DONALD Trump’s presidential victory has generated a frenzy of commentary on global geopolitics and geoeconomics unlike any previous election.
For a start, leaders critical of Trump have had to swallow their pride
while many have publicly retracted their earlier statements and are now eating crow.
One example is Australia’s former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, currently Australia’s ambassador to the United States. In 2020, Rudd condemned Trump as the “most destructive president in history” while in 2022, he denounced Trump as a “traitor to the West” for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Immediately after Trump’s victory, Rudd purged his personal and social media accounts of his anti-Trump posts.
This action led Peter Dutton, Australia’s opposition leader, to predict that Rudd would follow up with further attempts to ingratiate himself with the new government.
“He’ll be down at the tie shop, he’d be buying up red ties, he’d be buying red hats, he’ll be ordering those Maga (Make America Great Again) hats. He will do everything he can to ingratiate himself with the Trump campaign. So he’s indefatigable, as we know.”
Options for Asean
None of our leaders in Asean should engage in the behaviour that we are seeing from allies of the US, including from the Asian-Pacific region, in their efforts to apple-polish Trump and the new administration.
Not only is there no need for Asean leaders to buy Maga merchandise, especially submarines and missile systems and to ingratiate themselves with the new US president, there is every reason for Asean member countries and leaders to uphold
the organisation’s independent
and non-aligned stance in the tumultuous era ahead.
An important marker for Asean’s foreign policy for the next four years has already been established by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. While congratulating Trump on his remarkable comeback victory, Anwar expressed the hope that Trump’s victory would bring positive changes in geopolitics, particularly to end the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
“We will welcome any positive stance by the United States towards peace, particularly efforts to halt Israel’s violent attacks on Gaza and to acknowledge the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”
This call (Malaysia is the incoming chair of Asean in 2025) for the new US administration to change its war-oriented ideological position pursued by Joe Biden, and presently playing out in respect to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, should not be regarded as unrealistic or futile.
Although criticised by Western liberal media and think-tanks for
his unpredictable ways and combustible foreign policy, Trump previously undertook an unprecedented peace initiative in dealing with North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un.
During his recent campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. It is possible that he will do the same in Gaza if there is strong and sustained pressure from his Western allies and the rest of the world.
Standing up for Asean’s core principles means standing up for regional peace and security. This is a position which Trump, even if he disagrees with it, should be willing to live with.
Despite his election rhetoric of making America great again, he is ultimately a businessman and realist with bigger concerns and issues to deal with in America, Europe, the Middle East and China.
Draining the deep state and Capital Hill swamp may be his biggest challenge, and will take up much of
his time. This means that Asean will be relatively low and unimportant in his agenda.
At the same time, the reality for Trump’s hawkish foreign policy advisers is that Asean is a regional force that needs to be given due respect. With a larger population than North America’s, Asean, although a middle level power in geopolitics, is one of the world’s most diverse, fastest growing and competitive economic regions. Its combined gross domestic product of US$3.8 trillion (RM16.77 trillion) makes Asean the fifth largest economy in the world.
During the period 2013-2022, Asean’s economy grew at an annual rate of 4.2% and is expected to grow just as or more strongly in the coming decade. Should Trump want a stronger counterweight to China, his team will be out to solicit for Asean’s support.
The reality is also that if Trump wants to restore the US to a more respectable standing in this part of the world, he has to begin with the recognition that many in Asean – possibly the great majority of the population – do not see the US as a role model for democracy, freedom, human rights and a force for peace. This representation is regarded by most people, including Americans, as a hollow claim ceaselessly propagandised by the military-industrial-media complex.
The prevailing dark view of the US in Southeast Asia is not only because of its military campaign in Vietnam, which spilled over into Laos and Cambodia and killed more than a million of the Indochinese population, but also due to the US’s war record in the Middle East and elsewhere, and its support of the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza, which has adversely affected Muslims as well as other non-Western opinions of the US.
Alignment preference
With regard to China, which the Biden administration assessed as America’s greatest geopolitical and geoeconomic rival, a recent survey of the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute found that over half of Southeast Asians preferred alignment with China over the US.
Its polling sample included respondents from the public and private sectors, and researchers and academics who are in a position to influence policy.
If the poll numbers from the Philippines, the most pro-American among Asean nations because of its history and the large population of Filipinos with relatives in the US or dependent for their livelihood on US military bases in the Philippines, are discounted, the finding would be more lopsided in favour of China.
Policy advisers of president-elect Trump will do well to point out to him that more than 40% of the population of Southeast Asia are Muslims.
The way for Trump to make America better - great is in many ways a hopeless ambition – is to focus on dealing with the domestic issues that divide US society. It is not to engage in efforts to enforce the primacy of a nation whose pre-eminent standing in the world has been irretrievably lost.
Trump’s exclusion of Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, well known war hawks, in his new administration is a hopeful sign that he may, against all expectations, help build a peace-oriented road for the US in its foreign policy so as to embellish his place
in history.
Lim Teck Ghee’s Another Take is aimed at demystifying social orthodoxy. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
