Opinion
In the world’s most important power equation, China on the weekend advanced further at America’s expense.
US President Donald Trump went to Beijing in a weakened state. China’s President Xi Jinping took advantage. That’s the verdict of one of America’s most experienced Asia policy experts, Kurt Campbell.
It’s hard to disagree. “This is not the circumstance President Trump hoped for when visiting China,” Campbell tells me. “He’s clearly stuck in a quagmire in Iran.”
If Trump hoped for any help from Xi in dealing with Iran, he was disappointed. Beijing, a friend of Iran’s, surreptitiously has been helping it in targeting US forces with missiles and drones.
Trump seemed desperate for a trade deal in Beijing. Xi agreed to buy a figurative handful of beans and Boeings from the US. In return, the US president broke historical precedent to hand over to the Chinese Communist Party concessions on the only subject Xi really cared about – the security of Taiwan.
Xi was strident in dictating China’s red line to Trump. In his opening remarks, Taiwan, he said, was the “most important” issue in dealing with the US, according to the party-owned news service Xinhua.
“If handled poorly, the two countries will face collision or even conflict, pushing the entire China-US relationship into an extremely dangerous situation.” Washington needed to treat the Taiwan issue, he said, with “the utmost caution”.
And what did the US president have to say about this? When reporters asked for his account, he said he’d “heard him out” but “didn’t make a comment” in reply. But, in various remarks over the next couple of days, Trump repeatedly made comments dismissive of Taiwan and its interests – while making concessions to Beijing.
The clearest evidence was Trump’s blatant breach of a 44-year-old rule laid down by Republican president Ronald Reagan. After the US switched diplomatic recognition of “China” from Taipei to Beijing, it continued to help Taiwan to protect itself by selling it arms.
The mainland, of course, always has been opposed to any such arming of Taiwan. Beijing’s longstanding position is that it will acquire full control of Taiwan “inevitably” by force if peaceful means fail.
One of the 1982 “six assurances” that Reagan gave Taiwan was that the US would not conduct any prior consultation with Beijing on American arms sales to Taiwan.
After initially telling reporters that “no, I didn’t say anything” about US arms sales, Trump almost immediately said the opposite: “You know, the whole thing with the arms sales was in great detail, actually.”
When he was reminded of the longstanding US assurance, he tried to excuse himself by saying: “Well, I think the 1980s is a long way. That’s a big, far distance.” He’d been delaying approval of a $US14 billion arms sale to Taiwan and says he’ll make a decision soon.
“It’s definitely a violation of Reagan’s 1982 Six Assurances,” says Campbell, the US deputy Secretary of State under Joe Biden and variously a senior figure in the Pentagon, State Department and White House under Democrat administrations for the past 30 years.
“A Democrat president would have been savaged for that. President Trump doesn’t care. I felt an unmistakable waft of Russia and Ukraine.”
Meaning? In his treatment of China and Taiwan, Trump is replicating his conduct with Moscow and Kyiv; favouring a larger authoritarian power over a smaller democratic one. Refusing to help US allies in the region while going easy on traditional US rivals.
“Half the time, the way that President Trump talks about Ukraine, it’s almost as if the war is Ukraine’s fault. I got a sense of that”, from Trump’s weekend visit to Beijing, “that this is Taiwan being ‘provocative’.”
How so? Trump told reporters after his meetings that Xi “feels very strongly” about Taiwan. And Trump, evidently, does not. He says he “does not want to see a movement for independence”. Taiwan has not been planning one.
“I think the last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9500 miles away. I think that’s the last thing we need.” Trump repeatedly has emphasised that Taiwan is close to mainland China while the US is far. This, of course, appears to defer to China over Taiwan’s security.
In response to one such comment, his former vice president, Mike Pence, wrote: “What is distance to a global superpower?”
Trump’s understanding of the importance of Taiwan is highly suspect. Asked about Xi’s warning of the possibility of conflict, Trump told reporters: “I don’t think there’s a conflict. I don’t think that there is a risk. We don’t need their strait,” meaning the Taiwan Strait.
Has he learnt nothing from his self-described “little excursion” to the Strait of Hormuz? The Taiwan Strait carries about $US2.5 trillion in commercial shipping a year, including 44 per cent of all global container traffic and 90 per cent of cutting-edge chips, according to the Washington research institute Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Everything Trump said implies that Taiwan is of little interest and little value to the US.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said that people were “very concerned” about Trump’s Taiwan discussions with Xi. “Taiwan will absolutely not be sacrificed or traded,” he posted.
America’s allies in Indo-Pacific, including Australia, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, should be worried, according to Kurt Campbell: “They have to worry about repositioning of the US towards China. And the degradation of the US military capability in the Indo-Pacific – that’s undeniable.
“It’s been the work of a couple of administrations to patiently accumulate more military capability in the Indo-Pacific. A Marine Expeditionary Unit in Japan, a second aircraft carrier, ballistic missile defence capabilities. In one fell swoop, most of that capability was moved to the Middle East. The quality of our deterrence in the Indo-Pacific has definitely been degraded.” Once gone, it’s hard to get back, says Campbell. “There’s going to be anxiety” among the allies.
Campbell was the architect of Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia”. It was designed to help brace the region to withstand mounting coercive pressure from China. Trump seems to be pivoting away again. No wonder Xi readily agreed to another meeting with Trump in September. “The most important take away I saw,” concludes Campbell, “was China’s confidence on the global scene.”
Peter Hartcher is both international and political editor. His political column appears on Saturdays.
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Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.