Expert Mina Pollmann wrote a policy brief for the Centre of Security, Diplomacy and Strategy concerning the unpredictability of US foreign policy under President Donald Trump 2.0 and Japanese and South Korean responses to this uncertainty. This CSDS Policy Brief has been produced in collaboration with The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, as part of the PROGRESS 3.0 project.
Key issues
- Japan and South Korea both have higher abandonment concerns, are facing greater burden-sharing pressure and are diplomatically diversifying;
- Japan’s entrapment concerns are lower than South Korea’s because Japan sees defending Taiwan as more in its own interest than South Korea does;
- The United States’ (US) unpredictability accelerates trends in Japan towards investing more in its own self-defence, and South Korea’s reaction to the US administration is constrained by the North Korean threat.
