Donald Trump’s Asia trek through Japan, South Korea and China will test the art of his deals
Donald Kirk says the US president faces several difficult tasks as he meets leaders in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing, not least of which will be keeping the pressure on North Korea while easing China’s concerns about THAAD
US President Donald Trump faces a diplomatic challenge that would be daunting enough for any
national leader, let alone one who is noted for blunt, non-diplomatic language.
Beginning Sunday in Tokyo, he’ll be hopscotching among capitals of East Asian countries with long histories of hostility, each wary of the others even when they’re not fighting wars. It’s appropriate, after going on to Seoul, that he will be in Beijing, where he can tell President Xi Jinping all he’s taking away from meetings with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in.
No doubt the Chinese and American presidents will manage a show of cheer and goodwill, just as they did at their informal meetings earlier this year at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. For Trump, the challenge will be somehow to persuade Xi of the need to get even tougher on North Korea, which depends on China for most of its oil and much of its food.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un visits the Mangyongdae Revolutionary Academy on its 70th anniversary, in this photo released by North Korean state media on October 13. Photo: Reuters / KCNA
Trump may find Xi quite amenable now that the 19th congress of the Communist Party of China is over and new leaders are in place. To all outward appearances more powerful than ever, the Chinese president surely will put on a show of strict adherence to UN sanctions against the North even while demurring on pleas to cut off the oil.
The dialogue may get strained, however, when Trump reports on what he’s heard from Abe in Tokyo. Riding high after the success of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, allied with the much smaller Buddhist-backed Komeito, Abe wants to build up Japan’s euphemistically named “self-defence” forces to counter any North Korean threat. To do so, he has to persuade two-thirds of the Japanese diet, and then half the country’s voters, to say “no” to Article 9 of the so-called “peace constitution”, ghostwritten by Americans during the US “occupation” after the Japanese defeat in August 1945.
Chinese react instinctively against notions of Japan’s renaissance as a military power. There are too many awful memories of Japanese conquest of much of the country, notably in the northeast. Those memories go deep into history. No one forgets the first Sino-Japanese war that ended with Japan’s victory in 1895 and the Japanese takeover of Taiwan, island home of the Chinese Nationalist forces that fled there before the final Communist victory on the mainland in 1949.
A protester stomps on photos of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe outside the Japanese consulate general in Hong Kong’s Exchange Square in August to commemorate those killed in the second Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945. At least 3 million Chinese military personnel were killed in the conflict, along with at least 17 million Chinese civilians. Photo: Nora Tam
Sandwiched between Trump’s stops in Tokyo and Beijing, South Korea presents its own issues. Trump will no doubt affirm the “ironclad” nature of the US-South Korean alliance but will not convince Moon of the need for a “military option” if diplomacy with North Korea fails.
Xi, looking for clues to how Trump and Moon got along, will pick up on signs of disagreement. In the quest for “stability” on the Korean peninsula, he will not accept arguments of the need to “pre-emptively” annihilate North Korean nuclear and missile sites.
In navigating his way through the region, Trump will mingle calls for peace with declarations of power, including the ability to “destroy” North Korea if the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, shows signs of making good on his more bizarre threats.
To Xi, however, such loose rhetoric also threatens Chinese interests elsewhere. He is not going to agree with American claims of the right of US warships to go anywhere they wish in the South China Sea. Nor will he compromise on Japanese claims to those islands in the East China Sea known to the Japanese as the Senkaku and to the Chinese as Diaoyu.
A Terminal High Altitude Area Defence interceptor is launched from a THAAD battery located on Wake Island in the western Pacific. Photo: EPA-EFE / US Missile Defence Agency
Listening to Trump’s assurances of goodwill, however, might Xi relent on his strenuous objections to South Korea accepting a US battery known as the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence? Might Trump persuade Xi that China has punished South Korea enough for the sin of hosting THAAD, which the Americans and South Koreans insist is to shoot down high-flying North Korean missiles, not to menace China?
If Trump can talk Xi into passive acquiescence on THAAD, then his mission to Beijing will have been a success.
Donald Kirk is the author of three books and numerous articles on Korea
