By Dinh Hoang Thang , Fellow the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism
Busan — a city that smells of salt and ocean water, once defined by tides and trade — suddenly found itself at the center of a geopolitical storm. Before arriving here, Donald Trump had stopped in Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo. Five days, three capitals (October 26–30): what seemed like a restless shuttle across Asia turned out to be a cartography of power. Did the history of East Asia just quietly turn a new page?
I. A Journey Writting a Message
Trump’s travels were no ordinary tour. The trip implemented a strategy , scripted in three acts: beginning in Kuala Lumpur — the symbolic heart of ASEAN; moved to Tokyo — the setting of a revived alliance; and ended in Busan — where two superpowers tested each other’s resolve.
The sequence mattered. Southeast Asia is not an audience, but part of the stage. Japan is no longer just an ally, but a co-architect of global order. And Busan — that sea-wrapped arena — became host to the acting out of raw, transactional power.
In Kuala Lumpur, ASEAN — once derided as a “talking club” — suddenly looked relevant. Small nations, through the art of flexible diplomacy, managed to engage both Washington and Beijing, bargaining for space, investment, and having a voice in an age of tightening rivalry.
In Tokyo, Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae, heir to former Prime Minister Abe’s strategic realism, met Trump to discuss supply chains, defense, and technological autonomy. The U.S.–Japan alliance is no longer built only on deterrence; it now rests on industrial and technological power — an alliance of determinative capability.
And finally, in Busan, amid jet engine thrusts and the scent of the sea, Trump and Xi met in a modest room — no red carpets, no choreographed grandeur. What unfolded was a minimalist drama of power: an interim detente, not a peace; a truce defined by interests, not ideals.
II. Japan’s New Doctrine and the Shape of a Regional Order
Shinzo Abe planted the seeds of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.” Takaichi Sanae is harvesting them — with less rhetoric and more resolve. Her ambition is transparent: boost defense spending, anchor security cooperation with the U.S., and weave industrial links with India, Australia, and South Korea. This is Abe 2.0 — democratic, assertive, and determined to keep East Asia’s future from being written by Beijing.
With Trump’s pragmatic America back in play, Tokyo understands that autonomy is the new loyalty. Instead of sheltering under Washington’s security umbrella, Japan needs its own raincoat — rebuilding semiconductor industries, advancing clean energy, and reimagining its role in regional supply chains. The Abe–Takaichi doctrine turns ideals into instruments: from “rules-based order” to “capabilities-based alliances.”
III. Busan: When Two Worlds Talk in Calculus
After months of tariff battles, tech bans, and rare-earth restrictions, both Trump and Xi needed a breather. The outcome was a temporary armistice: Washington eased some tariffs; Beijing resumed U.S. soybean imports and pledged to rein in fentanyl exports. But beneath the smiles, the calculation was cold-hearted.
Trump needed stability heading into an election year. Xi needed calm to sustain his authority at home and preserve his face internationally. Each leader stepped back a few inches — without abandoning a single trenchline.
The U.S.–China rivalry has entered a new phase: managed competition. The conflict has evolved from a trade war to a war of standards — over chips, AI, finance, and energy. Two gravitational systems now coexist: not colliding, not converging, but circling in uneasy proximity. Like twin planets in an imperfect orbit, they offset the pull of — and so limit — each other’s orbit.
IV. ASEAN Awakens: From Playing Field to Power Hub
One quiet happening during Trump’s journey was the awakening of ASEAN. As Air Force One touched down in Kuala Lumpur, Southeast Asia ceased to be a corridor between superpowers and began to act as a hinge of strategic consequence.
ASEAN’s new realism lies in “neutral pragmatism.” Its members — Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, among others — are mastering the art of balance: welcoming investment, keeping dialogue open, and leveraging great-power rivalry to augment self-reliant autonomy.
Neutrality no longer means passivity. It’s an art of motion, not a state of immobility — the ability to maneuver between forces without being crushed. If sustained, that agility could transform ASEAN from a passive zone into a dynamic geoeconomic contributor to a multi-polar world.
V. Vietnam: From Insecure Wariness to Self-Reliant Confidence
Vietnam stands at the confluence of two currents: commerce and security strategy. The temporary U.S.–China détente offers a breathing space — stable trade, redirected investment, supply-chain realignment — but of uncertain duration. A single tariff tweak in Washington or a military move by Beijing in the South China Sea could upend it overnight.
Vietnam’s survival strategy must therefore be double-tracked: pragmatic in action, visionary in thought.
Pragmatism means infrastructure reform, institutional modernization, human-capital investment, and advances in logistics and semiconductors — the bloodstream feeding the new global economy.
Vision means redefining “self-reliance” not through isolation, but through innovation; not by avoiding conflict, but by shaping cooperation.
“Self-reliance” today is not a slogan but a system — the ability to shift from low-cost manufacturing to high-value creation, from export dependency to endogenous value chains.
As global powers race to secure chips and critical minerals, Vietnam must secure and refine its most precious resource: people — their education, creativity, and freedom – to shape the counry’s future.
Vietnam’s strength has never been about size. It lies in self-definition — the capacity to carve a very purposeful identity and design an innovative strategy amid flux.
VI. East Asia: A Quiet Reshaping of Order
Trump’s five-day tour did not shake the earth with thunder. But it did trigger some quiet tectonic movements. The regional order is morphing from black-and-white confrontation to a spectrum of pragmatic competition. Japan grows firmer, South Korea more adaptive, ASEAN more flexible, and China more cautious.
This is not the collapse of an old order but the reconfiguration of one — an emerging, networked, interdependent Indo-Pacific, built less on declarations and more on interlocking actions.
The new order cannot yet neutralize Beijing’s ambitions, but it has birthed a chain reaction: middle powers linking up, industrial alliances forming, technology partnerships expanding, preventive diplomacy taking root. A soft multipolarity is emerging — not of rival empires, but of complementary capabilities.
VII. Busan: Mirror or Gateway?
From the salty winds of Busan rises an image of contemporary East Asia — a mirror in which every nation can see itself: its possibilities, its limits. Trump’s five-day voyage did not redraw borders, but it stirred currents that may erode the old shorelines of certainty.
East Asia is entering a new phase — one of mid-sized powers asserting agency, of profitable alignments replacing rigid blocs, of competition measured not in ideology but in competence.
Vietnam, poised in the storm’s eye, has a choice: to shrink and dodge — or to reach and redefine.
In an age when power resides less in missiles or money than in ideas and intellect, any meaningful rise of Vietnam to take advantage of the new order will begin not with muscle power, but with heart/mind power – the freedom to think and the courage to create.
Trump’s five-day odyssey was but a moment. Yet history often turns on such moments — quietly, but profoundly.