There is growing concern in Tokyo and Seoul that US President Donald Trump’s approach to Ukraine and China is part of an overall transactional foreign policy that could eventually upset long-standing alliance structures in northeast Asia.
The Trump administration’s recent 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine turned out to be a rewrite of pre-existing, maximalist demands laid out by the Kremlin. Even as a more watered-down version of the plan was eventually put forth, and talks are ongoing, the Trump administration has repeatedly signaled willingness to turn its back on Ukraine.
On China, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Trump intends to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as many as four times over the course of 2026, including a state visit to Beijing in April and a reciprocal visit to the US later in the year. Bessent said the meetings would give the bilateral relationship “great stability,” as Trump attempts to smooth ties with Xi after launching a bruising trade war.
Officially, Seoul and Tokyo, Washington’s two closest allies in Asia, remain silent. However, many observers in Japan and South Korea interpret Washington’s foreign policy as Trump siding with a dictator attempting to subjugate a smaller neighbor in Europe. This, in turn, deepens concerns that the same thing could happen with China in the Pacific, with Taiwan the obvious target.
A question of US reliability
“The betrayal of Ukraine by Trump looms large over Asia and America’s allies in the region, who are now questioning the reliability of their alliances with the US,” said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at the Tokyo branch of Temple University.
“Japan and Korea are looking at Trump cozying up to authoritarian dictators in Russia, China and North Korea while he is stiffing them on trade and wondering what will happen in the event of a Taiwan contingency,” he told DW.
Kingston added that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was likely “disappointed” that Trump did not immediately come to her support during a recent row with Beijing.
During her first parliamentary address as PM in the Diet, in response to a question from a lawmaker, Takaichi said that any Chinese armed intervention against Taiwan would be an “existential threat” to Japan that could require a response from Japan’s self-defense forces.
Beijing reacted angrily, demanding that Tokyo stay out of China’s “internal affairs,” and implementing several measures, including telling Chinese not to travel to Japan, delaying the release of Japanese films and cancelling cultural events and exchanges.
Takaichi declined to withdraw her comments, but may have felt less than reassured when the US president reportedly told her in a phone call on November 24 that she should not “provoke” Beijing.
What do Japan and South Korea fear from Trump and China?
“After the successes of Trump’s recent visit to Tokyo and Takaichi committing to investment in the US, I think she would have expected something more,” Kingston said. “She would have wanted Trump to come out and talk about Japan being ‘cornerstone of peace’ in the region and the strength of the alliance.”
“Telling her not to ‘provoke’ China was not the robust pronouncement she would have hoped for,” he added.
“The worry now in Japan is the prospect of the US and China creating a ‘G-2’ that will simply go right over the heads of Japan and show how Tokyo is a declining influence,” he said. “And South Korea will have the same worries.”
Meanwhile, Japan capitulated to Trump’s demands to invest $550 billion (€472.5 million) in US industries, and Seoul subsequently agreed to provide $350 billion in cash investments and a further $150 billion in shipbuilding cooperation.
“Of course, it was unfair and of course people are unhappy, but we also recognize that South Korea is so dependent on the US,” said Lim Eun-jung, a professor of international studies at Kongju National University.
The present South Korean president, Lee Jae-myung, is from a left-wing party that would not be a natural fit for this US administration, Lim said, but he is also a “pragmatist” when it comes to the nation’s alliances.
Fears of US troop reduction in South Korea
Seoul is wary about China’s growing aggression in the region, not least in its steady encroachment into disputed waters in the Yellow Sea that has echoes of Beijing’s seizure of atolls and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea a decade ago.
Lim said South Korea does not know how much attention Washington has been paying to this dispute or whether this US administration would come to its assistance should the encroachment gather pace and greater scope.
“We also have concerns about a possible withdrawal scenario, of the US Forces Korea being reduced as part of Trump’s transactional approach to international relations,” she said.
Trump has not yet in his second term threatened to draw down the US military in South Korea if Seoul does not pay more to station US troops. However, pressure on troop payments was leverage that Trump attempted to exert during his first term and remains something that he could revert to.
Tokyo shares a similar fear, although Takaichi may have been able to head off some of that pressure by announcing that next year’s budget will see defense spending rise to 2% of Japan’s GDP. That may still be short of Trump’s demands, but it is an increase and a step in the right direction, Tokyo will argue.
But it is not clear that it will be enough.
In a recent interview with Fox News in the US, Trump was asked whether China was a “friend” to the US, in the context of the row between China and Japan.
“Many of our allies are not our friends either,” Trump said. “China has greatly exploited us … our allies have exploited us more in trade than China has.”
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
