Trump 2.0 shock forces Japan and Korea to consider where they stand in the world

Japan and South Korea are struggling to comprehend and manage the impact of the second Trump administration, which threatens to upend the international arrangements which have secured their security and prosperity since the 1950s.

Both are at high risk under the new US approach. Yet this is not a good time for either country to be facing major international challenges.

South Korea remains embroiled in domestic turmoil induced by President Yoon Suk-yeol’s bizarre decision to declare martial law on 3 December. He faces impeachment (with a verdict due any day) and a separate insurrection trial with a potential sentence of life imprisonment or even death.

Yoon Suk Yeol at the 6th hearing of impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court on Feburary 7, 2025. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The crisis is polarizing the Korean electorate and putting severe strain on its democratic institutions. Acting President Choi Sang-mok, notionally in charge, is a little-known caretaker figure from whom President Trump has not yet deigned to take a phone call. It is unclear who in Seoul would make decisions in the event of an international crisis tomorrow. 

With Kim Jong Un emboldened by his budding relationship with Russia and rising stock of nuclear weapons and missiles, South Korea has good reason for concern. President Trump’s keenness to renew his ‘beautiful friendship’ with Kim, and his rhetoric undermining US commitment to allies, has shifted the risk in Seoul’s eyes from invasion to blackmail. Like NATO members, South Korea and Japan are both being forced to reconsider whether the US would really come to their aid in an emergency - and whether it would be prepared to use its nuclear deterrent to do so.

Japan, normally a bastion of stability in international politics, is embroiled in a messy political transition of its own – though in a more restrained Japanese way (there are no demonstrators on the streets of Tokyo).   

After nearly a decade of strong leadership under former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has crumbled in face of a rumbling scandal about political funding, the collapse of its faction system, and weak leadership. Badly bruised in elections last November, Prime Minister Ishiba has plugged on as a leader of a minority government but faces internal dissent and a difficult Upper House election in July. Meanwhile Japan’s opposition has re-emerged as a more dynamic force, deploying new social media tools and galvanizing younger voters. Ishiba is struggling even to pass a budget, reliant on pulling together support from minor parties. From government by decision under Abe, Japan has shifted to government by negotiation. Ejecting the LDP from government altogether, unthinkable for the last decade, is now a realistic prospect.

The abrupt change in direction of US policy is a massive shock for both Korea and Japan. While much of his attention has been focused on Europe and the Americas, Trump’s recent comments on Japan and Korea have not been encouraging. Early this month he said he “loves” Japan, but complained that Japan had made a “fortune” out of the US. While the alliance ensured the US protected Japan, Japan had no obligation to protect the US.  Korea in turn was “unfair to the US – militarily and in other ways”.  

Officials in both countries are reacting with anxiety and alarm.  

The US and South Korea have a long shared military history. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Both support the continuation of the rules-based order, even as they worry it may barely exist any more. For the moment the approach of both countries can be summed up as hide, plan and wait:  avoid being an immediate target of US action; nevertheless plan that they will be; and wait to determine when to execute their response plan.

Trump’s shock treatment seems to be working already – to the extent of forcing Japan and Korea to upgrade their own self-reliance. Ishiba has committed to “dramatically bolster our defense capabilities…with the fundamental goal of deterring an invasion of Japan by possessing the capabilities needed to prevent or repel an invasion of Japan on our own.”  Achieving this would amount to a major reversal of Japan’s post-war dependence on US deterrence. 

Elbridge Colby, nominated to be Undersecretary for Policy at the Defense Department, told a Senate hearing earlier this month that he supports handing operational control of US forces on the peninsula to South Korea in war time – a shift long sought by South Korea but resisted to date by Pentagon bosses. 

Doubts about the strength of the US’ commitment are already driving explicit debates about going nuclear – overtly in Korea, more quietly in Japan.

The ‘planning’ of both countries is likely to involve looking beyond the US for support.

The trilateral cooperation between the US, Japan and Korea that Biden and Yoon had worked hard to establish is now in tatters.   The pendulum is now likely to swing instead to reviving another trilateral relationship – that between China, Korea and Japan. The three foreign ministers have been quick off the mark, meeting met in Tokyo last weekend.  

Ishiba appears to be inching in the direction of warmer ties with China.

In Korea, progressive leader Lee Jae-myung, a firm favourite to win the presidency if Yoon is impeached, is likely to tilt closer to China. In February he sent a close ally, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik, to Beijing where he met Xi Jinping.

Bilateral alliances with the US have been the foundation of security policy for both countries since the 1950s. Officials are now having to consider the possibility of a dramatic realignment of that order, though perhaps in slower time than in Europe.

For Seoul,  North Korea presents an escalating double jeopardy: the risk of a direct attack on the South while simultaneously testing and perhaps undermining the US alliance.  

Japan and Korea also face stark challenges on trade. Both run large trade surpluses with the US ($66 billion in Korea and $57 billion in Japan). The risk is compounded by US threats to count non-tariff barriers, local taxes and currency levels as grounds for tariff aggression. 

Trump at the signing of the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement and U.S.-Japan Digital Trade Agreement during his first term in 2019. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Early signs are that, rather than retaliation or seeking to work in solidarity with others, both countries are likely to respond in a low-key way to US tariff threats by seeking customized exemptions, cushioning the damage through domestic subsidies and tax support for business, and bribing Trump with investment and technology. Japan has promised to increase its direct investment into the US to USD1 trillion. Korea boasts that it already provides the largest FDI into the US. Both countries have responded with interest to a proposed gas pipeline with Alaska.

Above all, both countries fear the broader risk to the cherished rules-based system – and what its demise may mean for the G7/OECD community of liberal democratic values. In a world of spheres of influence, where will Japan and Korea stand?

The best scenario is one in which the views of Elbridge Colby and other policy experts in Washington prevail – whereby the US tilts away from Europe in order to better confront China, and sees Japan and Korea as continuing useful allies in that endeavour.

But that scenario implies a degree of policy coherence and consistency that the president himself has yet to display. His famed unpredictability is more likely to force Japan and Korea to explore new relationships as a hedge against US unreliability. A US/China deal of the sort Trump muses about would only deepen the anxiety in Seoul and Tokyo.   

Two broad scenarios can be sketched. In the first, Japan and Korea seek to deepen relationships with European and other aligned nations (think Canada/Australia/New Zealand) as part of a West-minus-one approach, and/or with other near-neighbours of China such as  India, ASEAN and Australia. This could well involve strengthening small-group middle-power diplomacy – perhaps building on initiatives such as the Quad and the Indo-Pacific Four. PM Ishiba has already mused about some form of  ‘Asian NATO’.

Yet the unavoidable weakness of this approach is that there is no immediate substitute for US military power and deterrence. Self-reliance will take time to build and may never be enough for either country to feel secure on its own, even with a nuclear add-on.  That may drive leaders in both countries to consider a second scenario where they seek to mitigate their security risk and bolster economic ties through some degree of accommodation with China – accepting roles as respectful, but wary neighbours, seeking to preserve their independence and democratic values in a China-dominated sphere.

Banner image: Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba with US President Trump in February 2025. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Asia Media Centre