Donald Trump arrived in Japan on Sunday for his first stop in a 12-day trip to Asia, the longest tour of the region by any US president since the early 1990s. While North Korea will dominate the first phase of the visit in Japan, South Korea, and China, Trump is also being billed later to outline his wider Asia policy for the first time with an alternative vision to Barack Obama’s regional “pivot.”

The Obama administration pushed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal to underline its regional commitment, partly to push back on China’s growing power and presence, which is a concern for some Asia allies. But the Trump team pulled out of that accord with no proposed replacement. 

A key goal of the trip for Trump, the most important foreign tour of his presidency so far, is therefore to dispel perceptions that he has little interest in this strategically important area of the globe. To do so, he will seek to articulate what his political, security, and economic ambitions for the region are in a speech in Vietnam at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation  summit.   

Beyond allies such as South Korea and Japan, the danger is that the president and his team may appear on the tour so overwhelmingly focused on North Korea — crucial as that issue is to resolve — that he shows little affinity for the broader range of issues in the regional dialogue, from South China Sea tensions to regional counterterrorism and trade. And this could fuel concerns in some countries that agendas are not aligned, and that the administration cares little for them, especially after Trump decided to cut short his visit by canceling attendance at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in the Philippines,  the last country on his tour.

Trump therefore faces a diplomatic balancing act, especially in the first part of his trip where the over-riding goal is getting Japan, South Korea and — especially — China on board with the US approach to tightening the screws on North Korea. The reason this is a US super-priority was highlighted by CIA Director Mike Pompeo last month, when he asserted that Pyongyang was perhaps only months away from possessing nuclear weapons capable of striking the US homeland, an avowed red line for the president.

While Japanese President Shinzo Abe is closely aligned to Trump, having just received a renewed electoral mandate on the back of tough talk against Pyongyang, Seoul and Beijing are tougher audiences.  South Korean President Moon Jae In strongly opposes the use of military force on the peninsula, while Trump has declared “more dialogue a dead end” and that Moon’s approach was tantamount to “appeasement.”   

The challenge is greater, however, in China, and it is reported that the White House is now conducting a root and branch review of policy toward Beijing. To be sure, US-China disagreements over North Korea have softened with Beijing — which accounts for about 90 percent of its neighbor’s foreign trade — tightening sanctions.  

Nevertheless, China still has key differences with the United States. A key reason for this is that President Xi Jinping does not want to push the regime so hard that it becomes significantly destabilized. From his vantage point, this risks North Korea behaving even more unpredictably, and the outside possibility of the regime’s collapse.

As Donald Trump arrives for a 12-day visit, the danger is that he appears so focused on North Korea that he ignores crucial issues such as counterterrorism and trade.

Andrew Hammond

Beijing fears that if the Communist regime in Pyongyang falls it could undermine the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party too. In addition, it worries that the collapse of order there could lead to instability on the North Korea-China border, a potentially large influx of refugees that it would need to manage, and ultimately the potential emergence of a pro-US successor state.

But in the face of repeated provocation from Pyongyang, Washington senses there may be a window to bring itself and Beijing even closer together. Trump will therefore probe if China may jettison more of its longstanding reservations about squeezing its neighbor. 

He will make it clear in Beijing that the stakes in play are growing fast. North Korea’s recent nuclear test and about 15 missile launches this year have offered significant evidence that it is moving closer to developing a nuclear warhead capable of being fitted on to an intercontinental ballistic missile that can strike the US mainland, let alone key allies such as Japan or South Korea.  

With the US and its territories, including Guam, looking increasingly vulnerable, what Beijing fears, especially with more potential provocation from Pyongyang on the horizon, is that Trump is thinking much more seriously about a pre-emptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. The US president has asserted for instance that the regime “is behaving in a very dangerous manner, and something will have to be done about it ... and probably dealt with rapidly.” 

Of course, Trump has threatened force before with his “fire and fury” and “locked and loaded” rhetoric.  Other scenarios range from a naval blockade to enforcing sanctions — including interdicting ships suspected of selling North Korea weapons abroad, one of the regime’s key sources of income — through to a potential new round of peace talks at the dovish end of the spectrum.

Taken overall, Trump faces a tricky task in balancing his desire to focus on Korea while showing interest in the wider regional dialogue. Perhaps his key test will come in Beijing, where he will seek to align more closely positions over Pyongyang given the possibility that he could soon face into his first major foreign policy crisis. 

• Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.