Opinion | US President Trump faces tough talks and disparate challenges on first trip to Asia
North Korea likely to loom large on agenda as Trump travels to five nations and attends two regional summits
The White House has confirmed that US President Donald Trump is set to make his third large presidential foreign trip. This time, he will travel to Asia for the usual rounds of November summits, in addition to more than a few tense bilateral meetings with allied leaders who have grown increasingly concerned about US policy towards the Korean peninsula.
From November 3 to 14, Trump will travel to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and stop over in Hawaii on his way back. While in Asia, in addition to his bilateral meetings, Trump will participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit (and its associated meetings).
The agenda in Asia, from the perspective of the White House, is relatively simple: emphasise the administration’s “America First” priorities on trade and win assurances from regional leaders that they will rein in North Korea.
But this trip will be anything but simple. Perhaps the overriding task for Trump’s trip will be assuring Japan and South Korea of a coherent strategy towards dealing with the problem of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes while also reassuring them of ongoing US extended deterrence commitments.
The “decoupling” cat came out of the bag earlier over the summer, when North Korea twice showed its intercontinental-range ballistic missile capabilities. We have already seen bilateral US-Japan and US-South Korea statements draw attention to the sustainment of extended deterrence commitments in the age of the North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile.