China’s recent live-fire naval exercises in the Tasman Sea have alerted Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Island states of Beijing’s growing military power and its ability to deploy military force outside of the South China Sea. This projection of hard power has been augmented by a series of China-Pacific Island pacts that caught Australian and New Zealand policymakers off balance.
At the same time, the new Trump administration in the United States has embarked on a chaotic and seemingly contradictory foreign policy that impacts regional policymakers’ perceptions of the reliability of U.S. security assurances and arrangements. The administration’s policy has involved tariffs that undermine international trade rules, sequestration of foreign aid, and the promotion of neoconservative nationalist parties in other countries, coupled with the usual Trump bombast.
In recent days, the usual theatrics, threats, and apparent policy chaos were exacerbated by the live argument between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the quality of the Russian threat. The United States subsequently suspended support for Ukraine. Washington and Kyiv have apparently patched things up since, but the damage to perceptions of U.S. reliability was done. These policies have given pause to Indo-Pacific policymakers as they seek ways to protect their national interests against the new Trumpian “America First” caprice.
The Trump administration has demonstrated a robust disregard of established norms and relationships. Yet the United States cannot sustain its foreign policy objectives and influence in the Indo-Pacific with only hard power or material inducements to other states. This is particularly evident where many states in the region have China as their major trading and investment partner. China itself is cultivating its own soft power based on attraction to Chinese culture, the Chinese model of development, and its call for a “new type of great power relations” that is framed as Pan-Asian and “anti-colonial.”
U.S. economic influence has declined across the region and across the globe generally. According to the Lowy Institute, before 2000, over 80 percent of the world’s countries traded with the U.S. more than they did with China, but by 2018 that number had dropped sharply to just 30 percent. Today, China is the main trading partner in 128 of 193 U.N. member countries. After the first Trump administration rejected the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Biden administration remained unwilling to open the U.S. market to Asia-Pacific exporters. Moreover, U.S. military capacities, despite the “pivot to Asia” remain dependent on a string of external bases and foreign assistance that could prove problematic for host countries should a conflict arise with China over Taiwan or the South China Sea. As such, the United States’ economic and military situation needs a strong alliance and trade system that proffers cooperation and development, self-determination, and liberal values.
The Importance of Soft Power
Power comes in many forms and contexts. In international relations there has often been a focus on material or hard power such as military capabilities and economic power. Yet even these elements are supported by other less tangible “soft power” factors based on the attractiveness of a state’s culture, political and social ideals, and policies. These cultural, social, and normative factors contribute to inter-societal social capital and have become a source of influence for states across the globe. Soft power reaches beyond the strict calculations of policymakers to influence and impact civil society. Included in this idea is the belief that a state’s leadership has empathy with another state’s particular concerns as well as a presumption that foreign instruments and state power will not be wholly used for unilateral advantage. An important component of soft power is that state action should be seen as ethically and legally legitimate.
The United States’ “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategy is constructed upon three fundamental pillars – security, economy, and governance – all of which are dependent upon a robust soft power. U.S. security arrangements (alliances and partnerships) in the Indo-Pacific are less entrenched and more dependent upon the overall strength of the bilateral relationship. Many of these states, such as Malaysia, Vietnam, and New Zealand have reservations about a greater U.S. presence in the region as well as the increased polarization of the region. For example, the New Zealand Labor Party, which had been open to having New Zealand join Pillar II of AUKUS, has come out against the pact. Similarly, the Philippines’ recent rapprochement with the United States may not last beyond the next Philippine election given former President Rodrigo Duterte’s pro-China tilt and the possibility that his daughter may win the next presidential election. Making matters worse, even long-standing U.S. allies such as Japan have not been exempt from Trumpian complaints. On February 7, Trump complained that Japan is not required to protect the United States militarily and makes “a fortune” economically from the United States.
The Biden administration renewed security ties across the region. However, Trump’s rhetoric, transactional approach to foreign policy and disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty has re-energized anti-American and anti-Western sentiments. These sentiments are widespread across the region and readily accepted by many people. In the Pacific Islands, for instance, anti-American sentiment has long been driven by Washington’s disregard for self-determination in American Samoa and Guam, and more recently by U.S. threats to prohibit assistance to certain countries that do not recognize Taiwan, including Solomon Islands and Kiribati. The challenges to U.S. soft power are complicated in the Pacific islands by AUKUS, which many Pacific Island states consider to be contrary to the regional nuclear-free aspirations of the 1985 Rarotonga Treaty. With the Trump administration now effectively ending all foreign aid, perceptions of a unilateral, military-first U.S. policy toward the region will be cemented.
On the economic front, the unwillingness of the United States to open its market has undermined U.S. rhetoric and credibility as a major player in the Indo-Pacific. Trump has compounded this problem with his implementation of reciprocal tariffs and the targeting of various steel and aluminum exporters, including levies on allies and partners such Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and India. Trump seems to enjoy flaunting WTO rules and embraces mercantilist economic national discourse that has been widely used since the 1930s.
The economic impacts – such as inflation, weakened currencies and nationalist backlash against U.S. products in the general population as well as the retaliatory tariffs implemented by other states – weaken the overall economic environment while not advancing any recognizable U.S. foreign policy objective. Moreover, it creates a disconnect with U.S. claims that it is a Pacific nation that, according to the U.S. Department of State, “not only shares the same values as its neighbors; it understands their hopes and aspirations – and seeks to assist the peoples and nations of the Pacific as they strive to realize them.”
Perhaps most damaging to the U.S. soft power has been the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement with the concomitant embrace of fossil fuels, and the suspension of 90 percent of funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). These organizations and agreements have epitomized regional values related to governance, health, and self-determination.
The United States provides $500 million to the WHO, and the withdrawal of funding will impact states, including many Pacific Island states, that rely on external financial assistance to maintain their public health systems. As noted by Samoan Director General of Health Aiono Dr. Alec Ekeroma “I’m afraid that with the U.S. withdrawing from WHO, it will affect us financially in terms of assistance provided to us. That’s why I’m not happy.”
Climate change is considered to be an existential threat by Pacific Island states and it is widely believed across the region that a failure to address the crisis is both a moral failure and an abdication of state responsibility. Trump again withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement on January 26, 2025. As noted by Vanuatu Attorney General Arnold Loughman, the withdrawal from the agreement was a “troubling precedent” and “bad behavior” that would have grave consequences in the region. Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape reminded the United States, “There is a moral responsibility by each global leader to think from the global perspective instead of from their own national-interest perspective.”
The Trump administration’s decision to eliminate more than 90 percent of USAID funding will also have enormous detrimental impacts on the Pacific Islands region, which is one of the most aid-dependent regions in the world. USAID is not without controversy – in the Solomon Islands, it was accused of seeking to influence the presidential election – but it also funds health projects such as efforts to combat tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV. The abrupt withdrawal of funding will have material impacts on people’s lives and intensify polarization in the region. As noted by Steven Ratuva, director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury “the U.S. reputation in the Pacific is already poor” and with the U.S. withdrawal of aid from the region, “China’s place will be easier to secure.” The broader picture is even more troubling for U.S. power, as small states and civil societies will have less normative and cultural affinity with the United States.
Finally, on a rhetorical level, the great power mentality in the “America First” policy erodes U.S. soft power. An emphasis on transactional foreign policy premised on an apparent zero-sum logic provides little room for the operation of soft power values and disregards traditional U.S. policy-settings in the Asia-Pacific. This was evident in Trump’s March 4 speech before Congress listing a number of allegedly wasteful and “woke” projects funded by USAID. Canvassing a list of projects, Trump dismissively noted that USAID had funded “$47 million for improving learning outcomes in Asia. Asia is doing very well with learning. You know what we’re doing? Should use it ourselves.” Nevertheless, promotion of values important to civil society, as noted by former President Bill Clinton, is “not charity” but rather in U.S. interests. Where there is disregard for values, grievances, and a sense of injustice, the potential for instability or extremism arises.
Soft power requires a state to undertake certain activities that provide for the common good or are, in some sense, not divisible. It requires an appreciation of history as experienced by other states and societies. The blatant disregard for international sentiment and law (such as Trump’s proposal to expel Palestinians from Gaza) impacts the perceptions of small states and democratic states in a manner that undermines U.S. policy objectives in the region. Small states need to be concerned about whether their interests and sovereignty will be ignored by great power machinations. In the Indo-Pacific, this involves a recognition of how the region has been impacted by colonialism over the past 150 years. Democratic states, such as Australia, are confronted with the notion that ideological affinity, a commitment to freer trade and democratic norms that previously served as an underlying basis of collective engagement with the United States, is less important or no longer matters.
Abraham Lincoln believed that you succeed when you treat others as friends and not as enemies: “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason.” Without friends and allies in the Indo-Pacific, U.S. objectives cannot be sustained. U.S. military, economic and technological strength are not enough; these relationships are underpinned by a common cultural, normative, and social frame that has made the United States an attractive partner to many states in the region. Regardless of how Indo-Pacific states adjust to recent U.S. policies and rhetoric, their impact will degrade U.S. soft power across the region.
