It's Way Too Complicated! Trump 2.0 and Southeast Asia

Abstract

The return of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States in 2025 has heightened strategic calculations across Southeast Asia. His approach to international relations—marked by a transactional logic, personalistic leadership style, and a general disdain for the rules-based international order (RBIO)—presents both immediate and long-term challenges to the region's security architecture, economic dynamism and diplomatic engagements. Unlike his predecessors that sought to embed Southeast Asia within a broader Indo-Pacific strategy premised on “ironclad commitment” or deeper engagement based on mutual interests, the Trump administration has prioritized short-term reciprocity over enduring relationships. This shift underscores the region's growing imperative to pursue strategic autonomy, recalibrate traditional alignments, and invest in regional mechanisms as buffers against the turbulence that Trump 2. has unleashed to the world.

Trump's foreign policy orientation represents a break from upholding the RBIO that underpinned American strategic engagement since the Cold War. His preference for bilateralism over multilateralism, and for economic coercion over diplomacy mostly based on normative values, reflects an overarching commitment to reasserting US primacy through transactional bargaining. In the context of Southeast Asia, this mode of diplomacy significantly alters the strategic calculus of regional states, many of whom have long relied on the consistency and predictability of US commitments to deter aggression and preserve a rules-based regional order (Tan 2024).

One of the most salient implications of Trump's foreign policy is observed in US–Philippines relations. Despite the long history of the alliance, the Trump administration's prior term revealed an inclination to instrumentalize security partnerships. Episodes such as the temporary suspension of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in 2020 highlighted the fragility of bilateral commitments when subordinated to perceived asymmetries in cost–benefit terms. For Manila, the return of Trump renews concerns regarding the reliability of security assurances, particularly in scenarios where Philippine interests may not align with immediate American strategic calculations. Initial indications seem to assuage any worst case conditions. But in such a context, excessive dependence on the alliance could generate strategic liabilities, especially given the administration's erratic signaling and prioritization of short-term leverage over institutional continuity (Misalucha and Amador 2016).

The South China Sea disputes further underscores the limitations of a transactional US policy in Southeast Asia. While Trump's first administration pursued a confrontational posture toward Beijing, including increased freedom of navigation operations and rhetorical support for Southeast Asian maritime claimants, these actions often lacked the institutional follow-through necessary to reassure regional states. The administration's withdrawal from multilateral economic initiatives such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its irregular engagement with ASEAN-led forums exacerbated perceptions of strategic incoherence. Consequently, while some regional actors—particularly Vietnam and the Philippines—welcomed a more assertive US position on Chinese expansionism, they simultaneously questioned Washington's willingness to sustain long-term commitments in the face of rising costs or domestic political shifts (Ibarra 2024).

Compounding these concerns is the Trump administration's general disdain for multilateralism, which poses a direct challenge to ASEAN centrality. For decades, ASEAN has served as the institutional anchor for regional cooperation and conflict management in Southeast Asia. Its inclusive, consensus-based approach to security has provided smaller states with a platform to collectively engage larger powers. Trump's open skepticism of such institutions, coupled with his administration's inconsistent participation in ASEAN summits and related forums, threatens to marginalize the organization's role in shaping regional security dynamics. “Bilateralization” of US engagement poses further risks against already a fraying ASEAN centrality, weakening its normative influence, and reinforcing power asymmetries that favor extra-regional actors with greater coercive capabilities (Kraft 2017).

In response to this environment of strategic uncertainty, Southeast Asian states have increasingly turned toward hedging and diversification strategies. Rather than relying exclusively on the United States, regional actors have sought to broaden their diplomatic and security partnerships. Countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam have expanded defense ties with Japan, India, Australia, and the European Union, signaling a preference for a multipolar order that allows for flexibility and resilience. These developments suggest that strategic autonomy is no longer a normative aspiration but a pragmatic necessity. By cultivating a wider array of partnerships, Southeast Asian states aim to mitigate the risks of great power volatility while preserving policy space to navigate contested issues such as maritime security, economic coercion, and technological dependence.

This evolving regional posture also entails a reconceptualization of Southeast Asia's strategic environment. Trump's foreign policy illustrates the growing difficulty of anchoring regional security to the commitments of a single great power, particularly one whose domestic politics and leadership style generate pronounced external uncertainties. The expectation that the United States will act as a consistent provider of regional public goods—be it security guarantees, economic access, or diplomatic mediation—has been significantly weakened. As a result, regional states are compelled to deepen intra-ASEAN cooperation, reinforce confidence-building measures, and promote regional norms that insulate Southeast Asia from the centrifugal forces of great power competition.

In this issue of APP, we are pleased to host a Special Issue about the discrepancy between public policies and the actual practice on a wide array of environmental issues in Asia. This was masterfully conceptualized and edited by Natalie Wong who is a leading Asian scholar on public policy and environmental governance. The original articles focusing on specific case studies in China, India, Indonesia, and Taiwan also benefited from a research workshop organized by the Department of Public Administration from the National Chengchi University. APP is grateful to their support as well as the anonymous master reviewer who skillfully ensured the quality and integrity of the papers. Apart from these original articles, APP is also featuring three other research articles on Malaysian party politics, South Korean foreign aid policy, and political behavior of Thai legislators. We hope our readers will appreciate the depth and breadth of the research behind these articles.