More broadly, under Trump the US looks set to pull funding from some long-term areas of defence, including army troop formations that would fight in Europe, in favour of ships for the Pacific, unmanned systems, a renewed focus on US border security and a missile defence shield called the “Golden Dome” that would protect against foreign ballistic missiles.
In the longer term, the focus on border and missile defence — coupled with Trump’s hope of expanding US control to Greenland and the Panama Canal — all appear to speak to a US refocusing on its immediate homeland defence and much less on protecting allies.
For all the short term focus on Ukraine, in the longer run it is what is happening in Asia that may be more dangerous and important.
“If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we are ready to fight until the end,” China's foreign ministry said in a statement.
It described the US blaming China for the fentanyl drug crisis as a “flimsy excuse” and warned of “legitimate and necessary” countermeasures. US law enforcement said most fentanyl is made in Mexico but from Chinese ingredients.
In more normal times, comments such as this might have received more media coverage.
Taiwan, increasingly threatened by a Chinese military that US intelligence said has been ordered by President Xi Jinping to be ready to invade by 2027, seems particularly in the firing line.
At his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill earlier this week, incoming US under secretary of defence for policy Elbridge Colby warned of a “dramatic deterioration of the military balance” with China. He suggested Taiwan, which spends about 3% of GDP on defence, should be spending at least 10%.
In the past, Colby, who has for years advocated pulling US resources from Europe to confront a rising China, called for Taiwan to be given security guarantees.
He said he had shifted the approach because of the worsening strategic situation, implying if Taiwan could not defend itself, the island might have to be abandoned.
“I've always said Taiwan is very important to the US, but it's not an existential interest,” he said, adding the real priority was stopping China dominating the entire wider region.
Successive US administrations have long maintained what they termed “strategic ambiguity” over whether they would fight for Taiwan, with Trump's predecessor president Joe Biden by far the most assertive in recent history that the US would fight for the island. Getting a similar certainty from the Trump administration appears a lot less likely. The president has explicitly ruled out revealing his hand.
On Monday, Trump met with CC Wei, CEO of the world’s largest manufacturer of hi-tech chips, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, to celebrate the movement of some manufacturing and potentially research to Arizona. Trump said the move would “diversify to a very safe location” in a way that would have “a big impact if something should happen” with Taiwan.
That will not have allayed worries on the island or elsewhere that “something” might be coming, either under the unpredictable administration or a more isolationist successor.
**Reuters**