Trump's first 100 days spark global messaging battle

As the Trump administration marked 100 days in office this past week, China's state broadcaster described what it called “100 days of chaos” and said the government in Beijing was providing “stability to a changing and turbulent world”.

- Peter Apps

Throughout the rollercoaster of the first weeks in office of the administration, state-backed Chinese channels and social media feeds have increasingly pushed the narrative that the US under Donald Trump is abandoning its allies, with a particular focus on Taiwan and US Asian partners.

It is a narrative the Pentagon has sometimes attempted to push back against. “America First does not mean America alone,” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a speech at the US Army War College earlier this month.

More broadly, however, the administration’s rhetoric has often been aggressively triumphalist.

In Beijing, the US Embassy described the opening of the new administration as “100 years of victory” on its social media channels, particularly infuriating Chinese officials.

While some in the US military and State Department clearly retain some concerns about alienating too many US allies, many of Mr Trump's supporters argue that his actions — including his trade war and associated rhetoric, treatment of Ukraine and demand that US allies do more in their own defence — represent exactly what he said he would do when he was elected.

On other areas, there can be little clarity.

When Mr Trump's new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Air Force General Dan Caine, was asked at his Senate confirmation hearing whether Washington would continue to provide Nato’s top military officer — regarded as a key indicator of US commitment to Europe — he simply said he did not yet know what the president would order.

When it comes to defence and national security, the new administration has explicitly placed much greater priority on securing the US border in the short term and delivering longer-term protection against foreign ballistic missiles through what Mr Trump has termed the “Golden Dome” defence shield.