Trump and the future of U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia

Amidst heightened international interest in United States foreign policy under Trump, Yale professor and diplomat-in-residence Charles Hill met with Cuong Nguyen, First Secretary of the Vietnam Mission, Professor Bill Frasure (Connecticut College), and Professor Erik Harms (Yale Anthropology Department and the Council on SEAS) on December 16 to discuss President-elect Trump and the future of United States policy toward Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The meeting was organized and hosted by Quang Van, Senior Lector in Vietnamese Language Studies (Yale), and facilitated by Professor Harms.

Mr. Nguyen opened the meeting by asking, “We know the election of Donald Trump is very important to United States domestic politics and to foreign countries. We see a lot of things that will maybe change in the relationship between the United States and foreign countries, especially in Southeast Asia, and we would much appreciate, Professor Hill, if you could tell us something about how you assess the potential foreign policies of the U.S. administration and the Trump presidency as it impacts the region of Asia and Southeast Asia?”

Professor Hill said that to frame the discussion, it was important to understand “that this is a time of enormous change. Usually in American politics, when you hear the word change, it seems to be thought of as a change for the better. In worldwide terms, I think we’re now on the edge of change for the worst.”

He continued to discuss the “international structure of relations between nations…that has been particularly advanced since the middle of the twentieth century.” This structure of relations, which “involves the state as the fundamental unit of world affairs, international laws, and the doctrine of equality of states…has been deteriorating since the end of the Cold War.” He said specifically that over the last eight years the United States has been pulling back from involvement in the world, but the level to which they have remained engaged has “meant that we are involved many ways, even militarily, but we never do enough to make a difference. This pseudo-isolationism will take on another dimension under the Trump administration.” He pointed to certain actions that Trump has already taken, such as calling the leader of Taiwan, as meant to send a signal to the international community that “there is going to be something different coming out of Washington.”

But Professor Hill cautioned against making definitive claims as to what Trump’s foreign policy would be. President-elect Trump, Hill said, does not know his foreign policy yet. “It is a certainty to me that there will be people who drop off, are pushed out, resign, trying to shape this policy that is not in existence, it is in a very developmental stage. It is likely to be highly contentious, highly argumentative, politically very risky, because there is no certainty to it either in a continuation of previous American policies or in some ideology or strategy that can be understood because it is written on a document. It’s just not there yet.”

He continued to talk about the international landscape of “disarray and disorientation” into which Trump’s foreign policy will be inserted. The Middle East is in a set of civil wars, Putin’s Russia is taking on an entirely new concept of interventionism, and most interestingly, “China believes that the world order we are now in, which goes back 200 years, is over – not totally over, it’ll stay around for a few years, but it is fading, and China is now moving itself for what is to come in this new world order…Every way that the established system is designed to function, Chinese scholars tell us that they are opposed to it and will leave it, including being a state. I have had a couple involvements that have told me that China is not a state. They have told me that international law does not matter.”

After this extraordinary pronouncement, Hill returned to the questions of how Vietnam and Southeast Asia would be affected by this new American administration. “This is a highly volatile situation,” he said, “And it’s particularly volatile when the United States is coming into an administration that is unpredictable.” He said that although he believes Trump does not want a war with anybody, his “personal propensity to do things that are very likely to cause another country to retaliate” could easily lead to an escalating situation. He also noted that the U.N.’s nuclear nonproliferation treaty is deteriorating. He pushed Mr. Nguyen to urge Vietnam to take a more active role in “building solidarity among the maritime nations of Asia, so they in terms of economic and political influence are not simply a collection, but at some level a totality of a point of view about what should be done in the world to come.” He also counseled Mr. Nguyen that Vietnam should “dedicate itself to maintaining the established international order, particularly in the crucial point of being a state.”

The conversation then turned to the question of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and whether America under Trump would maintain that agreement. Hill said that when the United States inevitably backs out of TPP, he expects China to jump in. Professor Frasure added that, after his involvement in preparation for TPP in Vietnam, he hoped that somebody in the United States administration would “look at [TPP] in the broader context, and not see it as just a bad trade deal, but look at the strategic implications behind it.” He urged Vietnam to “take the initiative in approaching the U.S., and make it clear to the U.S. that Vietnam wants some kind of a deal…letting this administration know, in effect, you want to make deals? Let’s make deals.”

Mr. Nguyen said, “We see that the TPP has been rejected by President-Elect Trump, and now we are really concerned with what the U.S. government under President Trump will do with the TPP when he puts an end to TPP, or when he requests to renegotiate some of it.”

Written by Olivia Paschal, Yale College Class of 2018.