Welcome to The Strategist Six, a feature that provides a glimpse into the thinking of prominent academics, analysts, government officials, military officers, reporters and interesting individuals from around the world.

1. What are your impressions of what we’ve seen from the new administration in Asia, and how might their approach differ from Obama’s rebalance?

This administration doesn’t really have a strategy for Asia, nor a larger strategy for the world. There isn’t an overarching vision, there isn’t a considered reflection of America’s global role and interests. What they have is the ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan and some predilections on the part of the President about the two pillars of America’s post-war foreign policy—he appears to maintain a suspicion of alliances, and rejects the multilateralism and enlightened internationalism that has guided American policy since World War II. With that said, what we see so far from the national security and foreign policy bureaucracy is status quo: the messages that Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson delivered during their trips to Asia were ones that any of their recent Defense and State Department predecessors would’ve also delivered.

2. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently claimed that decades of diplomacy had failed to compel Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program. What might Tokyo want Washington to do?

Japan wants the US to maintain a deep and abiding concern about the nature of the threat North Korea poses to Japan. The Japanese believe that they’re in the crosshairs of a North Korean nuclear weapon, so they want the US to be acutely sensitive to the consequences of nuclear use and to the consequences of Japan’s decision to back the US in a future Korean contingency. I’ve often been struck how the Japanese I’ve spoken with evince no doubts about the credibility of America’s commitment to their defence. So the problem is no longer reassurance, but rather deterrence: the Japanese and South Koreans believe that somehow the North Koreans think that their possession of a nuclear device is a deterrent and therefore will miscalculate.

3. What is your assessment of Prime Minister Abe’s courtship of Donald Trump?

Genius! Prime Minister Abe has done an extraordinary job of establishing the “best way” to pursue relations with the United States under President Trump. His quick trip to Trump Tower in December demonstrated his readiness to be a partner, which he backed up with a trip to DC and his time at Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s rhetoric about allies stepping up to the plate actually corresponds with what Abe wants to see from Japan, and the creation of a larger economic framework is something the Japanese have wanted with the US for years. So, Abe’s been brilliant.

4. After Japan’s bruising experience in its bid to sell submarines to Australia, do you think Tokyo still considers Canberra to be a serious security partner, and if so, what might Japan want us to do together?

First of all, I think Japan was a little more divided about the utility, value and the wisdom of the potential submarine deal than was the Abe administration. Subsequently you heard lots of reporting from the defence industry about being somewhat uncomfortable with the prospect, so let’s be careful when we talk about how great a disappointment it was. But I think as Abe surveys the region he absolutely sees Australia as one of his best partners. You share values, interests, security architectures and security structures.

What Japan wants from Australia is continued support for Japan’s new role and outward orientation, and diplomatic support for the rule of law, norm setting, economic engagement, multilateralism, capacity building—all of which Australia already does. The difference now is that Tokyo will look to Canberra (just as Canberra should look to Tokyo and others) to entangle the US, to keep it engaged in the region in ways that might counter some of the more isolationist tendencies of the new administration.

5. This time last year, ASPI published your Special Report,Peak Japan and its Implications for Regional Security. One of your arguments was that Japan’s demographic realities and economic challenges would naturally lead it to look inwards. How is that thesis holding up 12 months on?

Well, the economy is still stumbling along; I haven’t seen the structural reforms that would suggest otherwise. And on the demographic front we’re not seeing much happening either, so I’m still happy to cling to the conclusions I came to a year ago. I recently wrote about what I see as Japan’s ‘five futures’, which builds on the Peak Japan paper by laying out the other pathways Japan could head down. But I’m not seeing anything at this moment that suggests a change in trajectory.

6. To what extent has Prime Minister Abe’s activist international policy agenda penetrated the traditional anti-militarist mindset held by many Japanese?

Actually, the most important change didn’t come from Abe; instead, it was the triple catastrophe on 11 March 2011, when SDF were out on the front lines. The US was there as well, and you saw approval ratings for both the SDF and the US–Japan alliance skyrocket. So I think that’s been the most important development in changing minds. Prime Minister Abe has done a lot but I don’t think that he’s brought about a qualitative or paradigmatic shift. Japanese thinking is impacted when they are applauded for what they contribute and when the world can look to them and say ‘thank you’. I think that has the most profound influence on reshaping the anti-militarist mindset many Japanese have.

It’s tempting to dismiss Trump’s election as a bizarre aberration of the digital age—a triumph of celebrity over reason. But it’s also clear that Trump succeeded because he appealed to voters on issues long ignored by the mainstream.

The dominant factor underlying Trump’s win is that the US economy is oversupplied with unskilled and semi-skilled labour. Too simplistic? Perhaps. But the core tenets of Trump’s economic agenda—infrastructure spending, trade protection, resurrection of labour-intensive manufacturing, immigration cuts and business tax relief—are all focused on closing the gap between the supply and demand for labour.

Trump responded to a trend hidden in plain view. The economic malaise affecting middle class America has been apparent for years; workforce participation has been falling, income inequality has been widening and health outcomes have been declining. So why did it take Mr Trump to turn the resulting discontent into votes? One factor was his willingness to challenge orthodoxies that others dared not touch. Among other things, Trump rejected long-held assumptions about the merits of free trade. And many American workers agree; apparently $4.99 t-shirts at Walmart don’t compensate for job insecurity and stagnant wages.

That’s not to say that Trump’s economic agenda is coherent or prudent, or even that he has diagnosed the problem correctly. Not only does he exaggerate the role of free trade, but his proposed cure is more likely to hurt than help workers. But credit where credit’s due: by announcing that the free-trade emperor has no clothes, Trump harnessed widespread voter disenchantment.

What else might have Trump seen that the mainstream was unable or unwilling to acknowledge?

Well, another theme of Mr Trump’s campaign was the obsolescence of alliances. ‘Crazy talk,’ you say. And the appointment of a triumvirate of scholar-generals to key posts has persuaded many that US foreign policy is reverting to normal, especially after face-to-face reassurances in Tokyo, Seoul and Munich.

We’re not so sure. Although Secretary Mattis told the Munich Security Conference that ‘Article V is a bedrock commitment’, he also told NATO defence ministers in Brussels: ‘If your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to this alliance, each of your capitals needs to show support for our common defense.’ It’s not the first time that the US has complained about NATO free-riding, but it’s the first time that the US has threatened to ‘moderate its commitment’. And the threat was delivered with some theatre. Mattis said, ‘I owe it to you to give clarity on the political reality in the United States and to state the fair demand from my country’s people in concrete terms’.

Lest there be any doubt on the administration’s position, following a less-than-warm meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump tweeted that Germany owes the US ‘vast sums of money’ for NATO. Mattis’ threat and Trump’s statements portend a fundamental change in US policy towards Europe. More importantly, they reflect an underlying shift in the strategic landscape that the US foreign policy establishment has been unwilling to face up to.

NATO was created for the specific purpose of prosecuting the Cold War. It’d be a remarkable coincidence if it continued to serve US interests 70 years later. The Cold War Soviets represented an existential threat to the United States. Not a threat to some nebulous notion of ‘US interests’, but to the very survival of the US and its people. So the US was willing to stake everything—New York, Washington, Des Moines—to keep the Soviets in check.

The depth of Washington’s Cold War interests allowed other NATO members to free-ride on the US. Put simply, generations of Americans subsidised Europe’s defence. But because money’s fungible, it’s equally true that US taxpayers subsidised Europe’s generous pensions and social spending. Europe could free-ride because the US had no choice but to protect its own interests.

But today’s Russia isn’t the Soviet Union, and Putin isn’t a threat on the scale of Stalin or Brezhnev. While the Soviets stood ready to push NATO into the Channel, Russia poses a threat only to weaker ex-Soviet territories. Consequently, the US threat to ‘moderate its commitment’ was credible in a way that it wouldn’t have been during the Cold War. Somewhat ironically, Russia’s weakness rather than its strength is undermining NATO solidarity.

But, again, there’s a big difference between recognising something and formulating an effective response. There was an inherent contradiction in Mattis’ message to NATO; the US commitment can’t be simultaneously unwavering and up for negotiation. So what gives?

Orthodoxy holds that US interests in Europe are undiminished despite the end of the Cold War. That’s been a harmless fiction to maintain for most of the post-Cold War era, when defence spending was falling and Russia was quiescent. But with Russia raising the potential costs, the tensions inherent in the US underwriting of European security were bound to surface—especially under populist American leadership.

The United States is unlikely to withdraw from, or openly abrogate, the NATO treaty. That would undermine its alliance credibility elsewhere. But it can certainly reposition its forces so that, in a crisis, its response would be too little too late, and it can also be supine to Russian assertiveness in Europe.

The horror scenario for Europe would be an implicit grand bargain, in which Trump concedes a degree of Russian hegemony in Eastern Europe so that he can focus US strategic efforts on dealing with China—a “pivot” on steroids. It would almost be a photo-negative of Nixon’s deal with Mao in 1972, which also happens to be the last time that the US abandoned allies to their fate.

We were in Washington recently. Like much of the rest of the world, the town is trying to understand the new US administration. Surprisingly, some of the Washington establishment isn’t overly alarmed. We can’t rule out the Stockholm effect as an explanation, but there were certainly positive vibes to be found. Our interlocutors included a range of people from government (both US and other), business, academia and think tanks. There’s no strong consensus on even some of the broad brush questions, but here are our impressions from the week.

Let’s start with the administration itself. The Cabinet is slowly filling up and, while it seems to be taking time, it’s actually not much slower than its recent predecessors. Where progress is really lagging is in fleshing out the hundreds of lower level positions. It’s not unusual for that to take many months, but most of the names aren’t even rumours yet. We’re told that it could be the end of the year before the DC firmament is even mostly full.

That’s sometimes being ascribed to the inexperience of the Trump team. But an alternative explanation might lie in the 2010 Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act, which gives greater freedom for the transition team to work on new policies. If that was the Trump team’s focus, which is consistent with the unprecedented flurry of executive orders issued in the first few days after the inauguration, it would impact the time they could spend recruiting and nominating. Because the 2012 election returned the Obama team, there’s no previous experience of a new administration coming into power under the revised arrangements.

On the Cabinet itself, we heard generally reassuring assessments of the defence and national security team. A common view is that the decades of experience among the senior players, especially Generals Kelly and Mattis, will pull the administration back to the mainstream on security matters. Cited examples included the restatement of the one China policy after an initial excursion into a more exciting place, and the restatement of NATO’s centrality to America’s Europe security policy. This school of thought holds that there’ll be more continuity than change in US international security policy.

We’re not totally convinced. Firstly, we’re not sure that NATO will continue to be an object of much affection, especially if European solidarity gets any shakier. Second, and much more important for Australia, we don’t see any evidence of a coherent policy on Asia. Nor is there any obvious player who will drive one. It’s possible that an influential official will be appointed to a sub-Cabinet role and play a role similar to Kurt Campbell when the pivot was conceived, but that remains to be seen. If there’s no policy for managing the biggest strategic competition of our time, it’s hard to take too much solace. It now appears that the Congress is trying to fill the void, and perhaps external players such as Prime Minister Abe of Japan will also shape American thinking on the region.

On trade and economic policy, there weren’t even unconvincing assurances to be found. On the whole, we encountered much bleaker outlook than on the security front.

By jettisoning the TPP, the United States has abandoned any pretence of leadership on trade liberalisation. Lest there be any lingering hope of a resurrection, we were told repeatedly that the TTP is dead. So if China wants to seize the agenda on multilateral trade agreements, the way is clear. Under Trump, the United States looks almost certain to focus its efforts on bilateral trade agreements, which will take years to negotiate.

In the meantime, there’s a risk that Trump will set off a trade war by aggressively using anti-dumping provisions, or perhaps even by declaring China a ‘currency manipulator’ and launching punitive countermeasures. Worse still, we could see the United States walk away from the WTO in order to gain more favourable outcomes for US businesses. Indeed, the current tax reform plan proposed by Republicans—a destination-based tax—is incompatible with existing WTO rules. It would be a supreme irony if the United States renounced the existing rules-based international trade regime (which it helped design) while continuing to lecture others about the importance of a rules-based order on the security front.

So much for policy. The elephant in the room is the frequently eccentric behaviour of the President and his public spokespeople. On that, opinions were divided. Some found the angry 3AM tweets and focus on things like the Inauguration Day crowds worrying. We’re inclined to agree, but a surprising number of people put it down to showmanship, or even to politically brilliant use of social media to circumvent the press and talk to the Trump electoral base directly. There’s also a darker school of thought that ascribes it to a cynical technique for keeping the press talking about things that don’t matter, and for letting anti-Trump angst burn itself out.

Perhaps the best advice we got during the week was to ignore the sound and light show that surrounds President Trump and instead to focus on what he does. Then, we’re told, it will all become clearer. As an example, if you read everything about possible links to Russia, you might conclude that the US is getting set to give President Putin a soft ride. But actions, including making recent comments to a visiting Ukranian politician about retaining sanctions on Russia, suggest a different story.

To finish on a parochial note, we were surprised at the worry engendered by that phone call. Clearly there was some concern around town that a close relationship may have been badly damaged. Hopefully we pulled off some amateur diplomacy by explaining that the phone call wasn’t going to cause Australia to pull the plug on the relationship just yet.

The Trump administration’s 6th week saw yet another unfortunate Russia-related story bubble up. (Will it bubble over?) So we’ll take our cue from the news cycle and bypass the President’s speech to Congress—we hear he didn’t pivot—in order to move onto some choice Russia picks. First, there’s no going past this whopper in the pages of The New Yorker, which combines the supreme powers of three fine writers (including editor and Russia hand, David Remnick) to talk election meddling and where to next for US-Russia ties. (A classic New Yorker cover, too.) Jonathan Stray’s fantastic blog on persuasion, power and propaganda (examples: Russia, China, Milo Yiannopoulos, others) is well worth setting some time aside for. What might 2017 portend for Putin in Syria? This piece over at Lawfare has a crack. And here, Masha Gessen paints a disturbing picture of opposition politics in Russia, published in the lead up to the 12th anniversary of Boris Nemtsov’s murder.

Bookworms, rejoice! Admiral John Richardson, the current Chief of Naval Operations for the US Navy, this week released his reading list for 2017. There’s a few dozen titles that made the grade, so we suggest y’all get a move on if you’re going to be done in time for the 2018 release…

You might recall that Rosa Brooks’ new book, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon, got a few mentions in this spot at the tailend of last year. Brooks concludes that we increasingly occupy the middle ground between states of war and peace, and hoists in as her main example America’s use of armed drones to take it to terrorists in foreign lands. In a strong piece penned for the NYRB, Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth reflects on Brooks’ contribution and judges that we must again delineate between war and peace. ‘Preventing the rules of war from infecting views of moral conduct in times of peace is essential for preserving civilisation.’

Three sobering longreads about the Third Reich have surfaced this week. The first, from Smithsonian magazine, focuses on the story of escapee prisoners in the Ponar forest and the effort that passionate historians put into discovering unmarked mass graves in current day Lithuania. The New York Review of Books takes a slightly different tone, examining the pervasive drug culture among Nazi ranks. And finally, The Paris Review has a fascinating read on the use of the Rorschach Test during the Nuremburg trials, particularly that of Hermann Göring, and ends with a dark realisation from the writings of Douglas Kelley, author of The Rorschach Technique:

‘The Nazis were, he wrote, “not spectacular types, not personalities such as appear only once in a century,” but simply “strong, dominant, aggressive, egocentric personalities” who had been given “the opportunity to seize power.” Men like Göring “are not rare. They can be found anywhere in the country—behind big desks deciding big affairs as businessmen, politicians, and racketeers.”’

In our populism pick of the week, The Atlantic looks at The Donald’s transformation from your (almost) average White House contender into self-styled Populist Plenipotentiary. The author points the finger at Chief Strategist Steve Bannon as the root of the problem.

Two new reports focus on our near neighbourhood this week. The first, from the National Bureau of Asian Research, assesses the strategic outlook for the US–Thai alliance considering the halt of military relations after the installation of a military junta in 2014, and asks whether Bangkok is slowly drifting towards Beijing as a result. The second, from Tokyo’s National Institute for Defense Studies, holds a microscope to the China–Taiwan relationship (PDF). Over at Carnegie’s Middle East Center, a new report looks to eastern Syria’s tribal communities, and how they’ll impact upon developments in the west. And finally, CSIS has asked a handful of prominent US strategists to predict the direction and expenditure of Trump’s defense budget.

And finally, voting is now open for Smithsonian magazine’s 14th annual photography competition. Entries are from all over the world, and fall into seven categories: The Natural World, Travel, Sustainable Travel, People, The American Experience, Altered Images and Mobile. Have a browse (and cast your vote) here, or have a gander at some of The Atlantic’s favourite shots here. You’re not going to see any X-Pro II filters here, folks…

Podcast

If you’re after a brief refresher on the significance of President Joko Widodo’s visit to Australia last weekend and the full restoration of Indonesia–Australia military ties, be sure to check out this little five-minute listen from The Wire. Featuring David Hill and Peter Leahy, it’s a useful primer for anyone interested in the bilateral relationship and the direction of ASEAN in a Trumpian world.

Videos

Two of our esteemed ASPI colleagues, Mark Thomson and Andrew Davies, were running around D.C. this week, where they swung by the East-West Center to deliver some sobering home-truths about the strategic outlook in the Asia–Pacific, the shape of Australia’s defence policy and how Canberra is reading the Trump administration. Catch up with their remarks and Q&A (90 mins).

Continuing with the Kremlin headliner, the Council on Foreign Relations was on the ball this week with their excellent panel event, ‘Russia: Rival or Partner, or Both?’ Check out footage of the discussion (73 mins), where experts canvass US policy options ranging from cooperation in Syria to continuation of sanctions.

Events

Canberra: Readers based in our nation’s capital shouldn’t miss the opportunity to hear from Ambassador William Swing, the Director General of the International Organization for Migration, who will be in town on Monday to deliver a public lecture on ‘Orderly Migration in a Disorderly World.’ Check out the details here.

Melbourne: After a stellar effort last week in Sydney, the Cook for Syria campaign is rolling down south to Melbourne on Monday night for another spectacular charity banquet. For a taste of Syrian cuisine straight from the hands of some of Australia’s most talented chefs—and to participate in a truly good cause—buy your seats/tables here.

Over the last eight years, as China’s posturing in Asia became increasingly aggressive, many criticized US President Barack Obama for failing to stand up to the Asian giant. It was on Obama’s watch, after all, that China captured the disputed Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines and built seven artificial islands in the South China Sea, on which it then deployed heavy weapons—all without incurring any international costs.

Many expect Obama’s tough-talking successor, Donald Trump, to change all of this. He is not off to a good start.

During the campaign, Trump threatened to retaliate against China for ‘raping’ America on trade, to impose massive tariffs on Chinese imports, and to label China a currency manipulator on ‘day one.’ Soon after his victory, Trump took a congratulatory phone call from the president of Taiwan, thereby breaking with nearly 40 years of diplomatic orthodoxy. Trump then took the matter a step further, publicly suggesting that he would use the ‘One China’ policy as a bargaining chip in bilateral negotiations over contentious economic and security issues—from import taxes to North Korea.

But Trump backed down. Chinese President Xi Jinping made it clear that he would not so much as talk to Trump on the phone without assurance that the US president would pledge fidelity to the One China policy. The call happened, and Trump did exactly what Xi wanted, ostensibly without extracting anything in return. If China now perceives Trump to be all bark and no bite, he will undoubtedly find it harder to secure concessions from China on trade and security issues.

Trump is not the only figure in his administration to stake out a bold position on China, and then retreat meekly. During his Senate confirmation process, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared that the US should ‘send China a clear signal’ by denying it access to its artificial islands in the South China Sea. China’s expansionism in the region, Tillerson asserted, was ‘akin to Russia’s taking Crimea’ from Ukraine—an implicit criticism of Obama for allowing the two developments.

But Tillerson, like his new boss, soon backed down. The US, he now claims, merely needs to be ‘capable’ of restricting China’s access to the South China Sea islands, in the event of a contingency.

And yet China’s behavior merits stronger US action now. The country is attempting to upend the status quo not only in the South China Sea, but also in the East China Sea and the Himalayas. It is working to create a large sphere of influence through its ‘one belt, one road’ initiative. And it is reengineering transboundary river flows. All of this is intended to achieve Chinese leaders’ goal of re-establishing the country’s mythical ‘Middle Kingdom’ status.

Flawed US policy has opened the way for these efforts, in part by helping to turn China into an export juggernaut. The problem isn’t that China has a strong economy, but rather that it abuses free-trade rules to subsidize its exports and impede imports, in order to shield domestic jobs and industry. Today, China sells $4 worth of goods to the US for every $1 in imports.

Just as the US inadvertently saddled the world with the jihadist scourge by training Afghan mujahideen—the anti-Soviet fighting force out of which al-Qaeda evolved—it unintentionally created a rules-violating monster by aiding China’s economic rise. And it sustained its China-friendly trade policy even as China’s abuses became bolder and more obvious.

It is ironic that China, which has quietly waged a trade war for years, has responded to Trump’s threats to impose punitive tariffs by warning—notably, at this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos—of the risks of protectionism and trade wars. But not everyone is falling for China’s story. A growing number of countries are recognizing that reciprocity should guide their relations with China.

Trump himself may yet challenge China. When he agreed to abide by the One China policy, he said that he had done so at Xi’s request, suggesting that his commitment to the policy should not be taken for granted.

Moreover, even without defying the One China policy, Trump has ample room to apply pressure. He could start by highlighting increasing Chinese repression in Tibet. He could also expand political, commercial, and military contacts with Taiwan, where the One China policy has had the paradoxical effect of deepening people’s sense of national identity and strengthening their determination to maintain autonomy.

In any case, as China continues to pursue its hegemonic ambitions, Trump will have little choice but to pivot toward Asia—substantively, not just rhetorically, as Obama did. To constrain China and bring stability to Asia, he will have to work closely with friends. His efforts to establish a personal connection with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—the first foreign leader he hosted at Mar-a-Lago, his ‘Winter White House’—and the high priority his administration is assigning to relations with India and South Korea are positive signs.

By failing to provide strategic heft to his Asia pivot, Obama left it unhinged. Trump has the opportunity—and the responsibility—to change this. If he doesn’t, China will continue to challenge US allies and interests, with serious potential consequences for Asia and the world.