In the past few days, the US president, Donald Trump, has turned his curious loathing for his country’s allies towards South Korea. He has complained that the nation free-rides on the US military presence on the peninsula and did not participate in the Iran war. He has also talked up his rapport with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. To date, Trump has focused his anti-ally ire on Western partners such as Canada and Denmark; this turn towards Asian allies is new.
It’s also risky. The US has fewer allies in East Asia than in Europe and faces higher stakes there. China is a far greater challenger to US power than Russia, which means that Asian allies are much more important than European ones. While Europe has the combined weight to resist Russian regional ambitions, Asian partners do not have the same power regarding China nor are they effectively co-ordinated through a multilateral body such as Nato.
More broadly, a decade into the Trump era, his entrenched loathing for US allies and comfort – even glee – while tearing down long-standing US relationships is still rather a mystery. There appears to be no strategic rationale. The reasoning seems nothing more than petulance.
Trump has long complained that allies take advantage of US security guarantees. His claims began as early as the 1980s when he was a New York businessman. He appears to see US alliances as protection rackets rather than embodiments of international liberal solidarity. Hence his constant refrain that allies “rip off” the US and his demand for cash payments – he says that he has just asked South Korea for $10bn (€8.6bn).
The US president has, to be fair, identified a genuine issue. Many allies, especially in Europe, underspent on defence after the Cold War (a complaint also raised by American secretaries of defence for the past three decades). Perhaps a blunt force such as Trump was necessary to compel change – Europe, for example, has the wealth and industrial base to fully support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
But South Korea’s defence spending is higher than most US allies: 2.6 per cent of GDP and trending upwards. It has a large army to defend itself against its northern neighbours and a modern, if small, air force and navy. Most of its American assistance is logistics, intelligence and command-and-control. And the East Asian nation does pay. The terms of the agreement that allows the US to have a presence in South Korea means that Seoul gives about $1bn (€860m) annually – a number that has been rising for years.
Trump’s complaints miss the obvious value of US alliances. In South Korea, the pact gives the US access to bases on the peninsula where the Americans can do mostly what they want. The Iran war has illustrated the importance of such friendly bases. After Iran bombed US sustainment sites in the Gulf early in the war, American ships could no longer use the sites and are now accruing a backlog of maintenance needs. Conditions on some ships have become so bad that crew members’ families have complained to Congress.
This lesson applies more broadly to US partnerships elsewhere. Canada maintains early-warning radar for North America to detect missile launches across the Arctic. Okinawa in Japan houses a huge American presence without which the US cannot contest rising Chinese naval power.
The bigger takeaway from all this is an unmoored US grand strategy. Since 1940, the US broadly pursued an internationalist posture of alignment with fellow liberal democracies against the world’s various tyrannies. Strains were always present but the notion that the US would defect to the other side was never entertained. Yet today, Trump seemingly prefers North Korea to South; Russia to Ukraine.
If Trump were not so chaotic and undisciplined, this would be a revolution in US foreign policy. But it probably is not. Although American administrations are required to produce a formal statement of their national security strategy – and the White House released one last year – it has been a useless guide to Trump’s actions. Since its release last December, US foreign-policy behaviour has rarely conformed to it. While it speaks of restraint and caution, Trump has recklessly used force.
What “strategy” there is appears to turn on Trump’s pique. Rather than drop both literal and verbal bombs, the US president should take note from his predecessors: alliances are a force multiplier. The US is lilting and Trump has neither the discipline nor desire to steady the ship.
Robert E Kelly is a professor of political science at Pusan National University.
