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This post, originally published by Pacific Forum, is republished with authority.

In his first management, Donald Trump’s” America First” theory reshaped US international policy, emphasizing economic nationalism, suspicion of military relationships and a target on private interests over international agreements.

The Trump administration 2.0 more seeks to reconsider military commitments worldwide, reduce foreign support, and force allies to add more to their protection, fueling the debate over the extent of US involvement elsewhere. I assess how the government’s inside focus may concern pledges to two of the region’s longest-standing dilemmas: Taiwan and South Korea.

There are several factors to believe Trump would be less supportive of these commitments. As a member in 2024, he stated he&nbsp, did never defend Taiwan. In 2020, Trump demanded a&nbsp,$ 5 billion increase&nbsp, in what South Korea paid for the US military presence after rejecting a 14 % proposed boost, with ideas that he would pull out troops if this was not met.

Recent studies suggest Trump intends to require extra payments for the military appearance in South Korea and Japan, leading one researcher to express the presidency is&nbsp, no longer engaged in defending&nbsp, these countries or Taiwan.

Assessing public sentiment is harder.

Pew surveys&nbsp, from 2019 to 2023 find a decline, from 53 % to 43 %, of those stating the US should be active in world affairs, with 71 % of Republicans in 2023 saying the US should concentrate attention on problems at home, compared with only 39 % of Democrats.

Yet, existing evidence also suggests that the American public supports specific foreign policies. While support for Ukraine is increasingly&nbsp, divided on party lines, the same does not seem to be true for Taiwan and South Korea.

A&nbsp, 2021 Chicago Council survey&nbsp, finds a slim majority ( 52 % ) supported US troops to defend Taiwan, while&nbsp, a 2022 survey&nbsp, finds 61 % of Americans surveyed supported defending Taiwan, with slightly higher support among Democrats than Republicans ( 67.04 % vs. 60.15 % ). A 2023 YouGov poll found that most Democrats and Republicans support&nbsp, taking a strong stand&nbsp, to protect Taiwan from China.

Likewise, a 2024 Chicago Council survey finds majorities of Democrats and Republicans support the&nbsp, continuation of US military bases&nbsp, in South Korea, although the majorities are slimmer when committing troops if North Korea invaded. A 2022 IPOL survey finds little American support for&nbsp, base closures&nbsp, in South Korea, Japan, or Germany.

To identify how a more inward-looking American public would view these commitments, I commissioned a national web survey through Centiment February 12-26 to address these concerns.

We asked 522 respondents,” Which of the following best describes your views of the US role in world affairs? : ‘ We should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems at home,’ or ‘ It’s best for the future of the country to be active in world affairs.'”

A clear majority favor focusing inward (60.54 % ) but with stark partisan differences, as a thin majority of Democrats prioritize world affairs ( 52.71 % ), nearly twice the rate of Republicans ( 27.73 % ).

The inward focus is somewhat higher than&nbsp, a 2022 survey&nbsp, that showed 54.44 % preferred an inward focus, including 43.71 % of Democrats and 67.34 % of Republicans.

From here, I asked two questions related to American commitments in East Asia:” Do you support or oppose the US defending Taiwan if it were attacked by China”? and, later,” Currently, the US has approximately 24, 000 active-duty military in South Korea to deter North Korean aggression. Do you support the continuation of this US presence in South Korea”?

Overall the public shows broad support for both countries, with over 60 % of respondents supporting Taiwan’s defense and the continued military presence in South Korea.

Even among those who stated the US should concentrate on domestic issues, a majority favored these foreign policy commitments, whereas over three-quarters of respondents desiring the US to be active in world affairs did so as well.

Moreover, no difference emerges between Democrats and Republicans on these commitments.

Additional statistical tests find after controlling for age, gender and income, as well as views of the country and its primary aggressor ( Taiwan: China, South Korea: North Korea ) there remain no partisan differences, while a majority of those preferring a focus on domestic policy still support these commitments.

Despite the growing preference among Americans for an inward-focused foreign policy, the findings suggest that this does not necessarily translate into opposition to commitments to Taiwan and South Korea.

These results indicate that an” America First” mindset does not necessarily equate to a complete withdrawal from key alliances, particularly in East Asia.

Instead, Americans may distinguish between broad foreign policy engagement and specific security commitments that align with perceived national interests. This prioritized selective engagement builds upon positive evaluations of the two countries as well as concerns about their perceived aggressors.

However, such support in the abstract ignores how the public may reevaluate commitments in light of actual costs. If a crisis in East Asia were to escalate, factors such as economic costs, military casualties and elite discourse could shape whether current bipartisan support endures or fractures along partisan lines, as seen with Ukraine.

Future research should explore how Americans weigh the risks and trade-offs of these commitments in scenarios where direct US intervention becomes more likely.

Timothy S. Rich (timothy. [email protected] ) &nbsp, is a professor of political science at Western Kentucky University and director of the International Public Opinion Lab ( IPOL ). His research focuses on public opinion and the domestic and international politics of East Asia.

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Recently appointed US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and other top intelligence officials appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the US intelligence services ‘ annual threat assessment ( ATA ).

Most of the agency’s time and attention was focused on the discovery by the director of the Atlantic magazine that he had been mistakenly added to an anxious chat group, in which major security officials discussed extensive plans for an attack on Yemen. Gabbard and her associates resolutely refused to admit that this had been a security breach. It was an unhelpful diversion from the main event, a discourse of the latest ATA statement.

Produced every, the ATA is a combined examination by 18 US knowledge companies, headed up by the Office for National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, of the main risks to national security in America. The 2025 type is the first of Donald Trump’s next word and reflects Trumpism’s significant change from America’s past safety priorities in three ways.

Second, the examination gave focus to what it identified as home protection threats over those posed by foreign opponents. Next, the report ignored culture change as a critical threat to US protection. And fourth, there was an extraordinary weakening of the speech in relation to Russia.

Close to home

In her opening statement Gabbard identified” organizations, groups and other international legal businesses” as “what most quickly and immediately threatens the United States and the wellbeing of the National citizens”.

Those threats are closer to home, but they hardly warrant their lead billing – particularly given the way that Trump himself has regularly invoked the threat of” World War II I” ever since he started his campaign to return to the White House more than two years ago.

But what they do indicate is an America increasingly focused on the narrow predilections of its president and his MAGA supporters.

Climate? What climate?

An even more notable omission is the absence of any mention of climate change, either as an existential threat to human life as we know it or as a force multiplier to other threats such as migration, environmental disasters or famine.

This led to a testy exchange between Gabbard and Angus King, an independent senator from Maine. King asked the director of national intelligence:” Has global climate change been solved? Why is that not in this report? And who made the decision that it should not be in the report when it’s been in every one of the 11 prior reports”?

Gabbard replied:” What I focused this annual threat assessment on … are the most extreme and critical direct threats to our national security”.

This was an unconvincing response, given that the 2025 ATA specifically notes the security impact of melting sea ice in the Arctic. The report also notes increasing cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic and a growing Chinese footprint in the region.

Russian talking points

But the most notable difference in this year’s ATA concerns Russia. The Trump administration’s new approach to Moscow and the Russian leadership infuses the language and substance of this year’s intelligence report.

The 2024 threat assessment leads the section on Russia with the assertion that Moscow” seeks to project and defend its interests globally and to undermine the United States and the West”.

In 2025, the headline finding about the threat from Russia is that the Kremlin’s objective is” to restore Russian strength and security in its near abroad against perceived US and Western encroachment”. This, the report said, “has increased the risks of unintended escalation between Russia and NATO”.

Gone are the references to Russia as” a resilient and capable adversary across a wide range of domains“. Instead, this year’s ATA downplays the actual threat that the Kremlin poses to America’s interests by describing Russia merely as an “enduring potential threat to US power, presence and global interests”.

The 2025 report also assesses that Russia “has seized the upper hand in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is on a path to accrue greater leverage to press Kyiv and its western backers to negotiate an end to the war that grants Moscow concessions it seeks”. It doesn’t question why that might be the case or how it could be reversed.

Moreover, it presents the Kremlin’s malign influence activities as aimed at countering threats. This affords them an unprecedented degree of legitimacy and implies that the west poses a threat to Russia. This, of course, has long been a favorite talking point of Vladimir Putin’s.

Change of policy

More than just a change in threat assessment, the 2025 ATA doubles down on a change in policy. The report takes as a given that” Russia retains momentum]in ] a grinding war of attrition]which ] will lead to a gradual but steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any US or allied attempts to impose new and greater costs on Moscow”.

The inevitable conclusion is that the US should not pressure Russia to halt its illegal and brutal war of aggression against Ukraine. Rather Washington’s approach to security should accommodate the Kremlin’s ever-multiplying conditions for a ceasefire.

The report’s language on China is less ambiguous. It describes Beijing as” the most comprehensive and robust military threat to US national security” and as likely to” continue to expand its coercive and subversive malign influence activities to weaken the United States internally and globally”.

The report also notes that Beijing is critical to the alignment of all four major state actors that pose threats to the US: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

But China, and the other state adversaries, still take second place in America’s national security thinking to accommodate the administration’s inwardly focused” America First” mindset. This is not merely an indication of the isolationist tendencies in the foreign policy approach of Trumpism. It’s a deliberate abdication of US global leadership.

Trump and his team may believe that this will make America more secure – and the 2025 threat assessment is framed in a way that justifies such an approach. But it fails to provide any credible evidence that it might succeed.

David Hastings Dunn is a professor of international politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Stefan Wolff is a professor of international security at the University of Birmingham.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Aleksandr Dugin, sometimes referred to as” Putin’s mind” because of his philosophical effect on Russian politicians, endorsed the laws of Donald Trump in a CNN interview aired on March 30.

Interviewed by Fareed Zakaria, Dugin said Trump’s America has a lot more in common with Putin’s Russia than most people think, adding:” Trumpists and the supporters of Trump may know little better what Russia is, who Putin is and the desires of our elections”.

Dugin made his name by espousing Russian republican and conservative – including racist – designs, and publishing heavily on the importance of Russia in earth society.

But, this support should be a reminder of the problematic nature of the Trump White House. It implies that Dugin believes Trump’s guidelines support Russian pursuits.

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Dugin began his career as an anti-communist advocate in the 1980s. This was owing less to an intellectual antipathy for socialism than to his dismissal of the ideology that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union espoused. He even criticized the celebration for breaking from conventional – mainly religious – values.

Dugin proposes what he calls a “fourth social idea”. The second three, he claims, are Marxism, authoritarianism and democracy – all of which he thinks have elements of error, particularly their refusal of custom and their subjection of culture to scientific thought.

Dugin’s third political principle takes items from all three and discards the elements with which Dugin disagrees, particularly the dwindling value of classic family and society. The culmination is a melange of ideas that often appear Communist and sometimes totalitarian, but which usually center on the criticality of conventional Russian culture.

His founding philosophy is traditionalism, which he views as a strength of Russia. Thus, he has become a strong supporter of the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, who emphasizes traditional Russian values. Dugin and Putin align in their criticism of liberalist anti-religious individualism, which they claim destroys the values and culture on which society is based.

Dugin has value for Putin because he advances the president’s objectives. Putin’s security goals are in part founded on the principle that political unity is strength and political division is weakness. If Russia can maintain political unity by whatever means necessary, it retains its perception of strength. And if a state opposed to Russia is divided internally, it can be portrayed as weak.

The Russian government claims complete political unity inside Russia.

Its spokespeople reinforce that claim by declaring, for example, that the Russian electorate was so unified behind Putin that the 2024 Russian presidential election could have been skipped as an unnecessary expense.

They also push a strained claim that the Russian population is unanimously behind the Ukraine war.

Dugin energizes voters behind Putin, basing his support on the philosophy of Russian greatness and cultural superiority and the perception of Russian unity. His influence has been felt throughout the Russian government and society.

He publishes prolifically, and lectures at universities and government agencies about the harms of western liberalism. He also served as an advisor to Sergey Naryshkin, currently director of the Foreign Intelligence Service ( SVR ) of the Russian Federation.

Dugin’s views support an expansionist Russia, especially in the direction of Ukraine. He questions the existence of Ukraine and promotes Russia’s war there wholeheartedly. But his support for the war led to an attempt on his life. On August 20 2022, a bomb exploded in a car owned by Dugin, killing his daughter, Darya, who was driving it back from a festival of Russian traditional art.

Divide and conquer

Russia applies the same principle of “unity equals strength” to its adversaries, but in reverse. Many Russian political thinkers try to emphasize political divisions in unfriendly states. They work hard to broaden existing disagreements and support disruptive political parties and groups.

Such operations give the Russian government the ability to denigrate the foreign powers that Russia considers adversaries by making them look weak in the eyes of their own people– and more importantly, in the eyes of the Russian population.

Dugin lays a philosophical foundation for foreign parties that oppose the European Union and western liberalism, and that disrupt political unity. His views have been adopted by far-right political groups such as the German National Democratic Party, the British National Party, Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, and the National Front in France.

Dugin’s interview in which he endorsed Trump’s policies is likely to have been directly authorized by the Kremlin. He pushes a Kremlin-sponsored endorsement of Trump’s divisive – and thus weakening – effect on US politics.

But Dugin’s extreme Russian nationalist rhetoric at times clashes with Putin’s attempts to include all peoples of Russia in a strong unified state, rather than only ethnic Russians. As it is a multi-ethnic state, Russian ethnic nationalism can obstruct Putin’s attempts at portraying strength through unity. The label” Putin’s brain” is only accurate sometimes.

The Russian government uses Dugin when he is useful and separates itself from him when his extremism is inconvenient. Dugin is a tool who says many of the right things and facilitates Kremlin goals. His endorsement of Trump should be seen in its context: Russia attempting to strengthen itself at the expense of the US.

Kevin Riehle is a lecturer in intelligence and security studies at Brunel University of London.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Trump said in an exam with&nbsp, NBC News&nbsp, that” If Russia and I are unable to make a bargain on stopping the unrest in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault— which it might not be — but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put extra tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia. That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you didn’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25 % tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil”.

NBC News interpreted this as talking to what he earlier threatened on social media regarding the implementation of secondary restrictions on those that buy oil from Venezuela.

He&nbsp, wrote&nbsp, that “any Country that buying Oil and/or Gas from Venezuela will be forced to give a Tariff of 25 % to the United States on any Trade they do with our Country”. As it relates to Russia, this would rise tariffs on China and India, the first of which is now in a trade conflict with the US while the second&nbsp, wants to avoid one.

This is exactly what the previous US Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, insinuated in an appointment with the New York Post in early February that was analyzed&nbsp, these &nbsp, at the time. The conclusion was that such risks might suffice for getting them to push Russia into a bargain over Ukraine despite whatever apprehensions Putin may possess.

The effects of not doing so may be their conformity with the US secondary sanctions and all that may entail for the Russian business if it’s deprived of this income.

India is more prone to this form of American pressure, while China might endure for the reasons explained&nbsp, here, in which case Russia may be overwhelmingly dependent on China, thus leading to the fait accompli of de facto young partnership status that Putin has tried his utmost to prevent.

Accordingly, it might only be India that tries nudging Russia into a deal over Ukraine while China might not do what Trump expects, instead&nbsp, openly defying&nbsp, his secondary sanctions if they’re then imposed.

This analysis&nbsp, here &nbsp, briefly touches upon the five reasons why Russia might accept or reject a ceasefire in Ukraine, with it becoming increasingly likely that Trump might soon ramp up the pressure on Putin to decide, especially after he also just said that there‘s a “psychological deadline” for this. &nbsp,

In his words, which followed right after his interview with NBC News,” It’s a psychological deadline. If I think they’re tapping us along, I will not be happy about it”.

The day before, Trump spent a sizeable amount of the day golfing with Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who shared his impression of his counterpart’s approach to Russia with the media. &nbsp,

As he put it,” When you spend seven hours with someone, you at least get an intuition of the direction in which we’re going…The half-ceasefire has been broken by Russia, and I think America, and my sense is also the President of the United States, is running out of patience with Russia”.

This assessment aligns with what Trump told NBC News the next day and his later quip about a “psychological deadline” for concluding talks with Putin. The American leader’s preference for wielding sanctions as a foreign policy tool might, therefore, &nbsp, come into play against Russia&nbsp, exactly as was foreseen in early February after Kellogg’s cited interview.

This moment of truth could even arrive earlier than expected and thus force Putin to compromise&nbsp, or escalate&nbsp, before he’s fully made up his mind either way.

This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber&nbsp, here.

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