Much of the speculation about the implications of a Trump presidency for Asia suggest at least some degree of US retrenchment from the region. Former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans captured that pervasive sense of unease in The Strategist. Australia ‘could no longer take coherent, smart American leadership for granted’, he argued. We should ‘assign much higher priority to building closer trade and security ties with Japan, South Korea and India, and especially Indonesia our huge near-neighbour.’

But how much can Australia realistically expect of Indonesia right now? With the uncertainties posed by the election of Donald Trump and Beijing’s divide et empera strategy with ASEAN states on the South China Sea proving increasingly effective, rarely has there been a time where Indonesia’s leadership in Southeast Asia has been so critical to managing tensions and the underlying flux in the regional distribution of power.

The problem is that Indonesia’s enduring de facto leadership of ASEAN, critical to the organisation’s ability to forge a consensus on South China Sea issues and moderate Chinese influence, appears to be on the wane.

More broadly, some of the core principles of Indonesia’s foreign policy seem to have weakened under the Jokowi government. Diplomacy is now more concentrated on Indonesia’s economic development and infrastructure priorities, and as a result, it’s more transactional in nature. Less obvious is Indonesia’s strong normative leadership and activism in Southeast Asia, a characteristic of the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono presidency.

There’s no doubt the tensions surrounding China’s expansive South China Sea claims present a pressing policy dilemma for Indonesia. China’s intrusions into Indonesia’s territorial waters around the Natuna islands are an obvious threat to national security, just as they are to regional stability. And that all takes place amidst the broader challenge for Indonesia’s bilateral relationship with China—preserving a harmonious relationship that will continue to facilitate significant Chinese FDI and trade flows.

As a non-claimant state and honest broker in Southeast Asia’s maritime territorial disputes with China, Indonesia’s government had previously been circumspect about those confrontations. But the last two incidents in particular, where a China Coast Guard vessel rammed a Chinese fishing vessel to free it from being detained by Indonesia authorities in March and where an Indonesian Naval Corvette fired warning shots in the arrest of an illegal Chinese fishing vessel in June, resulted in a public backlash against Beijing.

Although, the Indonesian government seems determined to defend its maritime sovereignty against Chinese incursions, the question is whether the Jokowi administration will seek a bilateral modus vivendi with China over its Natuna waters for the sake of preserving the vital trade and investment relationship, and in doing so, neglect its larger leadership obligations in ASEAN.

Such concerns are shared by Indonesia’s foreign policy community. In July, a number of Indonesia’s prominent foreign policy intellectuals, journalists and practitioners put their names to a ‘Statement on the South China Sea ruling’. It was an expression of concern in response to the arbitral tribunal’s ruling on the Philippines’ legal complaints against China. The statement referred to ‘ASEAN’s Dimming Lights’ and its ‘growing marginalisation in managing the tension in the South China Sea.’

The signatories’ concerns about Indonesia’s lack of leadership on the South China Sea issue within ASEAN were made abundantly clear:

‘An independent and active foreign policy does not give Indonesia a free pass to watch a strategic turmoil unfolding in its environment from the sidelines. In fact, the active component in our bebas-aktif doctrine requires us to take the leadership mantle and contribute to regional peace.’

The statement can be understood as the manifestation of frustrations with Indonesia’s anodyne 130-word official response which one signatory described as ‘bland’.

Since ASEAN’s founding in the early years of the New Order regime, Indonesia has viewed its national resilience (ketahanan nasional) as inextricably linked to the stability and autonomy of Southeast Asia. Indonesia’s foreign policy elites had conceived of ASEAN as the soko guru (cornerstone) of Indonesia’s foreign policy. In contrast to previous governments, however, Indonesia’s current political leadership appears to place less emphasis on Indonesia’s traditional conception of the regional order and Indonesia’s leadership in it. It’s increasingly obvious that without Indonesia’s strong leadership in ASEAN, China can successfully co-opt smaller ‘client states’ Laos and Cambodia through economic leverage to ensure South China Sea concerns are downplayed in ASEAN meetings. In Indonesia itself, meanwhile, links between cabinet-level politicians and Chinese business interests haven’t escaped scrutiny.

To complicate things further, the Widodo-led government is preoccupied with worrying domestic political instability. Recent violence perpetrated by Islamists is made far more dangerous by its conflation with higher-level machinations among Jakarta’s political elites ahead of the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial and 2019 presidential elections. With ‘coup’ rumours swirling, or at least suspicions that protestors might attempt to oust the president, the Jokowi government has good reason to be concerned about national cohesion.

Faced with the prospect of a diminution of US strategic primacy in Asia, it’s natural Australia would turn to Indonesia as a fellow middle power with commonalities in strategic outlook, as Evans suggests. But given Indonesia’s high stakes domestic politics and apparent disinterest in reclaiming ASEAN’s leadership mantle, Australia would do well not to expect too much of its near neighbour.

The future of US cybersecurity policy remains uncertain as the Trump administration begins to take shape. On Friday Trump named Michael Flynn, previous director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as his national security advisor in the White House. The retired Lieutenant General has strong views on bolstering US offensive cyber capabilities and has been described as a ‘cybersecurity hawk’. Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper handed in his resignation last week, effective from 20 January 2017, after six years in charge of the 17 different agencies that make up the US Intelligence Community. His intention to call it quits at the end of President Obama’s term was long expected but the announcement represents another significant opportunity for the president-elect to shape US posture in intelligence and cyber spheres. Concerns have also been raised by cyber policy and tech professionals in light of Trump’s campaign rhetoric foreshadowing increased barriers to digital trade.

Fortunately, US tech and policy development appears to have strong momentum. This week, Elon Musk proposed a network of satellites to provide global internet access and Microsoft announced a doubled investment in quantum computing research. The US is taking rapid steps to keep abreast of such changes. For example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology recently released a new cybersecurity framework for small businesses providing SMEs a step-by-step guide to protecting themselves online. The Federal Trade Commission has also just published a report on the ‘Sharing Economy’ of app-based services such as Airbnb and Uber.

Privacy concerns have prompted Facebook to stop collecting WhatsApp user data from its European customers. Last month 28 European data collection authorities sent an open letter to WhatsApp’s CEO urging the company to pause the flow of user information to its parent company. Germany has already ordered that WhatsApp cease the data flow, which Facebook was ostensibly collecting for marketing and advertising purposes, and the UK, France and Italy are conducting their own investigations. European regulators noted ‘serious concerns’ in their open letter over those changes to WhatsApp’s Terms of Service, highlighting its contradiction with previous public statements that affirmed no data would be shared between the two companies.

Google has also had a run-in with European regulators after they were accused of using the Android operating system to ‘crush rivals’ by blocking them in online search advertising. The European Commission has been investigating Google for six years after complaints from competitors, and CEO Sandar Pichai met last Friday with the EU’s Competition Commissioner and the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society to discuss the problem after the company issued a formal rejection of the European’s claims earlier this month.

Things are looking more positive between Chinese regulators and industry with two of the country’s biggest tech companies, Alibaba and Tencent, publically stating their support for China’s controversial new Cyber Security Law. Speaking at the 3rd World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Alibaba’s Vice President noted that the company is working with law enforcement agencies to monitor content, and a Tencent executive stated that company has removed 80,000 videos from its site this year. President Xi also addressed the conference, calling for improved cooperation between states on internet governance and respect for cyber sovereignty. Both public and private sector leaders at the conference emphasised the security risks of cyber terrorism and the cited proliferation of false news during the US election as justification for tighter national and international control over the internet.

Security concerns over Chinese company Lenovo have surfaced after the ABC revealed that the Australian National University’s National Computational Infrastructure is planning to procure software and hardware from the company. ANU and Lenovo have both defended the plans, noting that the US government has approved Lenovo’s US acquisitions and the US Department of Defense has no restrictions on Lenovo products. The National Computational Infrastructure describes itself as ‘home to the Southern Hemisphere’s most highly-integrated supercomputer.’

And finally, a survey of 2,000 people in the US has found that 40% would prefer to skip sex for a year if it meant their personal information was protected from hackers. While this seems a bit surprising, the finding that 41% would give up their favourite food for a month rather than reset all their account passwords indicates that laziness is probably equal to privacy concerns in the driving force behind American attitudes to cybersecurity.

It was hard to overstate the shock in Washington and here in New York the day after the US election. But now it’s time for sober analysis of Trump’s possible foreign and defence policy, and it’s difficult to know where to begin. While Trump has made statements anathema to the foreign and defence policy establishment, he has offered little in the way of detailed policy. He is also known to have said privately—and his advisers have assured many—that his ideas are more ‘guideposts’ than blueprints.

So it’s unclear what his foreign and defence policy will look like. Given his business background, many issues may well be negotiable, as we are already seeing on healthcare reform. Trump comes from the deal-making world of putting forth far-reaching ambit claims as an opening position, then moving closer to the middle. This trait could account for some of his more radical campaign pronouncements, such as some of his immigration proposals. He could also do this as President, which would be a profound departure from the precisely-worded positions of traditional foreign policy. A compounding variable is the importance of face to this President-elect. The world will need to recalibrate how to conduct affairs of state with the US.

Still, some of Trump’s ideas are more baked in than others, including on trade and alliances. He’s long held a transactional view of alliances and believed the US pays too much for allies’ security—a view that resonated with his supporters (and even President Obama had complained about freeriding). Allies will almost certainly be expected to contribute more to their own and regional security. President Trump will likely have a narrower conception of America’s national interest than his predecessors.

While Trump has proven it possible to win an election being resolutely off piste and with a small group of advisers, it’s harder to govern that way: many more people need to be drawn in to craft an agenda and run the government. The fact his candidacy was so light on detail means his appointments are even more consequential than usual. But many Republican foreign policy experts disavowed Trump in open letters earlier this year. There is, for instance, a lack of senior Asia hands among the current Trump cohort who could give the region a steady policy focus without distraction from domestic, Middle Eastern and European imperatives.

A few may now step forward to serve, often out of a desire to keep the country on an even keel. But with a hastily-assembled team fleshing out detail on the fly and choosing between often contradictory positions, the world should prepare for policy lurches rather than steady policy roll out.

There are some promising initial signs, including reassuring calls to Tokyo, Seoul, Canberra and London, and President Obama’s description of the President elect’s interest in sustaining ‘core strategic relationships’, including a commitment to NATO. A number of Republicans rallying around Trump will stress the enduring benefits of alliances in today’s complex security environment: how they amplify US power projection, deter conflict and restrain allies from destabilizing postures. Some will also make the economic case for global engagement to this businessman-President elect: that it is cost effective for the US to maintain strong alliances and a forward presence, rather than reinsert into theatres and rebuild relationships in a crisis.

But US allies are already reassessing their security postures. This scrutiny has laid bare the fact that some US security guarantees were becoming less structurally credible than during the Cold War, and credibility has strained further with Trump’s questioning of US alliance obligations. Wholesale weakening of America’s alliance system rebounds on all allies, because it undercuts stability, as other allies’ postures change and rivals are emboldened.

Each alliance will have its own trajectory in the face of a Trump Presidency, depending on whether Trump’s view of alliances evolves in office and his perception of each ally’s reliability, geostrategic importance and level of burden-sharing. It will also depend on the personal relationships he and his senior team forge: the fraying US–Philippine relationship under Duterte demonstrates the impact individuals can have on alliances.

At this stage, Australia seems relatively well-positioned with the incoming Administration. Trump didn’t question ANZUS during the campaign, and his team seems seem well-disposed towards Australia (though Trump has little business experience of Australia). Prime Minister Turnbull and the President-elect appear to have had a constructive businessman-to-businessman conversation, and discussed the importance of America’s ongoing engagement to Asia–Pacific stability.

But it’s ever more important for Australia to view ANZUS as a tool to further the national interest, not as an end in itself. Regional military modernisation and the shifting strategic environment mean Australia still needs the US: without America’s strategic protection and access to US intelligence and defence platforms and systems, Australia would need to spend a great deal more on defence. Canberra must ensure ANZUS serves Australia’s interests, including helping to maintain regional stability. That requires counseling Washington on remaining constructively engaged in the Asia–Pacific and finding pathways for China into the regional order.

It’s also vital for Australia to enmesh ANZUS more squarely within the burgeoning web of Asian linkages by strengthening relationships with other Asian nations, including Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and India.

Donald Trump’s election has ushered in an unstable period, as the world’s hitherto linchpin becomes less predictable and states recalibrate accordingly. It’s going to take a while for the shock to wear off.

Five years ago this week, Barack Obama launched the Pivot. Thus, on its fifth birthday, the Pivot expires. This is an epitaph.

The American people have decided and the Pivot is Trumped. Asia confronts Amexit: not a rebalance towards Asia but a lurch away. The Pivot was a work in progress because Asia has made so much progress. The Pivot’s achievements were partial and contested because Asia’s issues are so large. Looking at what Obama and Hillary Clinton were trying with the Pivot offers ways to consider what Trump will do to US policy in Asia—and to the regional settings of Australia’s alliance.

Go back five years to see the stakes. The US President stood in the Australian Parliament on 17 November 2011, delivering a speech marking ‘the 60th anniversary of our unbreakable alliance.’

Beyond alliance, Obama outlined ‘the larger purpose’ of his visit to the Asia–Pacific, to launch a ‘broader shift’ by the US: ‘After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia–Pacific region.’ The ‘new focus on this region,’ he said, reflected ‘a fundamental truth—the US has been, and always will be, a Pacific nation.’ Obama announced a ‘deliberate and strategic decision’ that America ‘will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future.’ The Pivot ambition was to make the 21st century a US-flavoured Pacific century, not just the century of Asia resurgent. Obama proclaimed it as responsibility and right.

The word ‘Pivot’ wasn’t in the speech. The label was launched the previous month in Hillary’s Foreign Policy article, ‘America’s Pacific Century’. The Secretary of State put it in her first sentence:  ‘As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States stands at a pivot point.’ In the 5,000 words that followed, ‘pivot’ was used twice more. The Pivot was born.

Hillary claimed creator rights. She saw Asia as pivotal and wanted the US at the heart of a great geo-political and geo-economic shift in world affairs.

Goodbye to that.

The tides that created the Pivot still rise. The headlines have taken an amazing turn, but the trendlines continue. Those trends will pound Trump. As the world’s centre of gravity—economic and military and even political—settles in Asia, the Pivot was a US claim to a large role in making the gravity. More than military might, the Pivot was about partnership, engagement, diplomacy, cooperation, values and norms. Pick how much of that The Donald will adopt.

The Pivot ambition was Robert Browning territory:

‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what’s a heaven for?’

The US grasped to shape the contours and course of an increasingly powerful Asia. How to manage relative decline yet reach to maintain relative dominance? No wonder the US military prefers Rebalance—much balancing needed!

The power shifts were dissected in the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends, issued 12 months after Obama’s Canberra speech. The Council pronounced the end of the US unilateral moment. The Megatrend prediction was the diffusion of power: ‘There will not be any hegemonic power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multipolar world.’

Networks and coalitions aren’t the language of the US’s 45th President.  Consider the Pivot’s three essentials and what Trump will do to them.

Pivot: stay Asia’s military guarantor and guardian for decades

The Navy is shifting from a 50/50 Pacific-Atlantic split to have 60% of forces in the Pacific by 2020; 60% of the Air Force will be in the Asia–Pacific by 2020. The departing Defence Secretary, Ashton Carter promised: ‘The Pentagon is operationalizing the military part of the rebalance to ensure that the US remains the primary provider of regional security for decades to come.’

The military machinery of Pivot/Rebalance should grind on. And Trump promises the US will maintain the world’s most powerful military. As an American Firster, though, Trump has no interest in being the ‘primary provider of regional security.’ He wants everyone else to pay more.

Pivot: write the economic and trade rules

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead. Trump threatens a 45% tariff on China as a currency manipulator. Trade war trumps trade rules.

Obama set the stakes dangerously high with his description of the TPP as the test of US will in his State of the Union Address:

‘China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region.  That would put our workers and businesses at a disadvantage.  Why would we let that happen?  We should write those rules.’

The economic importance of the TPP was overstated. But as an expression of US intent it became emblematic. Trump’s victory says the US isn’t interested in writing rules and its will-to-power in Asia wanes.

Pivot: make Asia’s diplomatic weather in partnership with Asia

The Trump weather forecast is for storms and unpredictable gusts.  Amexit won’t be full-blown withdrawal from Asia of the magnitude of Brexit from Europe. This is the Amexit of shrinking ambition and refusal to show up. Anger replaces imagination: can’t pay, don’t care. It’s the Amexit of a US no longer committed to write the rules and run the region, an America less interested in partnerships and building institutions to serve its values.

Trump does deals, not designs.

The 400 page epitaph is Kurt Campbell’s book, The Pivot. His Pivot prescription—‘the future of American statecraft in Asia’—was ‘bolstering traditional alliances, forging new partnerships, engaging regional institutions, diversifying military forces, defending democratic values, embracing economic statecraft.’

Goodbye to that.

It was announced late last week that Australia’s biggest data breach to date had affected donors to the Red Cross Blood Service. A back-up database of 550,000 donor records (including names, contact details and behavioural questions around general wellbeing and sexual activities) was uncovered by an unknown person scanning websites for vulnerabilities. The information was provided to Troy Hunt, a cyber security blogger and Microsoft regional director, who then passed the information onto cyber incident response team AusCERT. The Red Cross has notified everyone affected by the breach, and believes that all known copies of the database have been deleted and has also engaged IDCARE to provide counselling and assistance to anyone affected by the breach.

The UK released its new five year Cyber Security Strategy yesterday, confirming that it will spend £1.9 billion over five years, previously announced in November last year, to implement new or strengthened initiatives across three key areas: defend, deter and develop. The Strategy warns that the UK will  ‘take the fight to those who threaten us in cyberspace’, and re-identifies a range of opportunities and challenges facing the UK’s cyber security

China’s controversial new Cyber Security Law has reached its final stages of approval, with state media announcing that the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress would vote on the cybersecurity law this week after its third reading. This comes despite protests from foreign governments and businesses concerned about the requirement to store data in China and provide encryption keys to the Chinese government. The law will codify China’s extensive censorship regime and extends government control over key cyber security technologies. The Chinese government has stated that the law is required to protect the security of the state, but many of its provisions will also protect local technology firms and service providers from overseas competition.

Following last week’s DDoS attack on Dyn in the US, Singapore ISP StarHub was affected by two similar DDoS incidents on 22 and 24 October, where compromised devices were used to overwhelm the company’s domain name server. The company, which described the incident as ‘unprecedented in the scale, nature and complexity’,  has instituted a campaign of home visits by company technicians to update the security of customer devices. While the company hasn’t specifically blamed the Mirai botnet, its home visits will be changing default passwords and installing security patches and anti-malware software on customer devices such as webcams. John Ellis of Akamai told the Financial Times that the incident was probably not targeted at StarHub, but blowback from an incident targeted elsewhere that was routed through the company’s infrastructure.

Cyber security researchers from South Korea have reported an uptick in North Korean cyber espionage operations targeting defectors and human rights groups in South Korea. The surge in North Korean operations appears to have begun in August, immediately following the defection of senior diplomat Thae Yong-ho to the UK. The incidents also demonstrate a new North Korean technique of using Twitter to alert the hackers of compromised machines. North Korean hackers use spear phishing emails to trick users into installing malware Once installed, the malware beacons to the hackers via a Twitter account that the computer has been compromised, allowing the North Koreans to issue remote commands and exfiltrate the data they want. The North Koreans have also compromised popular defector chat rooms in order to monitor their communications. The researchers claim to have broken the encryption protecting the identity of the hacker’s IP address and pinged it to confirm that it’s located in Pyongyang.

And finally, in the same week that the FBI has announced that it’s again investigating emails linked to Hillary Clinton’s private server, it’s also emerged that the US domestic intelligence agency may be examining a ‘secret server’ owned by Donald Trump. Slate has interviewed a group of academics in the US who analysed the traffic between a Trump server in Manhattan and a Russian server. Their analysis noted that the activity aligned with office hours in Moscow and New York, that the very large server carries only a very small amount of traffic, and is set up to only receive messages from a limited range of IP addresses, indicating an attempt to shield the communications from scrutiny. Separately, Mother Jones has reported that the FBI has received information contending that the Russian government has tried to co-opt and assist Trump. The metadata analysis doesn’t provide a smoking gun, but the academics believe it strongly suggests that Trump is covertly communicating with the Kremlin.  The Trump campaign has denied any links to Russia, and other possibilities could provide a completely reasonable cause for the activity, including errant spam or a misdirected email trying to reach its destination, have been raised by analysts.