An unreliable ally in the West, Donald Trump is now signalling that the US is happy to abandon its friends in Asia with the suspension of a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan after his visit to China’s leader Xi Jinping.
The US president is taking on his country’s policy of “strategic ambiguity” over the delicate standing of Taiwan, which China claims as its own, by tilting towards Beijing.
"Right now we're doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury – which we have plenty," US Navy secretary Hung Cao said in a Senate hearing on Thursday.
"We're just making sure we have everything, but then the foreign military sales will continue when the administration deems necessary," he added, referring to the US-Israeli war against Iran, which has absorbed vast stockpiles of American munitions and achieved none of its stated aims.
Trump had intense talks with Xi about Taiwan when he visited the Chinese leader on his first trip to China since 2017.
Following a pattern that he has established in his behaviour following meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, he appears to have taken the side of a rival power that is also an enemy of the US’s longstanding allies.
Speaking to Fox News after his two-day visit to Beijing, Trump suggested that enabling the defence of Taiwan and defending its democracy was no longer a priority.
“I will say this: I'm not looking to have somebody go independent. And, you know, we're supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I'm not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down," he said.
In Asia and Australasia, this attitude has caused quiet consternation, with Washington’s traditional friends seeking backroom reassurances from the Trump administration that he is not shifting away from the US’s well-established defence commitments.
There is fear he may abandon long-held strategic policies in the same way that he has ditched the principles that hold Nato together as a defensive alliance on the other side of the world.
China covets Taiwan. It also lays claim to the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands. It is building man-made islands to expand its claims to territorial waters in the South China Sea and has a highly effective long-term strategy to expand its imperial reach across the world through trade, exploitation of minerals and control of transport nodes, from Mozambique to Macau.
Past US administrations have said that they were shifting their priorities to Asia and the wider Pacific to offset and contain Chinese ambitions.
Taiwan had agreed to buy Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 interceptor missiles and Nasm anti-aircraft weapons from the US. The agreed sales were in response to increased Chinese military activity, which included navy and jet fighter incursions close to Taiwan over the last two years.
Regional powers will be looking at Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, part of the Nato member Denmark, his threats towards Canada, another Nato member, and his support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by stopping all military aid to Kyiv.
They will rightly worry they are next to be abandoned to Trump’s strategic desire to carve the world into spheres of influence – in which the US dominates the western hemisphere, Russia presides over central Europe and part of Asia and China is left to bestride the rest.
But in apparently bending the knee to Xi, Trump is also revealing a new level of strategic weakness.
The US, alongside Israel, has failed to successfully project its military power on Iran, which has survived an aerial onslaught.
Tehran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to shipping in response to the US’s bombardment. Up to 85 per cent of Asia’s crude oil is exported through this choke point, and Trump has been blamed for the economic fallout from his Middle East military adventure.
Military failure has reinforced the understanding, already now part of Europe’s strategic plans, that Trump’s American military power is further inhibited by his inability to do joined-up thinking.
