The world Donald Trump takes over is even more dangerous than the one he left behind four years back. The structural conditions, for one, have worsened. The economic gap between the United States and China has not significantly shifted away from the former, and the US’ surprisingly good growth rate has helped it to at least stay in place. Beijing’s decades-long investment in military power is now beginning to bear fruit, and though yet untested, it is now reaching very high levels of capability.
Its operations around Taiwan are now large and sophisticated, and it is potentially in a good place to impose a blockade around the island state. Because an invasion remains difficult, this is probably a more likely outcome. The blockade does not have to be a quick one, or even a single one—it could also be an iterated series that saps the strength and staying power of Taiwan’s allies. Would Trump be willing to start a war with China to break a blockade, especially if the first one, or the first few ones, are deliberately short-term ones that serve to create a new normal?
The Joe Biden administration’s policies have, in many cases, worsened the situation. On the positive side, they have deepened the continuing shift in American focus toward the Indo-Pacific. There can always be criticism about whether they have done this well, or as much as was needed. But there can be little doubt that a considerable shift has occurred in US policy. This includes partnerships among US allies, building the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, and United States) alliance, efforts to strengthen the Quad despite India’s foot-dragging, bolstering US military capabilities in the region, and rebuilding the US military more generally. Biden has done this while dealing with two major high-intensity regional wars that involved the US in some way or another.
This brings us to the negative side of the equation. Biden’s acts of omission were probably not responsible for the Russian invasion of Ukraine itself, though it could not have helped. The usual claim, that the Afghan withdrawal demonstrated American weakness and encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin, is only partly valid. The source of the withdrawal was the Trump-era Doha agreement, which abandoned Afghan security forces and tied the hands of the incoming Biden administration. That said, there was scope for the Biden administration to handle the withdrawal better. But it could not even win the narrative battle, which pinned the Afghanistan crisis solely on Biden’s failure and not Trump’s foolishness.
A more serious act of omission was the failure to help Ukraine win the war and instead letting it drag on for years. This allowed Putin to not only stabilise the Russian economy but also increase the likelihood that war weariness would ultimately sap Western steadfastness in helping Ukraine. A victory in Ukraine would have not only changed the global narrative regarding American power but have induced greater caution in capitals that had similar irredentist ambitions, such as Beijing.
Instead, the Biden administration worried about escalation, adopting a defeatist strategy that was exemplified by the offer to evacuate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when Russia invaded. Biden is still a prisoner to the lessons he learned during the Cold War about nuclear escalation without recognising the changed circumstances in a post-Cold War world, where Russia is too weak and the stakes too different to permit such confrontation. The consequence of Biden’s reluctance is that aggressors are now emboldened, adding another layer of danger to a world that was already unstable.
Trump’s crude thinking
To guide him, Trump only has what he already had – a crass selfishness and a couple of gut feelings about international politics. One is a rather crude nationalism, a version of the 1930s “America First”, which was a bad idea then and an even worse one today. All states look after themselves first, obviously, but they also need to assess the international conditions rather than stick their heads in the sand under the mistaken assumption that fires beyond your home will not singe you. Helping yourself sometimes means partnering with others to box distant arsonists before they start such fires.
Out of such crude thinking comes Trump’s long-standing conviction that tariffs are the way to manage trade relations, and that the balance of trade somehow reflects national power and even wisdom. In his view, perhaps, smarter countries do not allow adverse trade balances because they reflect weakness. Next comes Trump’s opposition to alliances, born of a complete lack of understanding of international politics. It was a frustrating attempt to educate him about these nuances that led to his then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson characterising him as a “moron”.
A more recent and related aspect of his “thinking”, no doubt also politically convenient currently, is his opposition to wars. Unfortunately, conflict is an unavoidable aspect of international politics, and the dividing line between wars of choice and wars of necessity is not always clear. A blanket desire to avoid all wars could very likely lead to those one is seeking to avoid. Cutting US support to Ukraine would likely mean that Putin wins. Europeans are unlikely to step into the breach, at least the major powers in the region like Germany and France. The message that Xi Jinping takes from that could very likely be that Trump would not risk a war over Taiwan, much less over the South China Sea. The direct and indirect consequences of such a miscalculation would be disastrous, including for India.
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Costs & benefits of intervention
Whether Trump can introduce enough uncertainty into his behaviour to deter others like Xi is far from clear. They could very well calculate that Trump wouldn’t risk American lives and assets to defend Taiwan, and it would be a reasonable guess. Even official US policy is unclear about whether the US would fight if China invades Taiwan, though Biden himself introduced more confusion here.
Any US administration would have to calculate what the costs and benefits of an intervention to defend Taiwan would be, and the answer is not obvious. That calculation becomes even more complicated with Trump because of his distrust of partners, his commitment against new wars, and the possibility of some new US-China deal of some kind, especially on trade.
Against the uncertainty of Trump, Beijing would have to calculate that the administration after him might be more determined to defend Washington’s stakes in the Indo-Pacific. For China, the risk of Trump’s intervention in Taiwan could be offset by the likelihood that the window of opportunity could close in four years. Moreover, the Chinese military is now nearing its peak capability, an advantage that could dwindle over time.
But if China successfully retakes Taiwan and the US stands aside, America’s alliances in the region would likely shatter. US partners would probably invest in their own measures, including nuclear weapons, for deterrence. This has its downsides.
Nuclear weapons might deter a direct full-scale Chinese invasion, but there is little likelihood of that in any case. China’s irredentist claims are, in terms of territorial demands, relatively small – in the same way that it is small vis-à-vis India.
China’s claims are almost certainly limited, and even if they are psychologically painful to its neighbours, they’ll have to just learn to live with it – a position not dissimilar to what Ukraine has to contend with. More serious is the probability of the nation’s political domination over the Indo-Pacific, a new hegemonic order in the region. There is little that India or other powers in the region can do about this except negotiate and hope that Beijing will not be too harsh. While weaker nations in the Indo-Pacific and Central Europe can band together in their respective regions, they’re unlikely to be a viable replacement for American power. That makes the next four years particularly volatile.
Rajesh Rajagopalan is a professor of International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He tweets @RRajagopalanJNU. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)