Canberra braces for turmoil in the region

The Albanese government is bracing for a more unstable Indo-Pacific under president-elect Donald Trump, amid fears his demand for an end to the Ukraine war could embolden Xi Jinping’s ambitions to take Taiwan.

Former US president Donald Trump with China's President Xi Jinping during a 2017 visit to Beijing. Picture: AFP

The Albanese government is ­bracing for a more unstable Indo-Pacific under president-elect Donald Trump, amid fears his demand for an end to the war in Ukraine could embolden Xi Jinping’s ambitions to take Taiwan.

As regional leaders scramble to assess the impact of the seismic US election result, experts warned Mr Trump’s trade threats, transactional style and fondness for dictators would upend international norms once again.

With the Trump 2.0 administration likely to be even more hawkish than his first on China, analysts said Australia would have to work with allies including Japan to drive home the need for continued US support for Taiwan.

Former Australian ambassador to the US Dennis Richardson said if Mr Trump “pulled the rug out from under Ukraine”, as many feared, it would have “massive” implications for Taiwan.

“It would unquestionably encourage China to think more aggressively in respect of Taiwan,” Mr Richardson said. “Whether it would lead to them doing anything outright, I don’t know. But it would certainly lead to a more aggressive posture by China.”

United States Studies Centre chief executive Mike Green said such a move would “embolden both China and North Korea”.

“The Japanese have been very clear about that. Australia, not as much,” Dr Green said. “So, I predict the Japanese will be coming to Australia and saying, ‘We need to make this point’.”

Lowy Institute’s senior fellow for East Asia, Richard McGregor, said: “We’re looking at a period of unpredictability, which can be easily turned into instability.”

Mr McGregor said the Chinese never worked out how to deal with the mercurial leader during his first term, and the relationship was likely to be fraught once again. But he said it was possible Beijing could try to do a deal with Mr Trump, such as offering to set up car plants in the US, to take the sting out of his threatened 60 tariff hike on Chinese goods.

Mr McGregor said it was unclear how Mr Trump would react to a crisis in the South China Sea or over Taiwan, “but if China does something which he thinks humiliates him or humiliates the US, then it’s quite possible he would respond”.

In a flurry of media appearances on Thursday, Penny Wong said the Australia-US alliance was “bigger than any individual”. “We are confident of our ability to continue to navigate these times,” the Foreign Minister said.

But the opposition warned there were serious questions over the future of Australia’s Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd, who drew attention to past disparaging comments about Mr Trump by announcing he had erased them from his X account.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said the government would have to make a “clear-eyed assessment” over Dr Rudd’s future. He said the Coalition wanted to see Mr Rudd succeed, but warned: “No one person is bigger than Australia’s national interest.”

As Australia’s diplomatic and national security establishment prepares to deal with the new administration, Mr Richardson - a former head of the departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs - warned it was vital that officials “don’t allow their personal views of Trump to get the better of their professional judgments”.