US Elections & Global Security Calculus

Even as the US Democratic Party works to secure a formal nomination for Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden’s decision to bow out of the electoral process, the Republican National Convention earlier this month put its stamp on former president Donald Trump’s candidacy for the White House. Trump also announced the junior senator from Ohio since 2023, J.D. Vance, as his running mate. Vance had been a strong critic of Trump in the past, calling him “America’s Hitler” and a “moral disaster.” He had been categorical in his public assessment of Trump as a “total fraud” who didn’t care about regular people and had even called him “reprehensible.” But that was then. After the assassination attempt against Trump, Vance placed the blame directly on Biden and had tweeted: “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that president Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to president Trump’s attempted assassination.” At the convention, he was all praises for Trump, arguing that Trump had “given everything he has to fight for his country” and that “he didn’t need politics but the country needed him.” More strikingly, he also laid out a vision of a Trump-Vance foreign policy that is striking in the way it positions the Republican external engagement far away from the traditional centre ground of American politics. Both Trump and Vance have articulated a foreign policy landscape that is causing ripples across the world. The most significant aspect of a Trump-Vance foreign policy is likely to be an even closer scrutiny of China. The duo has repeatedly underlined, with some justification, that policies pursued by Washington over the past few decades have resulted in the US market being “flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labour,” and in the decades to come, inflows of “deadly Chinese fentanyl” could worsen. In his four years in office, Trump succeeded in re-configuring the contours of American policy toward Beijing despite his occasional displays of a liking for China’s leader Xi Jinping. It resulted in a tech and trade war with China, but more significantly forced the world to recognize the costs of allowing China to grow at the expense of others. A broader Western re-appraisal followed, leading to a rapid shift in the global consensus. Trump’s successor Joe Biden also agreed with the Trump assessment, and, after initial criticism, ended up not only keeping but expanding the US tariffs placed on a range of Chinese goods. For the Biden administration, the centrality of China in the US foreign policy matrix cannot be overestimated, though the security architecture it has tried to create is in partnership with allies. Yet, Trump remains relentless in his targeting of China, suggesting in one of his recent interviews that he would not be averse to raising tariffs to around 50% on Chinese products as this would encourage American companies to shift from China and manufacture in the US. With Trump appearing to inch closer to the White House, Beijing’s concerns are evident and it has been underlining that it remains “opposed to making China an issue in US elections.” But tensions in Trump’s China policy are also evident. Where Biden has been steadfast in his support for Taiwan, Trump has argued that Taiwan “should pay [the US] for defence,” and has also suggested that the US would struggle to defend the island because of distance, saying “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China.” At the same time, Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential candidate has suggested that the supply of weapons to Ukraine by the US could prevent its ability to support Taiwan in the event of an attack by China. The broader logic of the Trump-Vance position flows from the argument that ending the war in Ukraine is important in order for the US to focus its energies on China, which is the real threat. Vance has been very critical of US aid to Ukraine and has pushed for negotiations with Russia, going to the extent of saying that “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” Both Trump and Vance have been targeting Europe for not spending enough on defence. At the convention, Vance couldn’t have been clearer: “Together, we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.” This transactional approach to partnerships is going to drive the Trump-Vance foreign policy in ways that remain as unpredictable as disconcerting to some. In his speech, Vance tried to clarify that he did not believe the US should pull out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) or “abandon Europe,” but that Washington should “pivot” toward Asia. “The United States has to focus more on East Asia,” he said. “That is going to be the future of American foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact.” There is a lot of merit in this assessment, but it also requires a more coherent and holistic approach than what is on offer at the moment from the Trump-Vance ticket.