Three US Grand Strategy in Asia

Three US Grand Strategy in Asia

Introduction

Asia will be the paramount focus of US grand strategy in the twenty-first century. The centre of gravity in world politics is shifting from the trans-Atlantic West, whose geopolitical and ideological struggles for global supremacy have dominated international relations in the twentieth century, to the trans-Pacific East. The dynamic economic growth across the Indo-Pacific, and in particular the rise, or rather re-emergence of China into a position of regional preponderance - economically, diplomatically, and militarily - challenges the established position of the United States as Asia's predominant power and extra-regional security guarantor. A far-flung system of Washington-centred alliances and partnerships has underwritten a Pax Americana in support of economic openness, liberal democracy, and the international rule of law. Historically, the United States has sought to defend this hegemonic legacy and to prevent the rise of any strategic rival to its dominant position either globally or regionally. Today, China pursues its own claim to regional hegemony and national exceptionalism, seeking the revival of its historical position as a focal point of a Sino-centric world order. The United States' strategic vision of leading a 'Pacific Century' therefore raises the spectre of an escalating contest for supremacy with the 'Asia-Pacific Dream' of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.

The United States' pursuit of liberal hegemony has, at the same time, come under growing pressure at home. Critics, ranging from left-wing progressives to small-government libertarians and adherents to realist IR theory, have argued that Washington's failed post-'nine eleven' military interventions have overextended the country's financial and military resources, and that the United States should pursue an alternative grand strategy of restraint. They attacked both the hegemonic groupthink of the US foreign policy establishment 'Blob' and what they saw as the hubris of American exceptionalism. The origin of the two thousand eight financial crisis in the United States, the failure to effectively respond to the Covid-nineteen pandemic, and the continued struggle for racial equality in America were all seen as casting doubt on the country's self-ascribed role as an 'indispensable nation', whose national destiny it was to remake the world in its image. Donald Trump's blend of nationalist populism, on the other hand, demonstrated a pronounced hostility towards Washington's global leadership role and its foundation in a rules-based international order over the course of his presidency, twenty seventeen to twenty twenty-one. The volatile four-year period of

'America First' further challenged the credibility and reliability of US grand strategy, in Asia and beyond.

In providing readers with an overview of these various external and internal dynamics, the material and ideational dimensions informing US grand strategy in Asia, this chapter will first review the study of grand strategy in International Relations. As the chapter will demonstrate, different theoretical approaches underwrite competing strategic visions of Washington's role in the world, which manifest both on the political decision-making level and in the wider academic, policy expert and media debates. The subsequent historical evaluation then mainly explores the post-Cold War era and how US grand strategy in Asia was anchored in the pursuit of liberal hegemony through diplomatic, military and economic means. A particular focus lies on comparing the strategic visions of Barack Obama ('pivot to Asia') and Donald Trump ('America First') and their practical manifestations in the region. The chapter concludes that the United States has increasingly struggled to match its enduring strategic aim of regional leadership with its actual investment in the Indo-Pacific.

American Grand Strategy and the Washington Consensus on Liberal Hegemony

Conventionally understood, a grand strategy envisions how a state can best use its various resources of power (military, economic, diplomatic) to pursue the national interest. According to the realist IR scholar Barry Posen: 'A grand strategy is a nation state's theory about how to produce security for itself'. The influential Center for a New American Security think tank argued that a grand strategy should answer fundamental questions about 'America's core national interest' and 'the purpose of American power'. Given this prevalent analytical focus on national security and power, a majority of the academic literature on grand strategy is informed by the theoretical assumptions of (neo)realism regarding an international system defined by structural anarchy and the functional equivalence of states seeking to guarantee their survival against external threats. Such works tend to focus on the materialist determinants of US grand strategy as analytical categories, in particular changes and continuities in the global military and economic balance of power as explanatory variables for strategic decision-making.

However, as the Joint Doctrine of the United States Armed Forces makes clear: 'At the grand strategic level, the ways and means to achieve US core national interests are based on the national leadership's strategic vision of America's role in the world'. Grand strategy then extends beyond a mere material equation of means, ends and ways. It formulates a vision of a country's role and position in world politics, providing an idealized big picture of the national interest. A growing body of research in International Relations, from such diverse theoretical, conceptual and epistemological approaches as neoclassical realism, liberal institutionalism, conventional constructivism, and critical security studies has therefore emphasized the influential role of domestic socio-economic systems and political actors, strategic culture, professional elite networks, and narratives, identity and discourse in the analysis of grand strategy and its political effects. Empirically, any analysis of American grand strategy, understood here as the 'national leadership's strategic vision', should pay special attention to the role of the President of the United States and key texts produced under a presidential administration. In the case of Donald Trump, this primarily includes the twenty seventeen United States National Security Strategy issued by the White House, and the twenty twenty Strategic Approach to the People's Republic of China, as well as the Pentagon's twenty eighteen National Defense Strategy and twenty nineteen Indo

Pacific Strategy Report, together with various Congressional reports on the United States' strategic approach towards the region. According to the Pentagon's twenty eighteen analysis, for example, China was seeking 'Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global pre-eminence in the future', requiring a shift from engagement towards long-term strategic competition of the United States with China to secure American 'security and prosperity'.

At the same time, however, debates about US grand strategy extend far beyond the highest echelons of the White House and Pentagon and preoccupy a large segment of the foreign policy and national security establishment in Washington DC; a far-flung elite network of prestigious academic institutions, mainstream media organizations, career diplomats, military and intelligence professionals, and influential think tanks and policy experts that shape ideas and advance policies to pursue the national interest of the United States. The US foreign policy establishment's role in promoting a strategic elite consensus on liberal hegemony and military interventionism has drawn increasing attention (and criticism) in IR research. President Obama himself and leading members of his administration publicly attacked a lack of political nuance and intellectual depth in formulating US policy responses among the Washington establishment's membership in prominent media outlets like the Atlantic and the New York Times. For the purposes of mapping this internal debate, it is useful to refer to the categorization of grand strategy options in the respective IR literature, ranging from unipolar primacy to cooperative security, selective engagement, and offshore balancing to neo-isolationism. At the broadest level of an identity-policy nexus, however, which links the ideational and practical dimensions of US grand strategy, we can differentiate three basic competing geopolitical visions: primacy, engagement, and restraint. Debates among practitioners, scholars, think tanks, pundits, and media in the United States tend to occur within this established matrix of ideas and discourses about the country's role and position in the world, and the ways and means to pursue the long-term national interest.

A grand strategy of primacy is focused on the preservation of the dominant military, economic and geopolitical position of the United States in the international system. It seeks to prevent the rise of any rival great power achieving hegemony in Eurasia. Beyond power politics, primacy, alternatively referred to as hegemony, or American leadership of the 'free world', also articulates a special responsibility of the United States to maintain and, where possible, expand freedom and democracy in the international system. After the end of the Cold War, geopolitical visions of US primacy and liberal imperialism were aggressively promoted by neoconservative intellectuals like William Kristol or Charles Krauthammer, and think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, proclaiming the arrival of Washington's triumphalist 'unipolar moment' on the world stage. Unilateral primacy reached its geopolitical apex under the George W. Bush administration and the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, which provided the intellectual foundation and strategic justification for the invasion of Iraq in two thousand and three. In respect to the Indo-Pacific, proponents of American primacy under the Trump presidency focused primarily on an intensifying political-ideological, economic and military struggle with the People's Republic of China for regional supremacy from twenty seventeen onwards. This 'new Cold War' paradigm united both neoconservative 'Never Trumpers', GOP establishment figures, and staunch supporters of a nationalist populist foreign policy course like Steve Bannon, who would serve for a time as Trump's White House chief strategist.

Engagement, alternatively known as cooperative security, or 'burden sharing', on the other hand, is centred on the idea that the United States should seek increased international cooperation with allies and partners, and on issues ranging from nuclear non-proliferation to climate change and counter-terrorism even with rivals and adversaries, including with strategic competitors like China or Russia. Rather than the projection of military power and the use of force, engagement emphasizes diplomacy, economic interdependence, soft power, international organizations and multilateral institutions, and is endorsed in particular by liberal institutionalists and proponents of the Wilsonian idealist and internationalist tradition in US foreign policy. Cooperative means are seen as vital instruments for the United States to promote its interests and values in an increasingly multipolar international system, which US government reports like the long-term strategic forecasts of the National Intelligence Council have assessed as being defined by an increasing diffusion of power and influence away from US unipolarity. The Obama administration's conclusion of a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement with eleven other nations in February twenty sixteen was testament to its enduring focus to foster cooperative engagement in the Asia-Pacific as part of its pivot strategy. Viewed from a constructivist perspective on national identity, however, both conservative visions of unilateral primacy and liberal ideas about global engagement reflect a deep-seated belief in American exceptionalism. Since the end of the Cold War, a broad bi-partisan elite consensus on liberal hegemony was based on the assumption that the global leadership role of the United States was both a moral imperative and functional necessity for the continued success and survival of a liberal international order defined by great power peace, the international rule of law, the promotion of democracy and human rights, and a prosperous globalized economy. Both liberals and conservatives also expected the United States to act unilaterally, including with the use of force, to maintain this global Pax Americana and to defend American values of freedom and democracy. Barack Obama himself frequently invoked the rhetoric of American exceptionalism to legitimate a less financially and militarily costly pursuit of US grand strategy, including through 'burden sharing' with allies and partners, while never doubting the ultimate necessity of the United States' global leadership role. As Obama made clear at the US military academy of West Point: 'America must always lead on the world stage. If we don't, no one else will.' The dominant debate over grand strategy in Washington was not if hegemony should be pursued, but how.

While the Obama Doctrine followed a pragmatist approach to military restraint, viewing it as more cost-effective pursuit of US leadership abroad, proponents of an alternative grand strategy of offshore balancing advanced a more comprehensive critique of liberal hegemony. Notable realist IR scholars in the United States, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, viewed liberal hegemony as fundamentally misguided strategic vision, based on flawed assumptions about the United States' national interest. They argued that there was neither the necessity nor the ability to control outside events in remote corners of the world through force. The United States should instead practice restraint and focus on maintaining its position of regional hegemony in the Western hemisphere. In respect to US grand strategy in Asia, the US should significantly draw down its forces in Japan and South Korea, reducing its military footprint to an 'over the horizon' posture around US military bases, naval installations and logistics hubs on islands in the Indo-Pacific (especially Guam, Diego Garcia, Hawaii). According to a grand strategy of restraint, the United States would only directly intervene militarily in Asia if China were to make an all-out bid for regional hegemony akin to the expansionist threat of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. For realist proponents of offshore balancing, the defence of Taiwan against a potential future Chinese invasion was not a core strategic interest of the United States. The burden to organize the strategic deterrence of China would instead fall primarily on India, Japan and South Korea, the latter two countries which, in line with realist balance of power calculations, would have to consider the acquisition of nuclear weapons for this purpose. This realist sentiment was echoed to some extent by Donald Trump when he campaigned for the presidency in twenty sixteen. To its many liberal and neoconservative critics in the US foreign policy establishment, however, restraint represented a politically irresponsible and morally reprehensible, discredited realpolitik vision of 'neo-isolationism', a potentially catastrophic disengagement of the United States from international affairs, which could result in a major war in Asia, or even trigger World War Three.

In Washington, strategic visions of restraint and offshore balancing were politically endorsed to varying degrees by an ideologically diverse set of supporters. Libertarians like the Cato Institute think tank, were concerned about excessive government spending on national security and the global overreach and imperial distortion of the American republic. Progressive critics in turn targeted the militarization of US foreign policy and demanded an end to 'forever wars' to focus more energy on domestic policy priorities. This included prominent Democrats like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump repeatedly voiced arguments for restraint in public, from prioritizing 'nation building at home' and suggestions of 'leading from behind' under Obama, to attacking a Washington establishment record of 'failed policies and continued losses in war' under Trump. Such sentiments testified to the growing political significance of a restraint discourse in Washington, in particular since Obama's second term. Ultimately, however, neither the Obama Doctrine nor 'America First' could be considered comprehensive and consistent strategies for offshore balancing, or even isolationist disengagement from the Indo-Pacific.