United States’ pivot towards Asia-Pacific Region – its results and prospects

 One of the most important strategic shift of the U.S. in the first decades of the 21^st century is the Strategy to pivot towards the Asia-Pacific Region which is of special importance to the US global strategy. After 10 years, regardless of a number of successes, there are a lot of difficulties and challenges for Washington to realise that Strategy.

The Strategy’s Goal

In 2011, the Barack Obama Administration announced the Strategy to pivot (or rebalance) towards the Asia-Pacific Region. The strengths of the US Strategy towards the Asia-Pacific Region include: (1) reinforcing the regional traditional alliances with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia, (2) strengthening partnerships with other countries from the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, such as India, Singapore, and Indonesia, (3) participating in multilateral regional mechanisms, such as the East Asia Summit (EAS), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI), and the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus (ADMM+), (4) increasing US military presence and troop rotations in regional countries, such as Singapore, Australia, and the Philippines, and maintaining American presence via bilateral and multilateral military exercises, (5) boosting trade and investment flows through existing free trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), APEC, and the US-ASEAN Expanded Economic Engagement (E3) Initiative, (6) keeping spreading and advocating values of democracy and human rights.

Former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one of the architects of the US Pivot Strategy ever announced that America’s goal was to build a sustainable trans-Pacific security and economic system like trans-Atlantic institutions and partnerships. That system would help facilitate security, prosperity, and universal values, settle differences between countries, and foster confidence, responsibility, and effective cooperation to respond to challenges. At that time, scholars around the world believed that the primary goal of the United States’ Pivot Strategy was to ensure the US leadership position against rapid changes in the region and especially China’s rise.

The results of the Strategy

After 10 years of implementing the Strategy, the United States has achieved several successes together with a number of shortcomings.

Regarding successes of the Strategy, first of all, in politico-diplomatic field, America has qualitatively strengthened its “alliances” and “partnerships” with many other countries in this region. The U.S. has established comprehensive partnerships with Vietnam (2013), Malaysia (2014), and Laos (2016), while upgrading its diplomatic ties with Indonesia into a strategic partnership (2015). Besides, the U.S. has expanded the scope of cooperation under its strategic partnerships with India and Singapore. It is worth noting that under the presidency of Barack Obama, India had been considered an emerging country to be intervened in and contained, but this country has become an important partner of America under the presidency of Donald Trump and the presidency of Joe Biden as a security “anchor” of the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific Region.

Second, multilaterally, the U.S. has been more active and proactive in promoting the agenda of EAS, ARF, and ADMM+, institutionalising and turning US-ASEAN leaders meetings into annual ones since 2013, upgrading its relations with ASEAN into a strategic partnership in November 2015, and holding discussions to upgrade into a comprehensive strategy partnership. It is worth noting that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden Administrations have “revived” the Quad (including the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia), with a view to improving coordination of policies for the region.

Defence cooperation could be a central point in the US policy for the region. American governments have recently fostered relations with Japan, South Korea, and Australia as the U.S. important traditional allies. Those allies have been more and more active and proactive in cooperating with the U.S. in implementing policies towards China, increasing their defence budgets, acquiring advanced military equipment, and participating in bilateral and multilateral military exercises. The U.S. has first sent its troops back to the Philippines’ military bases since 1992. More importantly, the establishment of the Quad and the AUKUS alliance is aimed at building regional collective security and connecting with America allies in Europe and Asia.

Third, with reference to the U.S. influence on the region, in spite of a relative decline in American influence in several periods, generally speaking, the U.S. is still seen as a key partner of a number of nations with its significant influence on regional security and economy. Many regional countries, including some Southeast Asian nations (America allies) hope that Washington as their partner will continue to help maintain a strategic balance in the region. Economically, although the U.S. withdrew from the TPP, it is one of the largest export markets of the region with the total import revenue of more than 3,000 billion USD per annum. For many years, Washington has been a key investor in East Asia and Southeast Asia with a total investment of over $1,000 billion. Technologically, although China is making huge investments in this field to compete with Washington, the U.S. is holding a lot of source and high technologies to lead economic growth in the foreseeable future. Notably, amidst the complex developments of COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. is the world’s largest vaccine sponsor with more than 89 million doses to East Asia and the Pacific (13 countries, excluding China and Australia) and over 84 million doses to South Asia and Central Asia as of January 2022.

Concerning shortcomings of the Strategy, first, there have been some inconsistencies in public attention and resources from Washington. Although America political parties basically advocate the strengthened intervention in the Indo-Pacific Region, the change of power after every four years and new governments’ policy adjustments sometimes make the public sceptical of the US determination for intervention. The US Congress’ budget stalemate leads to discontinuity in America’s resources for the region occasionally. Besides, the U.S. could not concentrate all resources on the region due to its global burden.

Second, several measures of intervention adopted by the U.S. in the region have yet to be really effective. Regional countries found it difficult to understand economic measures of the US Pivot Strategy as Washington withdrew from the TPP and implemented policies to put pressure on trade deficit and currency manipulation. The ineffectiveness of US specific policies for Mekong subregion countries leads to a relative decline in Washington’s influence on this region. With respect to the East Sea, in spite of releasing a large number of statements and conducting freedom of navigation operations (FONOP), the U.S. has yet to exert a considerable influence on this region.

Third, once the U.S. continues insisting on American values, it is hard to make substantial progress in Washington’s cooperative relations with other countries. The return to power by the Thai military and the Tatmadaw in Thailand and Myanmar respectively has got the US relations with the two countries into the most difficult period in the past decade. Duterte’s victory in the Philippine presidential election of 2016 has also made the US-Philippine relations fall into a precarious situation. While respecting their relations with the U.S., some countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia have rejected American criticism of democracy and human rights. Cambodia has recently taken a strong stance against the U.S. after Washington’s sanctions against a number of Cambodian government officials.

The prospects of the Strategy

Although the Joe Biden Administration has not announced any new strategy for the region yet, it could be predicted that the new strategy would basically inherit the fundamentals of the Pivot Strategy of 10 years ago with several adjustments to be relevant to the new situation. President Joe Biden will certainly realise the goal of containing China in his new strategy as the U.S. considers Beijing as its strategic rival. Washington will consolidate its alliances and partnerships. The U.S. will continue placing emphasis on defence-security contents to deal with threats from the region. Great value will be attached to multilateral intervention (the Quad and the AUKUS alliance) in order to strengthen America’s “anchors” in the region. The U.S. will diversify supply chains to gradually decrease “dependence” on Chinese goods, while more strictly controlling technologies, particularly high technologies against China so as to step by step increase dependence upon Washington. Promoting democracy and human rights will still be a goal of the Strategy; however, it will be adjusted in order not to impact on America’s partnerships and strategic partnerships.

One thing we could draw from the 10-year implementation of the US Pivot Strategy is a growing consensus within the U.S. about the importance of this region to American security and prosperity. That is proved by an increase in the US defence budget of 2022 for the Indo-Pacific Region as the highest compared to the others of the world. It is believed that in the upcoming time, a new version of the Pivot Strategy will be robustly implemented for the sake of American security benefits, influence, and prosperity.