China will replace the US as the pre-eminent power in east Asia

FT
Donald Trump’s retreat is the greatest threat to global security
The president intends to dismantle an alliance system that has endured for 70 years
PHILIP STEPHENS

China and Russia are throwing their hats in the air to celebrate the president’s retreat from international leadership. Absent from the Singapore summit, Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, was nonetheless a big winner. In Mr Trump’s world of everyone for themselves, China will replace the US as the pre-eminent power in east Asia. Japan, Taiwan and, in time, South Korea itself, may choose to take a tip from Mr Kim. If you want to be safe, build a bomb.

G7 leaders have been inclined to make a case that Mr Trump can be “managed”. France’s president Emmanuel Macron applied flattery. Japan’s Shinzo Abe wooed the president on the golf course. Britain’s Theresa May dangles an invitation for tea with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. The be-nice strategy has now been derailed.

　Donald Tusk, the president of the EU, speculated the other day as to whether the western political community faced a cyclical or a structural threat from US unilateralism. Mr Tusk is a thoughtful politician, someone worth listening to. He can also be over-generous. The US president has answered his question loud and clear: he disdains any such political community.


　Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, may be termed “dishonest” and “weak”, but in the president’s mind, Mr Kim is someone America can “trust”.

　South Korean president Moon Jae-in deserves only praise for his role in fostering detente. Mr Moon seems genuinely to believe that Mr Kim wants to put economic modernisation before nuclear posturing. He must forgive the rest of us if we do not recognise in Mr Kim the new Mikhail Gorbachev.

　Mr Trump has thrown out this week the assumptions that have kept the peace in east Asia since the end of the second world war. Japan has obvious and powerful historical reasons for eschewing a strong military and the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Its pacifism has been made possible by America’s security shelter.

　Policymakers in Tokyo must now ask themselves for how long that will last as China grows more assertive.

I am sometimes asked what I consider to represent the biggest threat to global peace and stability. A nuclear North Korea looks dangerous, but containable. Mr Kim is not a madman. So the temptation is to reply that the risk is found in China’s rise or in Russian revanchism. The real answer is Mr Trump’s retreat.

　欧州はトランプをなんとか、管理できると思っているようだが、トランプ自身は、そうした国際社会は信用していない。

　韓国の文大統領は、金正恩が、核兵器を捨てて、経済的繁栄に向かうとまじで、信じているらしいが、世界の誰も金正恩がゴルバチョフだとは思っていない。

　トランプがアジアから撤退すれば、中国がアジアでの覇権をとって代わるだろう。日本も韓国、台湾も、北朝鮮から学んで、身の安全のためには、核兵器を製造する、ということとになろう。

　北朝鮮の核は危険だが、封じ込めできないわけではない。中国の台頭や、ロシアの報復主義が一番怖いと思う人がいるかもしれんが、しかし、世界平和にとって一番の脅威は、トランプによるアメリカの世界からの撤退なのだ、と。