The following is Walden Bello’s recollection of his extemporaneous remarks at the Conference on the Second Trump Administration and Southeast Asia that was held at the Columbia School of Journalism on March 27, 2025.

Columbia University: front line of political conflict

It is not every day that one finds oneself on the frontlines of political conflict, such as that in which Columbia University finds itself with the Trump administration. I can relate to the feelings that many of you have today, being confused and bewildered by the moves of the administration. I can relate to the feeling that due process is being violated with impunity by Trump. During the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, we also had that same sense of due process being violated with impunity and that there was nothing we could do to stop Duterte from subjecting thousands of people to extrajudicial execution. I am horrified by the assault on free speech, the arbitrary detention of the Palestinian activist Mahmoud Kahlil, who has a permanent residence card, and the Turkish woman activist, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was snatched on a street in a Boston suburb in full view of people by ICE agents.

Violations of due process by Duterte and Trump

After being initially shellshocked, like you are now, eventually, people got the courage to oppose Duterte’s violations of due process, and this included the media. I was involved with the fight against the assault on due process in the Philippines when I participated in the effort to liberate former Secretary of Justice Leila de Lima, who was framed with impunity by Duterte, who made her out to be part of the drug syndicates.

There are two important lessons that I have learned from the examples of Duterte and Trump. One is that the authoritarian personality who comes to power via a democratic vote is the most dangerous kind of fascist since he feels that his popularity with the masses allows him to do all sorts of things. People are rightly worried that judicial decisions aiming to restrain him will be ignored by Trump and the separation of powers is being rapidly eroded, owing to Trump’s feeling that the people’s making him president by a majority rule allows him to get away with anything. The second lesson is that there is no way you can stop guys like Trump and Duterte except to resist by putting your bodies on the line. Duterte, as you all know, is not detained in the Hague, awaiting trial for the extrajudicial execution of some 27,000 people.

Trump’s isolationist foreign policy: perils and possibilities for the Global South

Let’s now turn to foreign policy and Southeast Asia. If conditions are bleak for the United States under Trump, the situation is more complex internationally. I mean, there are both perils and possibilities for us in the Global South.

I think that Trump is instinctively an isolationist, and he is playing to that very significant part of his base that is isolationist. My sense is that where we’re at with Trump is the end of that eighty-year-old grand strategy of global engagement that began with Pearl Harbor, where Washington deployed its forces anywhere it perceived US interests were threatened. Trump’s foreign policy is to retrench to the Western Hemisphere, to build a Fortress America. We have entered an era of defensive imperialism, in contrast to the expansive imperialism of the last eight decades.

Trump’s rhetoric may be aggressive, but it is the rhetoric of a fighting retreat to the core of the empire, which includes North America and South America; hence, Trump’s interest in taking over Greenland and Panama and seducing Canada to be the US’s fifty-first state. Some of Trump’s appointees, like Peter Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and Mike Waltz, may exhibit the old neoconservative Cold War language, but these folks do not have fixed beliefs in anything other than their own self-interest, and they will opportunistically adapt themselves to Trump’s isolationist instincts.

Trump and Musk should bring their chainsaws to the IMF and World Bank

Trump has no use for the multilateral system, for NATO, the WTO, and the Bretton Woods institutions. Here people like me who have been critical of the way these institutions have served US interests to the detriment of the interests of the Global South have a coincidence of interests with Trump and Elon Musk, though coming from different perspectives. As I wrote in a recent article, Musk’s abolition of USAID was, in many ways, misplaced. USAID is peanuts. If he and Trump really want to cut waste, then they should turn their chainsaws on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which waste billions of dollars on projects and initiatives that are harmful to the Global South. I would not object to Trump and Musk’s emasculating these institutions, in which the US has a controlling interest and in which it has wasted billions of taxpayers’ money. Trump has made the WTO ineffective; he should do the same with the Bretton Woods institutions.

Trump’s spheres of influence thinking

I think that it is becoming clear that Trump is moving towards a sphere of influence strategy. Latin America is seen as part of the Western Hemisphere's core of the empire, and this is definitely bad for us in the Global South. But let us continue. Eastern Europe is seen as Russia’s sphere of influence, Western Europe is left on its own, Africa becomes even more marginal to US interests, and South Asia is most likely seen as China’s sphere of influence, despite Trump’s ideological affinity with India’s Modi. The Asia Pacific is likely seen as China’s sphere of influence, so the South Korean, Japanese, and Philippine governments should be worried that Trump may be entertaining some grand deal with China and North Korea that could lead to a significant reduction of the US military and political presence in the area.

The US will increasingly be transactional in its dealings with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan, and US forces in these areas will be increasingly seen less as protectors of ideological allies but as pure mercenaries with little common interest with the locals, making them more and more an intolerable burden, as in Okinawa.

Pullback of the empire is good for the Western Pacific

I think the pullback of the empire to its North American core is largely a positive development from the perspective of the Asia Pacific, since we Asians will have to begin to work out our relations with one another instead of having Washington be the central actor determining our relations with our neighbors. I speak in particular of Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. And I think this is a largely healthy process.

Let me end by addressing the situation of the Philippines. For so long, we have been simply a dependency of the US, with the consequent retarded character of our political development as a nation. This being a dependent polity has become particularly acute over the last few years, when the Marcos Jr. administration has practically outsourced its defense policy and diplomacy to the United States. It is time we deal with China as a neighbor and not as an enemy, as Washington wants us to do. This is not, of course, an easy thing, but at no better time do we have the chance to have an independent foreign policy.

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote:

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” In other words, you cannot have opportunity without crisis. This perfectly sums up our situation in the Asia Pacific today.