Behind closed doors, new US leader Donald Trump is thinking about pulling troops out of the South China Seas. Washington is considering making an offer to remove the large number of American military forces lurking around China's coast, and in turn asking Beijing to drop the number of Chinese coast guard vessels in the area, according to a report in Bloomberg. "Removing American military forces nearby, in exchange for fewer Beijing-owned coast guards patrolling the area is currently under proposal…" the news agency said. . GOOD FOR PEACE, BAD FOR BONGBONG The step would be good news for those who want peace between the two superpowers. But it would be a huge embarrassment for pliant Philippines leader Bongbong Marcos, who the US has been using to create conflict in the waters, which the Western mainstream media then reports as if it was China creating conflict. The push to ratchet down the tension comes from John Andrew Byers, a history professor who has been appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia. Byers has long been known as a lonely-but-not-alone advocate for moving away from the prepare-for-war-with-China attitude of the Biden Administration (and many on the Republican side). . 'A LEADER OF HIS TIME' In a co-written essay in The American Conservative last September, and a follow-up academic paper, Byers argued that it would be smarter to move away from such a war, even if it could be won. "But this 'fact' of U.S. superiority does not mean that it can or should attempt to militarily conquer its weaker rival," he wrote. "We live in a nuclear world. Secure second-strike capabilities make great-power conquest impossible without global annihilation. "A second Trump administration should embrace a Cold Peace with China, exercising foreign policy restraint—one guided by a narrow definition of the national interest, economic nationalism, and penchant for viewing world politics in geo-economic rather than geo-strategic terms. If he remains true to his instincts, he will be a leader of his time." It is that last statement – that Trump could be 'a leader of his time', taking his place in history for removing the US from its warring proclivities - that has apparently caused the unpredictable leader to give ear to a peace-mongering academic. . HOSTILE TO PEACE Yet Byers may have an uphill battle to halt a war that the US has spent years preparing for. Many Trump officials have been anxious to attack China, including national security adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the President's choice for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, and advisor Elbridge Colby, who has advocated for a conflict centred on Taiwan to be used as a tool to weaken China. Journalists are also hostile. The hawkish, right-wing Lowy Institute said in a report last week that the move towards peaceful engagement in the South China Seas was "troubling". Bloomberg writer Karishma Vaswani is also dismayed by the idea of less confrontation in Asia, and urges Trump to convene a summit "to build partnerships that deter China's expansionist ambitions". This point of view seems to harks back to the discredited argument that China wants to take over Asia-Pacific, and suggests a lack of understanding of how the Chinese think. Their schtick is win-win trade links, not expansionism. A more insightful view comes from the writer Jacob Dreyer, who told this reporter that he thinks the US is "headed to a Monroe doctrine style 'zones of influence'." In that scenario, the USA maintains "hegemony over its backyard" but generally leaves China and Russia to do their own thing on their side of the Pacific, which the US sees as “near abroad”. That rings true—and provides hope. For people in East Asia, tired of the endless demonization of China and general warmongering of the western media, Trump, for all his hostile bluster, is at least thinking about moving in the right direction.