Ceylon Today Editorial

Trump worries Asian-Pacific Leaders

17 November 2016

President Maithripala Sirisena and Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe in addition to Sri Lanka's Defence establishment and fiscal/monetary planners will hang on to every word spoken between US President–elect Donald Trump and Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe immediately after Abe flies in to New York shortly after you read this commentary.

Abe could be as worried a man as India's Narendra Modi is and more worried about Trump's campaign rhetoric about possible scaling down of US commitments in the Asia/Pacific as well as rethinking about the Trade and investment oriented Trans-Pacific agreements. Sri Lanka's Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake in fact significantly singled out pursuing US-Lanka Trans-Pacific negotiations as a focal point in his Budget speech in Parliament last week.

Besides India, Japan and Sri Lanka, other Asia-Pacific nations, who were recently invited to the G7 meet in Tokyo where Obama showed every sign of a post-Obama continuation of the US Pivot to Asia, the totally unexpected Trump presidency has infused sudden military/defence and economic fears amongst all of the US friends in this region. The Japanese Premier was shaken badly enough to almost immediately after Trump's election seek a face-to-face talk with Trump on these vital issues to which Trump readily agreed.

China, Russia and Pakistan as Syria will also be keenly following the talks in New York. Russian strategies have split US forces and focus between the NATO region and the Asia-Pacific theatre, thus tending to ensure US forces cannot be concentrated to act in any one given crisis area.

Trump will need to alter his worldview to a more rational one if only because the entire security and prosperity of the Asian-Pacific nations will also ensure US defence and economic stability. One wrong move by Trump, can plunge the entire Asia-Pacific region into abysmal chaos, and undo the relationships nurtured by Obama with Asian and Pacific leaders. This is why Sri Lanka under Sirisena will also share in global misgivings about Trump's Asia-Pacific policies. Abe will be in power until 2021. Modi will be in power until 2019 and Sirisena will be in power until 2020. And they will all have to deal with a man at the White House who seems lacking in a wider worldview.

Modi leads the world's largest democracy. Abe heads the world's third-largest economy and plays host to an overwhelming number of US forces in the Pacific. As a foil for anti-US Chinese ambitions, Trump had better see the light and shed his blinkers in talks with Abe. Not only has Abe upped Japan's defence spending enormously but Abe made it a point to invite Sri Lanka's President Sirisena to the G7...and by describing him as the new Voice of Asia, the Japanese Premier was in fact emphasizing the increased role that Sri Lanka under Sirisena had begun to play in the Indian Ocean-Pacific military/economic nexus led by the US. Trump's stated general political philosophy does not gel with any of this.

The evolving military security threat faced by Japan in the region and by extension the threat to the US too, is amply underscored by the fact that Abe has pumped billions of dollars into putting 130 war ships out to sea and strengthening its air deterrent machine. It's all because of the depth of the Japanese commitment to the maritime security architecture necessitated by the Japan–US partnership. On 26 April last year, François Hollande launched an Asia-wide initiative in an attempt to halt declining trade figures and improve its overall leverage with the region. France is helping Sri Lanka immeasurably to regain her lost GSP+ exports status.

Nuclear powered France and Canberra have now forged a close military-trade partnership...the two seem to inevitably go together in global affairs today. All this seems to be leading to a closer knit link between France and Australia and Japan...but can they sustain a mammoth military defence architecture without a substantial US involvement? This underscores the huge difference a Rajapaksa regime would have on the geopolitics of the region should a negative Trump policy need a helping hand in Colombo for China and Russia.

Let's remember that Hollande, is committed to the Quadrilateral Defence Coordination Group that includes the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and which coordinates maritime security efforts in the Pacific...and by extension, the Indian Ocean domain.

France is also developing close ties with India, Japan, South Korea and South East Asian countries, especially Sri Lanka, which have all received French ministerial visits recently. Trump has to reckon with all of these facts when he sits down for talks with Abe tomorrow...remembering that there's a growing new joint European Union policy towards the Asia-Pacific related to developments in the South China Sea. All this could encourage Trump's pull-back thinking and foster a wider French-Japan-India-Australia role in the Asia-Pacific.