INTERVIEW | In a New Trump Administration, What a US-China Policy Might Look Like

In November, America will elect a candidate to fill the 47th term of President of the United States. Former US President Donald Trump is expected to be the Republican candidate. On June 6, The Sankei Shimbun and JAPAN Forward sat down with former Trump administration advisor Steve Yates to discuss what kind of China policy Japan might expect if Mr Trump wins the 2024 election. 

Yates is now a Senior Fellow and Chair of the China Policy Initiative at the America First Policy Institute. In Tokyo with his colleague, former White House advisor Fred Fleitz, he emphasized that the Trump team put importance on constructing stronger, more independent and cooperative partnerships for better deterrence against American adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran. 

Last of 2 parts 

Part 1: INTERVIEW | Imagining a New Trump Administration: Japan as 'Independent' and 'Resilient' Ally

Excerpts of the interview with Steve Yates follow.

If Mr Trump is President Again

How do you think Mr Trump will deal with the China issue?

Basically, China would be seen as a foreign policy subcomponent of an Asia portfolio. It's just a part of the overall foreign policy. 

However, increasingly, especially over the last 10 years, it's clear that the malign influences of the Chinese Communist Party touch on every part of American life. This affects every department of government and all of the activities that a president and his administration must deal with. 

Do you see China elevating the tension in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait?

There's always been a threat from the CCP to engage in belligerent behavior and expansive territorial claims. From the inception of the People's Republic of China, it has engaged in vigorous ideological and political warfare against Japan. 

It has also engaged in extended political warfare against Taiwan, the United States, and others, too. That remains. In recent years, people have become awakened to what's driving this. 

What kind of problems do you see in China itself?

Its aggressive political warfare is now weaponized with technology. That creates problems for influence operations in [Japan], our country, elsewhere China tries to affect elections or sow division. And so we have a comprehensive challenge like never before. 

Our overall objective is to try to identify, resist, and contain those malign influences. And to shift our patterns of behavior away from dependency on that unstable actor. 

We ask some basic questions: 

• What are we doing that transfers wealth, technology, and opportunity to an entity that seeks to do us harm? 
• And what are we doing to lessen that? 

We learned through especially the COVID pandemic, that we, over the last many decades, have become far too dependent on one market.

Allies and Partners in Asia

What do you think will happen with the Japan-US alliance? 

The US-Japan alliance is possibly the strongest and healthiest alliance that we have. 

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's vision of a more normal nation, the arc of peace and stability vision that went from Japan around the Indo-Pacific, had a transformative effect on how people think about Japan's role across the board in the region and internationally. I don't fear the US-Japan alliance collapsing. In part, that's because I think Japan has done a great deal on its own to carry its share of the alliance. 

And, yes, there's more to do. I agree with that assessment. Because of the unusual post-war constitution and the senior partner, junior partner relationship that lasted a very long time, Japan has not thought comprehensively about its security the way a quote-unquote "normal nation" might. But it's making great progress. 

I honor that progress. I think it makes the US-Japan alliance better, stronger, and more resilient. But I think that the vital areas for Japan to move forward would be energy security, cybersecurity, and other kind of homeland security missions.

What course of action do you think the US will take?

What are we doing now is going forward together to lessen our collective dependency on that one unreliable and malicious market. And there is a third category that organizes our policy-thinking efforts: how to create a much more robust, cooperative relationship among our allies and partners, with or without the United States. Not so that we withdraw, but stronger, more independent and cooperative allies and partners, greatly complicating [options] for Beijing.

It makes our options for containing the malign influences of the CCP safer and more effective. They will have less leverage over us, and we will have more leverage among ourselves to live a more peaceful, prosperous, and better way of life. That, I think, is the vision for how to try to move forward on policy. 

Energy security is a concern for Japan. 

On energy, Japan and Taiwan have sort of shared a moment of pulling back from nuclear energy. However, it's impossible to be modern competitive manufacturing and high-tech economies without abundant, resilient, and affordable baseload energy. And you cannot be leaders in semiconductors and artificial intelligence without that significant supply. 

Nuclear energy is friendly to the planet. It's much better in terms of the radioactive waste and recyclability and safety. So I would like to believe that we have partners in East Asia that can get beyond the terrible impressions left by the Fukushima disaster. We have much better options now. 

That might seem like a niche issue and far removed from China. But if you take it back to China, the only place in the world where there is significant investment, advancement, and deployment of modern nuclear reactors right now is China. It's just huge numbers. 

We don't want to be dependent on China for energy. And we shouldn't cede this as an area where responsible countries could do a much better job for themselves.

Japan's Role at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Should there be a "NATO" for Asia?

I don't think we'll have a NATO of East Asia. But in terms of substance and material capabilities, the US and Japan can together work with other alliances across this region. That alone should make Beijing recalculate how aggressive it is with its revisionist territorial claims, its ideological and political warfare, or its enabling of irresponsible neighbors and partners. 

NATO will hold a summit meeting in Washington DC in July. It is trying to increase cooperation with AP4 countries in the Indo-Pacific. Do you think that is beneficial for both NATO and Indo-Pacific partners?

I still think that NATO needs to place priority on Europe and make sure that it's doing things right by Europe for its own security. Dealing correctly with Russia economically and strategically really needs to be a pretty significant priority. 

It can't ignore the role that China plays in those very questions. At the same time, I think Japan has played a constructive and moderating role in making clear that concern about China's influence in Europe is not just because American hawkish advisors don't like China. 

Rather, other allied partners that are responsible stakeholders in the global community are concerned about this. I think that Japanese leadership trying to press Europe to face Japan and [Japanese] national interests in these conversations, has been a significant positive contribution. 

Does Japan has a role to play in sounding the alarm about China to the West?

We need our European allies to catch up more. They're better than they were 20 years ago, but they still have a long way to go to catch up to where we are today. I don't think that the Europeans understand how things have changed in the perceptions of Asian counterparts with [China's] territorial claims. 

It is strategically significant that the CCP has escalated tensions with the Philippines. It's completely unnecessary but definitely willful. And I think Europeans need to think long and hard about why that is. And also what message it says about the nature and intentions of Beijing. 

I think European powers have been willfully blind to Beijing's very obvious contribution to Moscow's military and other capabilities relevant to the war machine. And so the more Japan can help with that, the more that a DC environment is conducive to that wake-up call. To me, that's a positive contribution. 

To learn more about Mr Yates and AFPI China policy, read their new book, An America First Approach to US National Security (ISBN 979-8-9905031-0-6, by America First Press, 2024)

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(Read the related report in Japanese.)

Author: Mizuki Okada