The Allies Who Cannot Afford to Quit America
· Time
These are not easy days for America’s allies. From Europe to the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific, security partners of the United States are treading carefully, fearful of antagonizing President Donald Trump, who has cast Washington’s closest allies as freeloaders, slapped them with steep tariffs, and even questioned the sovereignty of some allies with outlandish claims.
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Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Asia-Pacific. The region may appear more stable compared to Europe or the Middle East, but it is anything but placid: a rising China is pressing for greater influence in a region where American primacy—and that of its allies—once went largely unchallenged.
As if to underscore this point, China chose July 6—the day before the NATO summit began in Ankara—to test and fire a long-range ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine, which landed in the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone. The launch of a missile capable of reaching the continental U.S. drew attention to China’s massive military buildup and its growing capacity to threaten American cities should Washington come to the aid of regional allies in a conflict with Beijing. The missile test may be a demonstration of China’s new capability, but it is also a reminder of a longstanding threat.
Washington and several U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific criticized the “irresponsible” test. Still, the episode reinforced allies’ longstanding concerns about the effectiveness and reliability of the U.S. security guarantees to deter an ever more powerful China. What are American allies and partners supposed to do about it? The answers vary across the region, but every answer points toward a stronger American role.
Unease in the Asia-Pacific
There is no equivalent of NATO in Asia. The security arrangements in the region have been based primarily on the hub and spoke system that Washington created after World War II, when it signed alliance treaties with the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. The U.S. also signed a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan, but it is not an ally the way others are. However, these American allies—the spokes—did not necessarily have defense obligations to each other. All of these countries, to varying degrees, rely on U.S. assurances to deter China from using its military muscle to impose its will on them and the broader region.
Nearly every Asian capital has by now grown less certain that Washington will honor those commitments if put to the test. And while Trump does not tend to rant against Asian allies as he does against NATO partners, this offers little comfort to Asian capitals. Some read it as a sign that Washington doesn’t care enough even to get worked up over them. These anxieties are magnified by other changes, even subtle ones. Many worry that the Trump Administration may pivot away from the region, given its prioritization of U.S. homeland security and the Western Hemisphere. The Pentagon’s decision to rename the Indo-Pacific Command by dropping “Indo” further signals a pivot away from the region.
The Iran war has only deepened this fear. The U.S. redeployment of missile-defense interceptors from South Korea to the Middle East stung Seoul. Allies and partners worry that promised arms shipments may not arrive on time, as the war burns through U.S. stockpiles and Washington prioritizes its own military requirements. Some have stepped up to build their own weapons and are contributing to America’s war supplies. Australia fired its first domestically built guided rockets at a test range in April, while Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are setting up new production lines for missiles of their own.
This strategy of arming up while working hard to keep the U.S. close is not new. A series of reports by the International Crisis Group on military modernization across the region traces how some of Washington’s Asian allies and partners have been following a similar playbook for several years now. Only now, they have stronger incentives.
Japan offers the most dramatic case of structural change in its defense sector. Since 1967, Tokyo had kept defense spending under 1% of GDP. That ceiling is gone now, and Tokyo is on track to reach 2% ahead of the 2027 target set by a previous government in 2022. It has purchased American missiles that can reach the Chinese mainland, the first such weapons it has owned since 1945. Japan plans to spend up to $100 billion over five years on stockpiling ammunition, maintenance, and hardening military bases across its archipelago.
The rearmament effort predates Trump’s second term, but pressure from Washington has only added momentum. Tokyo’s purchase of Tomahawk missiles from the U.S., along with the new indigenous long-range munitions it is producing, would still rely on U.S. targeting data to be used effectively.
Japan is also stepping up its diplomacy with other regional players, as necessary in a period of American retrenchment and amid growing tensions with China over Taiwan. In recent months, Tokyo has hosted leaders from Canada, France, India, Italy, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. Sanae Takaichi, the Japanese prime minister, has traveled to Vietnam and Australia, among other countries, to promote and “upgrade” Shinzo Abe’s idea of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” a strategy to counter China that emphasizes pragmatic economic security, strategic supply chain, energy resilience, and proactiveness.
South Korea has vowed to increase its defense spending from 2.3% of its GDP to as much as 3.6% and has earned praise from Washington as a “model ally.” Seoul’s contribution runs through its factories. It has become one of the world's largest arms exporters, with its tanks and howitzers topping up the European stocks that the war in Ukraine has emptied. Those sales fund Seoul’s own defense modernization and serve as a source of global influence, though the government shows relatively little appetite for a wider regional diplomatic role.
Seoul is also considering its options for confronting North Korea’s nuclear advancement. Discussions of nuclearization, once nearly taboo, have entered mainstream discourse, although its prospects remain theoretical, in the medium term, leaving South Korea reliant on the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
Australia, having made its largest-ever defense investment on nuclear-propelled submarines through the AUKUS (Australia–U.K.–U.S.) partnership established in 2021, continues to bet on getting closer to the U.S. rather than becoming more independent of it. Canberra recognizes that Washington is recalibrating its commitments to its allies, but it sees no substitute for American military support. To become a more capable partner, Australia has pledged to raise its defense spending from 2% of GDP at the moment to 3% by the mid-2030s; expand production lines for its own guided weapons; and allow the U.S. to build a war-ready weapons store on its east coast, out of range of Chinese missiles, and to invest in naval facilities capable of servicing nuclear submarines of allied forces.
Despite declining trust in President Trump, Canberra holds on to the alliance. It harbors no illusions about the limits of the capabilities it is developing compared with the ones that its adversaries have: its 2026 National Defense Strategy states plainly that the American security umbrella remains “fundamental.”
The Philippines has a smaller defense budget, as a share of its economy, than almost any other American ally in Asia. The country lacks the industrial base to build significant productive capacity. So Manila draws on its strategic position, its geographical proximity to Taiwan and the Chinese mainland—a fact even Trump recognized in his particular manner, describing the Philippines as "the most prime piece of real estate from a military standpoint."
Manila has expanded access for U.S. troops from five to nine bases and allowed the U.S. military to place Typhon missile launchers on Luzon, an island at the northern end of the country, which offers them the range to reach the Chinese coast. It is also cultivating ties with Japan and Australia.
No plan but America
Even though every Asian ally is handling American unpredictability in its own way, guided by its own security contexts and domestic politics, their strategies have certain things in common. They are all reaching out to build stronger connections among other “spokes,” and beyond, with outside partners like Europe. The clearest evidence of this is that Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand have now become regular participants of the NATO summits, despite not being members.
Yet this active hedging won’t replace the alliance with America. It is meant to complement it. Asian allies focus on demonstrating their value as partners to Washington in hopes of ensuring that the U.S. presence in the region stays intact. This persistent reliance on a variable they cannot control is being described as the “no-plan-B” dilemma.
For America’s Asian allies, continued U.S. presence in the region remains the most effective deterrent against what they see as the threat of Chinese hegemony. They see the investments they are making in higher defense budgets, weapons factories, and the careful management of Trump’s moods as the price of keeping this tool within reach.
Strategic autonomy may be a popular idea, but for now, most of the America’s Asian allies see it as a distant prospect, whereas the threats they need to deter are clear and present. And so the question of whether to keep making these investments may not be much of a dilemma after all.