PREFACE

the election of donald trump was a revolutionary moment.

The implications of his presidency for international politics are
profound. Ever since 1945, all American presidents have shared a
commitment to an international order built around two central pil-
lars. The first is the promotion of international trade. The second is
a global security system based on U.S.-led alliances.
Trump threatens to pull down both pillars. The forty-fifth pres-
ident of the United States is an avowed trade protectionist. And he
is also a man who has consistently questioned the value of U.S.-led
alliances, calling NATO obsolete and suggesting that Americas
defense treaties with Japan and South Korea are bad deals for the
United States.
Trumps revolutionary approach to world affairs is under-pinned
by a discontent with the process that this book calls
Easternization a shift of power and wealth from the West
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to Asia. By 2014, according to the IMF, China had become the

worlds largest economyranked by purchasing power. The
United States is now number tworelinquishing the top spot that
it had held since the late nineteenth century. In 2009, China had
also become the worlds largest merchandise exporter a position
that the United States had held since the Second World War.
Chinas rise is part of a broader shift in economic power to Asia
(see pp 89). In pledging to Make America Great Again, Trump
implicitly promises to reverse this process of Easterniza-tion
restoring America to its unrivaled position, both in terms of living
standards and global power.
The Trump drive to restore American greatness threatens to
create conflict between the United States and the rising powers of
Asiaabove all, China. Under President Xi Jinping, who came to
power in Beijing in 2012, China has also moved in a much more
nationalistic direction. Well before Trump pledged to Make Amer-
ica Great Again, Xi had made a similar pitch to nostalgic national-
ism, promising a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. With
Trump and Xi in power in Washington and Beijing, the stage is set
for a potential clash between American and Chinese nationalism in
the Pacific.
The most obvious potential conflict is over trade. If Trump fol-
lows through on his threat to impose swinging tariffs on Chinese
goods, he would certainly provoke retaliation. A trade war would
ensue, poisoning commercial relations between the first and sec-
ond largest economies in the world and destabilizing the global
economy.
The threat of a real war between the United States and China
has also risen following Trumps election. Much of this book is
concerned with the slow but steady increase in geopolitical rivalry
between America and China during the Obama years. The arrival of
Trump in the White House threatens a significant accelera-tion in
this process. The deliberate but careful attempts of the Obama
administration to push back against Chinese ambitions in

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the Asia-Pacific region are likely to be replaced by a new Trump

approach that is much more openly confrontational, and more
impulsive in style. Even before taking office, the new U.S. pres-
ident demonstrated his willingness to antagonize Beijing by
speaking directly to the president of Taiwan, something that all U.S.
presidents have refused to do since the normalization of rela-tions
between the United States and China in the 1970s.
If a direct military conflict between China and the United States
does break out during the Trump years, the likeliest arena for a
clash is the South China Sea. In his confirmation hearings before
the U.S. Senate, Rex Tillerson, Trumps new secretary of state, sig-
naled a significant hardening in the American attitude to the arti-
ficial islands that China has been building in the South China Sea
(see page 41). Tillerson likened the island building to Russias ille-
gal annexation of Crimea and said that the Trump administration
intended to let Beijing know that your access to those islands is
not going to be allowed.
Taken at face value, that sounded like a threat to blockade the islands,
on which China has been constructing military installations. China would
almost certainly attempt to break such a blockade by sea or air. The stage
would be set for a modern version of the Cuba missile crisis. The Chinese
governments official reaction to the Tillerson statement was restrained.
But Chinas state-controlled media was ferocious. The Global Times, a
nationalist paper, warned of the possibility of a large-scale war between
the United States and China, while the China Daily spoke of a
devastating confron-tation between China and the U.S. Independent
observers had come to similar conclusions. Speaking to me in Davos a
couple of days after Tillersons statement, Vivian Balakrishnan, the
foreign minister of Singapore, warned that any effort at a U.S. blockade in
the South China Sea would lead to a war between the United States and
China. The Singaporeans, who maintain close ties to both Washington and
Beijing and whose natural style is cau-tious and technocratic, are not given
to hysteria. Many observers

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wondered whether Tillerson had gone further than intended in his

Congressional testimony. His statement seemed to change the tra-
ditional U.S. position that its sole concern is freedom of navigation
in the South China Sea, and that it takes no position on Chinese
sovereignty over the islands. But in the days after Tillersons testi-
mony, the Trump administration did nothing to withdraw or clarify
his statements.
A decision by President Trump to confront China over its ter-
ritorial claims would represent a new development in the pres-
idents thinking, for Trumps most longstanding and profound
concerns about Asia are economic. Conventional economic theory
has long held that the growing wealth of Asian nations is a good
thing for the United States, since it creates larger markets for
American companies and cheaper goods for American consumers.
But Trump and his advisers emphatically reject this idea. They
blame the stagnation of the living standards of American work-ers
on globalismotherwise known as international trade and
investment. Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist in the Trump
White House, argues that, The globalists gutted the American
working-class and created a middle-class in Asia. 1 In his view, the
increasing wealth of Asiafar from being the mutually
advantageous process envisaged by mainstream economics has
impoverished the United States.
During the election campaign, Trump was visceral in his denun-
ciations of China, proclaiming that, We have a $500 billion deficit with
China...We cant continue to allow China to rape our coun-try...Its the
greatest theft in the history of the world. Those who hoped that Trump
would abandon protectionism after winning office were quickly
disappointed. On the contrary, the new pres-ident placed protectionists in
key positions in his administration. Peter Navarro, author of a book and
film called Death By China, was appointed to head a new National Trade
Council, based in the White House. Navarros intellectual ally and
sometime coauthor, Wilbur

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Ross, was made Commerce Secretary. Robert Lighthizer, another

noted protectionist, was given the job of chief trade negotiator.
Navarros film begins by urging viewers, Dont buy Made in
China. It points out the considerable loss in U.S. manufacturing
jobs since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and
blames this on a range of unfair Chinese trading practices,
including lax environmental standards, currency manipulation,
intellectual property theft and illegal export subsidies. Some of the
ills that Navarro highlights, such as commercial espionage, are real
enough. Other complaints, such as the charge of currency manipu-
lation, are outdated.
The broader difficulty with the TrumpNavarro analysis is that
its promise to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States is
misleading. Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence mean
that modern factories employ relatively few workers, compared to
the past. Manufacturing employment is now leveling off, even in
China, as robots replace people on the production line and the
really low-skilled jobs migrate to poorer countries in South Asia or
Africa (see chapter 13). A protectionist drive by the Trump admin-
istration is likely to raise living costs in the United States, without
doing much to boost employment.
The pursuit of protectionist policies has implications that go
well beyond economics. China would see the partial closure of
American markets as a hostile act that threatened the health of its
economy and thus its internal political stability. Overt Ameri-can
protectionism aimed at China would also mark a fundamental break
with the strategy that the United States has adopted over many
decades to deal with the rise of China. This strategy was based
around the assumption that burgeoning trade with China would
ultimately bolster Americas global leadership by creating a
Chinese interest in the maintenance of a global order, designed and
maintained in Washington. Robert Zoellick, who served as deputy
secretary of state under George W. Bush, summed up this

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theory when he suggested that China would become a responsi-ble

stakeholder in the international order.
This reassuring idea came under severe strain during the Obama
years (see chapter 4), as it became increasingly obvious that China
is intent on becoming the dominant power in the Asia- Pacific
region. A tilt toward protectionism under the Trump admin-istration
would represent the final abandonment of the responsible
stakeholder theory. It would also mean that the most important field
of U.S.Chinese cooperationtrade and investment would turn
into an area of rivalry. With both strategic and economic com-
petition mounting, the United States and China would be locked into
an increasingly overt struggle for power in the Pacific.
The threat to Chinese interests posed by Donald Trump came as
an unpleasant surprise to the government in Beijing. On a trip to
China in September 2016, I found that officials there were adopting
a position of studied indifference to the outcome of the U.S. presi-
dential election, which was then just six weeks away. (This made a
strong contrast with the obvious Russian support for Trump.) Just
beneath the surface, however, it was possible to detect a certain
Chinese excitement at the idea of a Trump presidency. In part, this
reflected official hostility to Hillary Clinton, whom the Chinese
government blamed for the American effort to push back against
Chinese power in the Pacific. Trumps skeptical comments about
Americas alliances with Japan and South Korea had also been
noted with interest. Some in China wondered whether this meant
that Trumps America would be less interested in playing the role of
global policemanand would gracefully cede a sphere of
influence in East Asia to China.
Many Chinese commentators also noted that Republican pres-
idents, from Nixon to George H. W. Bush, have usually been eas-ier
for Beijing to deal with because they tend to focus on business and
economics, rather than human rights. I tried to suggest to my hosts
that Trump was anything but a traditional Republican. But most
experts in Beijing dismissed Trumps protectionism as mere

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election rhetoric. The Chinese also seemed curiously unconcerned

by the Trump campaigns commitment to build a 350-ship U.S.
Navya significant increase from the 270 ships of the Obama-era
navy. And yet the most plausible reason for such a large increase in
the American fleet is to give the United States an increased capacity
to challenge Chinas maritime claims in the South China Sea. In the
days after Trumps unexpected victory, Eric Li, a well- connected
Chinese commentator, published a column in the New York Times,
headlined How Trump Is Good For China. Li confi-dently
asserted that Beijing is looking forward to change in Wash-
ington...The Chinese prefer a relationship with a United States that
does not try to remake the world.
But Chinese complacency about Trump lasted less than a
month. On December 2, Trump had a ten-minute phone conver-
sation with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwana call that reversed
almost forty years of precedent. The U.S. president-elects decision
to speak to the leader of an island that China deems a mere rebel
province came as a thunderbolt in Beijing. Chinese leaders, who
had fondly imagined that Trump might tacitly acquiesce to Chinas
territorial claims in the South China Sea, found instead that Amer-
icas new leader had challenged them on an even more sensitive
issue: the status of Taiwan. Behind the scenes, American and Chi-
nese officials have openly discussed the possibility that their two
countries might one day go to war over Taiwan (see pp 4243).
Much Chinese military spendingin particular investments in
sub marines and missileshas been designed to prepare China for
a possible invasion of Taiwan.
It is entirely possible that Trump was largely ignorant of the
implications of accepting President Tsais call. An understanding of
the importance of Taiwan to the Chinese government requires some
knowledge of modern Asian history. When the Chinese Communist
Party came to power in 1949, after securing victory in a civil war,
the defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan. Ever since, Beijing has
seen Taipei as a rival center of authorityand

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has sought to isolate the government there. When the United States
and China restored diplomatic relations in 1979, Beijing
successfully insisted that Washington break formal diplomatic ties
with Taipei.
In recent decades, the nature of Beijings anxiety about Taiwan
has changed. Rather than worrying that the government in Taipei is
plotting to regain authority in mainland China, the Communist Party
has fretted that Taiwan might instead declare independence from
China. This would contradict the official doctrine that there is only
one China. The version of history taught to the Chinese people
stresses that, during a century of humiliation dating from the 1840s,
China was weak, divided and exploited by foreigners. Since 1949,
however, a strong Communist Party has stood up for China and
regained the countrys lost territoriesincluding Hong Kong in
1997 and Macau in 1999. The loss of Taiwan to pro-
independence forces would profoundly undermine this official story.
It would be a humiliation for the Chinese Communist Party that
could well pose a threat to its continued rule. So, for President Xi
Jinping, the stakes could not be higher.
The fact that China bitterly denounces any American contacts
with Taiwan does not mean, in itself, that such contacts are wrong.
The pretense that Taiwan is just a province of mainland China is
increasingly absurd. The island has been governed separately since
1949and has thrived economically. Modern Taiwan has an open
and democratic culture that makes a pleasant contrast with the one-
party state in mainland China. There is also a respect-able argument
that U.S. presidents should not allow foreign gov-ernments to
dictate whom they can speak to. As President Obama noted, just
after the TrumpTsai call, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with
taking another look at U.S. policy to Taiwan. But as the outgoing
president also pointed out, The status quo, although not
completely satisfactory to any of the parties involved, has kept the
peace...If you are going to upend this understanding, you have to
have thought through the consequences.

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Trump had shown little previous interest in Taiwan. But some of

the advisers and lobbyists in Trumps circle were rather less nave.
Bob Dole, the former Republican presidential candidate and a paid
lobbyist for Taiwan, had helped to set up the TrumpTsai call. And
Peter Navarro, Trumps trade advisor, had publicly urged a much
closer U.S. embrace of Taiwan. In a little-noticed article, published
in July 2016, Navarro argued that the United States should sell
Taiwan submarines to counter Chinas naval buildup, adding that,
We need to stop sacrificing friends like Taiwan to pla-cate what is
increasingly morphing from a trading partner and stra-tegic rival,
into a hostile enemy. 2
This view of China as a hostile enemy is not one that Trump
has explicitly endorsed. But Trumps characteristic reaction to
being challenged is to respond with increased belligerence. So
when China complained about the TrumpTsai call, the president-
elects tweeted response was, Did China ask if was OK to devalue
their currency...heavily tax our producers...or to build a massive
military complex in the middle of the South China Sea?
Trumps response was interestingboth for its belligerence
and for its willingness to mingle security and economic issues. Tra-
ditionally, the U.S. approach to Asia had maintained a rigid divi-
sion between military and economic affairs. So Americas military
commitment to Japan was never used as leverage in trade disputes
between the two countries. Trumps instinct seems to be very
different. He sees military and security commitments as part of a
connected set of issues that can be used as bargaining chips in a
broad-ranging negotiation.
To Americas security establishment this approach is anathema.
Military alliances are meant to be sacrosanct. If they are thrown into the
mix as part of a negotiation, then American credibility and the
doctrine of deterrence attached to itare gravely weakened. The
implications for allies such as Japanand for the Taiwanese of this
new Trump doctrine are disturbing, since it implies that their security
could be traded away as part of a broader negotiation.

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The understandable euphoria among pro-independence forces in

Taiwan that followed the TsaiTrump call was mixed with appre-
hension about the future. What if Trumps new approach provoked
a military response from China? And what was to prevent the new
American president from one day trading his support for Taiwan, in
return for concessions on trade by China?
If Taiwan becomes the trigger for a sharp downturn in U.S.
Chinese relations, it will in many ways be an avoidable crisis. The
current situation involves some peculiar diplomatic contortions. But
the status quo has provided stability for Taiwan for more than
twenty years. Left undisturbed, it could easily last another gener-
ation. By contrast, a crisis over North Korea during Trumps presi-
dency may be unavoidable.
The North Korean nuclear program was a consistent concern for
the United States throughout the Obama years. The Kim Jong-un
regime has staged a number of nuclear-weapons tests and is now
estimated (by the South Koreans) to have an arsenal of up to twenty
nuclear weapons. At the same time, the North Koreans have an
active ballistic missile program. By the end of the Obama years,
concerns were mounting in the White House that North Korea is
getting dangerously close to being able to fit a nuclear war-head
onto a ballistic missile that could hit the west coast of the United
States. The usual estimate given was that North Korea was two
years away from establishing this capability.
Although South Korea has had to live with the North Korean
nuclear threat for many years, it is conventional wisdom in the U.S.
security establishment that a North Korea armed with ballis-tic
nuclear missiles is an intolerable threat to the United States.
However, as Evan Medeiros, who ran Asia policy in the Obama
White House for six years, put it to me, North Korea is the land of
bad options.3 No combination of economic sanctions or diplo-
matic pressure has so far been able to deflect or destroy the North
Korean nuclear program. There is, of course, a military option. The
United States could bomb North Koreas nuclear facilities. But, as

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Medeiros explains, any such action risks the outbreak of all-out

war on the Korean peninsula. Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is
within easy range of North Koreas conventional artillery. And the
last time that war broke out on the Korean peninsula, in the 1950s,
it led to direct military conflict between China and America, as
China fought to sustain its North Korean ally.
The growing urgency of the situation ensured that North Korea
was one of three major topics discussed by Obama and Trump in
their first meeting at the White House following Trumps election.
Trumps initial comments on the subject suggest that he believes
that increased pressure from China could force the North Koreans
to abandon their nuclear program. It is certainly true that North
Korea is desperately poor and hugely dependent on its wealthy
Chinese neighbor. Yet the Chinese have always denied that they
have the leverage to deliver North Korea. The real truth may be
that they are loath to provoke a crisis in a dangerous and unstable
neighborwhich also remains an ally, albeit an infuriating one.
The increasing dangers of the North Korean situation and
Trumps own temperamentsuggest that his administration may
be much more inclined to try to force Chinas hand over North
Korea. That would be difficult under any circumstances. But
gaining Beijings cooperation over North Korea could become
impossible if the crisis on the Korean peninsula plays out against a
backdrop of U.S.Chinese rows over trade, Taiwan and the South
China Sea. Faced with frustration over North Korea, Trump may be
tempted to revisit some of the military options that were dis-carded
by President Obama as too dangerous.
Trumps unpredictability is a profound worry for Americas clos-est
allies in East Asia: Japan and South Korea. Both countries know that they
would be in the front line if a war were ever to break out on the Korean
peninsula or in the South China Sea. So it was a considerable diplomatic
achievement for Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, to be the first
foreign leader to secure a meet-ing with Trump after the U.S. presidential
election. The pictures of

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Abe and Trump together at a meeting at Trump Tower on Novem-

ber 18, 2016 sent a comforting message to the Japanese people
particularly given Trumps longstanding criticism of Japans trade
surplus with the United States and his public questioning of the
U.S.Japan security treaty.
While Trump was perfectly happy to pose for a reassuring photo-op
with Abe, his actual policies are considerably less com-forting for Japan.
Just four days after meeting the Japanese prime minister, Trump
announced that he intended to renounce the Trans-Pacific Partnership on
his first day in office. The TPP is a painstakingly negotiated trade deal
between twelve countrieswith Japan and the United States as the two
most important signatories. Abe had expended enormous political capital
both to negotiate the TPP and to force it through parliament in Tokyo. For
the Japanese prime minister, the significance of the TPP was as much
strategic as economic (see chapter 5). Like President Obama, he saw the
nego-tiation of a giant new trade deal that included Japan and the United
Statesbut very pointedly did not include Chinaas a way of head-ing
off Chinese dominance of the Asia-Pacific region.

The Japanese government, like the Obama administration,

understands that the likeliest route to a China-dominated Asia is
commerce rather than conflict. Twenty years ago, America was the
most significant market for all the major Asian economies, and
Japanese multinationals were the largest foreign investors across
Southeast Asia. But those days have gone. Now China is the most
important trading partner for South Korea, Japan, Australia and
most of the nations of Southeast Asia. Chinese investment is also
increasingly important and attractive to neighboring countries in
Asia. The One Belt, One Road policy promoted from Beijing
essentially an effort to promote Chinese investment in infrastruc-
ture across Asiahas further increased Beijings economic clout.
As Abe and Obama both realized, the growing importance of Chi-
nese trade and investment across the world has considerable geo-
political significance. Asian countries will be much less willing

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to confront Chinaor side with the United States or Japan in a

territorial dispute if their economic futures depend on goodwill
from Beijing.
For the Abe administration, the TPP represented a last effort to
push back against the creation of a China-dominated co-prosperity
sphere in East Asia. Donald Trumps repudiation of the deal was
thus a grievous blow to Japans survival strategy for the twenty-first
century.
For Trump himself, however, ditching the TPP made perfect
sense. He had campaigned against the supposedly disastrous trade
deals that America had signed in the Clinton, Bush and Obama
years. The TPP was the perfect symbol of the globalism that
Trump rejected. And Trump was hardly alone in his hostility to the
idea of a big new trade deal. Opposition to the TPP was also a cen-
tral feature of Bernie Sanderss campaign for the presidency. At the
Democratic Party convention in Philadelphia in July 2016, anti-TPP
posters were almost as ubiquitous as pro-Clinton banners and
they were brandished with rather more fervor.
Ditching the TPP was a decision driven by American domestic
considerations. But outside the United States, Trumps move was
widely interpreted as a symbol of an American retreat from global
leadership. A couple of days after the decision was announced, I
found myself in the office of a senior EU official in Brussels, who
remarked to me, Its interesting, when the Brits were the worlds
dominant economy, they were also the main promoters of free trade.
And then when America became the worlds dominant economy,
they became the main promoters of free trade. And now America is
losing its faith in globalization and China is becoming the main
advocate of free trade. You can feel the wheels of history turning.
Given the difficulties that many foreign companies still expe-
rience in China, it is still a slight stretch to describe the Chinese
government as the worlds leading advocate of free trade. But it is
certainly true that China moved smartly to take advantage of

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Trumps torpedoing of the TPP. Within days, Beijing was energet-

ically pushing a rival China-centered free-trade area for the Asia-
Pacific region. Countries such as Australia, which had signed the
TPP only to be jilted by the United States, were swift to express
interest in the new Chinese initiative.
Trade is not the only area in which Trumps America First
policies offer China an opportunity to try on the robes of global
leadership. When Trump threatened to pull America out of the Paris
climate-change accords, the Chinese government was swift to warn
the United States against this kind of unilateral action. Chi-nas
emergence as a more enthusiastic champion of global action on
climate change than the United States would be a striking rever-sal
of the pattern of the Obama years. It would also provide the
government in Beijing with significant opportunities to forge inter-
national partnerships and to portray the United States as an irre-
sponsible global power.
The same pattern could emerge at the United Nations. After the
UN passed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, Trump
tweeted that The United Nations...is just a club for people to get
together, talk and have a good time. His appointment of a UN
ambassador who had no relevant diplomatic experience Nikki
Haley, the governor of South Carolinaalso underlined the low
priority that Trump gives to the world body. China, by contrast, was
striving to place a Chinese national as the head of the UNs vital
peacekeeping department, which runs UN-mandated military
operations all over the world.
During the Obama years, the United States had sometimes
suggested that China was an irresponsible international actor whose
actions over the climate, or the South China Sea, threatened the
international order. The arrival of Donald Trump in the White
House presented Beijing with an opportunity to turn the tables.
Now it was the United States that could be presented as an unsta-
ble and dangerous player, while China played the role of the sup-
porter of international norms and agreements.

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Trumps hostility to China makes a stark contrast with his warm

appreciation for Vladimir Putins Russia. What accounts for this
difference in attitude? In the immediate aftermath of Trumps
victory, there was no shortage of conspiracy theories about the
mysterious hold that the Kremlin was said to exercise over Trump.
This fevered speculation covered everything from the finances of
the Trump empire to the antics at the Miss Universe contest that
Trump staged in Moscow in 2013. But, putting the conspiracy the-
ories to one side, there are three broad explanations for the new
presidents divergent attitudes toward Russia and China.
First, Trump sees the world primarily in terms of economic
competition. The powerful Chinese economy is a formidable com-
petitor for the United States. By contrast, the Russian economy is
relatively puny and therefore less threatening.
Second, if Trump is thinking in strategic terms, he may also be
attempting to disrupt the increasingly close entente that grew up
between Russia and China during the Obama years, as both
countries relations with the United States deteriorated. Ever since
the 1970s, there has been talk of a strategic triangle linking
Washington, Moscow and Beijing. The NixonKissinger opening to
China was intended, in large part, to isolate the Soviet Union by
pulling China closer to the United States. The Trump administration
may seek to repeat the maneuver in reverse: draw-ing closer to
Moscow, so as to isolate Beijing. The fact that the ninety-three-
year-old Henry Kissinger visited both Trump Tower and Moscow in
the immediate aftermath of the U.S. election lent some credence to
the idea that Trump was considering a strategic shift along these
lines.
A third reason that some in the Trump camp are drawn to Rus-
sia is the emphasis that certain key advisers including Steve
Bannon and General Michael Flynn, Trumps national security
advisorplace on the war against radical Islam. Both Bannon
and Flynn believe that an existential struggle between Islam and
Western civilization is already underway, and that Russia and the

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United States should be natural allies in this battle. The influence of

this thinking on Trump is reflected in his advocacy of a U.S.
Russian alliance in Syria to destroy Islamic State.
The idea that Russia and the United States might be natural
partners in a struggle against Islam involves rethinking the idea of
the West. During the Cold War, U.S. leaders defined the West in
ideological terms, as the group of countries that embraced ideas
such as democracy and capitalism. That placed the Soviet Union
firmly on the other side of the divide. Many in contemporary Wash-
ington continue to see Putins Russia as defining an alternative and
hostile value system. But for Trump adviserswho see the West
in cultural or even racial termsRussia looks more like an ally. It
is a largely Christian country, run by white Europeans, that is also
engaged in a violent struggle against radical Islamism in Chechnya
and Syria. Putins cultural conservatism, including his hostility to
gay marriage, is also appealing to many on the Trumpist right.
If Russia is redefined as an outpost of Western culture, Trumps
embrace of Putin makes more ideological sense. And although
Trumps advisers primarily see Putin as a potential ally in the war
on radical Islam, Russia could also, in the long term, be seen as a
bulwark in the struggle to maintain Western primacy in the age of
Easternization. If Russia becomes too weak, then China will inev-
itably dominate Central Asia, including countries such as Kazakh-
stan that were once part of the Soviet Union. There are even
grounds to fear that parts of Russias sparsely populated East might
one day be vulnerable to Chinese expansionism. Americans who
fear the growth of Chinese power might see some merit in trying to
encourage a more robust Russia, as a bulwark against Beijing.
There are, however, several objections to this approachas prac-
ticed by Donald Trump. First, it seems entirely likely that the wily and
experienced Vladimir Putin might seek to extract whatever benefits he can
from the Trump administration without allowing Russia to be
maneuvered into an anti-Chinese front. Second, an

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entente between Moscow and Washington, arranged over the heads

of European allies, would destabilize the European Union.
Upsetting the EU is unlikely to worry Trump. He is the first
U.S. president since 1945 who has expressed far more admiration
for the leader of Russia than for the chancellor of Germany. While
Trump consistently praised Putin as a strong leader during the
presidential election, he attacked Angela Merkels willingness to
admit more than one million refugees into Germany as insane.
For Trump advisers such as Stephen Bannon, the EU is also a -
standard-bearer of the internationalist and globalist philosophy
that they have consistently denounced. Through his Breitbart news
service, Bannon has forged ties with far-right and anti-EU parties in
Europe, including the National Front in France and the Alternative
fr Deutschland party in Germany.
The traditional West as a political concept has always had two
pillars: North America and Europe. But if the United States and the
EU end up at loggerheads during the Trump years, the West-ern
alliance will be in profound trouble. Trump, as an advocate of
America First, might not worry about antagonizing Europe. But
the demise of the Western alliance would actually gravely under-
mine Trumps plans to restore American greatness, since it would
decrease the power of the United States to shape world affairs. In so
doing, it would also hasten the shift of wealth and power to Asia
that so troubles Trump and his supporters.
As this book will show, the political effects of the rise of Asia
have been slowed by the continuing strength of the Western alli-
ance. But if the West itself now falls into disarray, the process of
Easternization will accelerate still further, and with it, the decline of
American power.

January 26, 2017

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