{"id":29518,"date":"2016-11-14T14:30:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T03:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=29518"},"modified":"2016-11-14T11:32:31","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T00:32:31","slug":"strategic-policy-anzus-dealing-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/strategic-policy-anzus-dealing-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategic policy, ANZUS and dealing with Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

On 20 January 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as America\u2019s 45th president. I\u2019m not expecting an immediate revolution in strategic affairs; his priorities will be unashamedly domestic. Indeed, like most politicians\u2014who campaign in poetry and govern in prose\u2014I suspect the new president will spend the first year getting on top of his portfolio and letting his appointees do the same.<\/p>\n

The outpouring of vitriol that\u2019s followed Trump\u2019s election reflects in part the sudden disappointment of Clinton\u2019s supporters shocked at the outcome. But Trump\u2019s not Hitler or Mussolini; dictatorship hasn\u2019t come to the US<\/a>; the republic isn\u2019t dead<\/a>, and neither is its Constitution. (For those wanting to \u2018locate\u2019 Trump in the vast gallery of US leaders, Walter Russell Mead\u2019s depiction of Trump as a Jacksonian<\/a> is an interesting read.)<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s a dealer. And, as P.J. Harvey once observed, dealers don\u2019t live on the moral high ground<\/a>. So as president he won\u2019t be much like Barack Obama. In foreign affairs he\u2019ll be more of a politician and less of a statesman. In defence policy he\u2019s already signalled<\/a> a preference for using force massively or not at all\u2014a classic preference of military leaders rather than civilian ones.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s already clear that \u2018America First\u2019 will be the long pole in Trump\u2019s strategic tent. That\u2019s his natural instinct, and it aligns with both the preferences of the US public<\/a>, and an international structure of growing\u2014if uneven\u2014multipolarity. He\u2019s not going to walk away from US alliances, least of all the ANZUS alliance which ties together three members of the close-knit \u2018five-eyes community\u2019. But he has put allies on notice that he expects them to carry more of their weight. And that leaves him an important and immediate task of assurance\u2014convincing America\u2019s partners that the US still has their backs. The dimensions of that challenge shouldn\u2019t be underestimated.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now not only possible but likely that the US will be absorbed in an agenda of \u2018America First\u2019 while large-scale strategic transformation plays out in Asia. That\u2019s worrying, and not just for us. Indeed, our worries will probably seem trivial to US allies living closer to authoritarian great powers, or to risk-tolerant adversaries like North Korea. At a minimum, an America focused on domestic priorities will encourage Asian nations to hedge more intensively. At a maximum, it might lead to a cascade of nuclear proliferation both within and beyond the region<\/a>, an event which would signal the death of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and render impotent any UN-led negotiations to ban nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Why would nuclear weapons\u2014the symbols of an earlier age of total war\u2014suddenly look so appealing? Basically because there\u2019s not a wide range of alternatives. Academics write a lot about the growing \u2018webs\u2019 of intra-Asian security cooperation\u2014webs that are supposed to complement the hub-and-spokes \u2018wheels\u2019 of current US alliances\u2014but in reality there\u2019s less to multilateral security cooperation in Asia than meets the eye. Whatever cooperation does exist is clustered at the confidence-building end of the spectrum; actual agreements to come to each other\u2019s aid in the event of an attack don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Look at Australia\u2019s own options. If we judged that the ANZUS treaty was becoming a less reliable guarantor of our security, where would we source new increments of security? From other US allies caught up in a similar predicament to our own? From other Asian middle powers, with whom we\u2019d hope to make common cause in the future though we seldom did in the past? Well, yes, we might do a little more of each. But surely the conclusion we\u2019d quickly come to would be that the fastest way to add serious strategic ballast to our own position would be through a small arsenal of, say, 20 nuclear warheads, plus a credible delivery vehicle. That Australia would look a whole lot less vulnerable to coercion than the Australia we have today. If we do think a \u2018come-as-you-are\u2019 war<\/a> is a real possibility in Asia, it\u2019s an option even we might want to think about.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the ledger, Trump might well be a driver for an era of US reinvigoration. That\u2019d be good news\u2014albeit over the longer term. Even Obama came to power promising to rebuild the US middle class. Back in 2009 he argued that a strong middle class had been the basis of US global dominance in the 20th century, and would be again in the 21st. But the US middle class didn\u2019t recover under Obama\u2014indeed, it shrank<\/a>. So, if Trump can pull that off, he\u2019d chalk up some serious strategic kudos, as well as political and economic ones.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s our best strategic course? Well, ANZUS has no termination date. As Article X says, it\u2019s meant to last indefinitely. So my money is on its still being there when Donald Trump\u2019s presidency has come and gone. But we\u2019d be wise to think through our other options for strengthening Australia\u2019s position in a shifting regional order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 20 January 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as America\u2019s 45th president. I\u2019m not expecting an immediate revolution in strategic affairs; his priorities will be unashamedly domestic. 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