia Power Index confirms this positive trendline, finding that the United States remains the most powerful country in Asia, and that while Beijing continues to chip away at Washington’s lead, “China’s power is plateauing” rather than surpassing that of the United States.
Despite those noteworthy accomplishments, however, the longer-term trendline for the United States is concerning.
As Washington continues to project a strategy that implicitly assumes American primacy while it abstains from the evolving regional economic architecture by rejecting free trade deals, the United States is increasingly losing influence in Asia.
Official inattention and inconsistency are largely to blame for the current situation and can be corrected – but time is running out.
While US policymakers frequently make the point that the United States is the largest source of foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia, this is only true if you consider total investment stocks. According to new data from the Lowy Institute, over the last decade China has invested significantly more in the region than has the United States ($218 billion to $158 billion).
Wary of alienating a country that is their biggest trading partner and an inescapable geographic reality, Southeast Asian states are unwilling to join what they perceive as US-led efforts to contain China.
According to a recent survey by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, more Southeast Asian states now say that they would choose China over the United States if forced to pick between the two, the first time Beijing has eclipsed Washington as the partner of choice.
Increasingly bellicose anti-China rhetoric in Washington – never more evident than in an election year in which each party seeks to outbid the other as tougher on China – has not been balanced by a positive vision for regional stability that embraces economic statecraft or conventional tools of diplomacy.
Whether Democrat or Republican, the next administration has an opportunity to reframe Washington’s Asia policy in response to regional demand for a more active and balanced US role in the region. The incoming president should consider three guiding principles to get the balance right.
First, Asian states want a more benign and sustainable US presence, one not simply predicated on security partnerships and military bases but capable of delivering much needed public goods such as economic investment and development finance to meet the needs of Asia’s rapidly growing middle classes.
Asia’s middle class is expected to grow to 3.5 billion by 2030, making it the largest in the world. A 2019 report by the Asian Development Bank estimated that the infrastructure needs of developing countries in the Indo-Pacific would amount to $1.7 trillion a year through 2030 when climate change adaptation was factored in.
Yet according to one recent study, official development finance to Southeast Asia in 2022 was at its lowest level since 2015 in real terms.
Secondly, it’s not necessary for the United States to be the single most powerful player for it to make positive contributions to regional order. Washington policymakers are deluding themselves if they are crafting regional strategy from an assumption that the US still enjoys unchallenged primacy in Asia.
Primacy should no longer be the lodestar of US strategy and is an unrealistic goal anyway. A foreign policy based on primacy squanders scarce resources and overstretches policymakers at a time when American voters are most concerned with the economy and healthcare.
Third, smaller states want options. While it has become cliché, the reality is that Asian states do not want to be forced to choose between China and the US. China has been the dominant economic partner for the entire region for some time, and it isn’t going away.
By contrast, the United States is seen as fickle and often a source of instability. In Indonesia and Malaysia, citizens have boycotted American companies such as McDonald’s and Starbucks to express their outrage over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Indonesia and Malaysia are both significant regional partners for Washington and proverbial “swing states,” whose populations frequently put pressure on their political leaders to distance their countries from the United States. Policymakers in Washington therefore need to be more cognizant of how their country is perceived in the region.
In light of these limitations on US power and influence, the next president should recognize the value of America’s alliances and partnerships across the globe, which act as a force multiplier when rowing in the same direction. Washington should continue to empower partners and allies that are willing to play constructive roles in preserving a rules-based (not necessarily liberal) international order.
Ultimately, neither candidate is likely to follow these prescriptions to a tee. Neither party shows any sign of abandoning the current trajectory, which privileges rivalry with China at all costs with a vaguely defined goal of “winning” that competition.
Primacy may be too baked into the cake for any US leader to let go of. In a climate of great power competition globally and political brinkmanship at home, no candidate sees anything short of US dominance as a viable platform.
However, the next American leader may be forced to reconcile with shifting voter preferences. While foreign policy is never a priority issue in any US election, a large percentage of Americans say that it ranks relatively high on their list of concerns: 62% of all voters indicate that foreign policy is very important in determining whom they will vote for (that breaks down to 70% of Trump supporters and 54% of Harris supporters).
Each candidate has sought to be seen as the candidate of change. While the rest of the world is unlikely to view this election that way (both are incumbents to varying degrees), change is precisely what US Asia strategy needs. The election provides a valuable opportunity to reimagine US goals in light of 21st-century global realities.
Hunter Marston (@hmarston4), a PhD candidate at Australian National University, is a Southeast Asia associate with 9DASHLINE and an adjunct research fellow with La Trobe Asia.