How Asia Learned to Live With “America First” |
Western Europe is reeling in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s transactionalism, unilateralism, and unpredictability. U.S. allies on the continent have bristled at an American president unsentimental about decades-long alliances and uninterested in the storied history of transatlantic cooperation. In Berlin, Madrid, Paris, and other western European capitals, leaders are either struggling to manage the risk posed by an antagonistic leader in Washington or deferring any hard choices about how to adapt in the hope that a more friendly successor takes office in 2028.
Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand are also wary of Trump. But the United States’ Asian allies have been far less pessimistic than their European counterparts. They see risks, too, but they are also focused on realizing unique opportunities that are emerging from the disruption that Trump is causing. By accepting the Trump administration’s “America first” approach, the United States’ Asian allies believe they can obtain special benefits, such as stronger security guarantees and collaboration in sectors including artificial intelligence and critical minerals processing.
Asian allies’ willingness to work with Trump on his terms is rooted in a sense of vulnerability that European allies neither feel nor understand. U.S. allies in Asia must deal with a unique threat from China, which is an economic superpower that possesses Asia’s most formidable military and eyes a return to regional preeminence. The presence of the United States and the security that it can provide is the only check that these states have against Chinese dominance. They are willing to take unequal deals from Washington because they know that taking orders from Beijing is far worse. Countries in western Europe, by contrast, have been outwardly disdainful of American power and culture, unwilling to recognize that many of the changes in Washington are the product of shifting structural realities rather than the president’s whim. It no longer makes sense for the United States to allow western Europe’s outsize role in defining the rules and norms of the global order because rising powers such as China are exploiting these rules and norms at the United States’ expense.
The divergence in attitudes between Asia and Europe has shaped the two continents’ respective abilities to handle Trump and the world he has wrought. Major allies in western Europe—especially Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain—were caught flat-footed when the United States turned away from a selfless and benign internationalism. Washington’s Asian allies, in contrast, were ready. Asian governments are looking at the world as it is, whereas western European ones still see the world as it once was—or how they wish it were. In a world increasingly shaped by Chinese power, the willingness of U.S. allies in Asia to deal with Washington is likely to make them stronger and more secure than European powers will be.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, western Europe has enjoyed a peace dividend. Countries in this region have acted as though they do not have any serious security or existential threats. Even after Russian President Vladimir Putin embarked on his westward expansion, beginning with the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, in 2014, major powers in western Europe were reluctant to invest in their own security. From 2014 to 2019, according to data collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, defense spending as a share of GDP in the four largest military spenders in continental western Europe—Germany, France, Italy, and Spain—remained largely stagnant. Spending grew slowly after 2019; only after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine did these countries start to seriously address the need to build up their defenses.
Instead of investing in their militaries, western European countries have prioritized their vast welfare states. They spend more than many other countries on programs such as pensions, health care, unemployment benefits, and disability payments. In 2024, according to estimates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain spent 27.9 percent, 30.6 percent, 27.6 percent, and 25.9 percent of GDP, respectively, on public social spending. The average among members of the OECD, which includes 38 high- and middle-income countries committed to democracy and free markets, was 21.2 percent of GDP. If leading western European powers are to meet their defense commitments—Germany plans to spend 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense by 2029—they will need to reduce their social spending. But there is no clear evidence yet that they are planning to do so.
Western European countries have been able to prioritize welfare over security because they are insulated from direct threats. They are shielded by the territorial buffer of eastern Europe and by the institutional buffer of NATO, which obliges the world’s sole superpower, the United States, to defend their borders. Safe in its bubble, the region has come to see itself as the custodian of a civilized and stable post–World War II order.
Western European countries have prioritized welfare over security.
Despite the size of its economy, Europe is not a major security provider. It exports norms, standards, rules, and laws because of its central role in international institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the United Nations and because the European Union represents one of the world’s largest markets in terms of GDP and purchasing power. There is even a term—“the Brussels effect”—to describe the power of European regulations to spread beyond the continent’s borders. When European officials and experts visit Asia, they emphasize that Europe is a normative and regulatory........