Declining Great Power Rivalry? Implications for the Alliances

The most striking feature of the new National Security Strategy (NSS) is the shucking of “great power competition” as the overarching theme of U.S. grand strategy. Yes, it could be merely a short-term tactical move given the president’s interest in meeting with Xi Jinping in 2026. And yes, as Barry Naughton argues, the report’s purported focus on resource constraints and the need to focus is belied by long lists of expansive priorities, including with respect to Asia. The language of the report does reiterate long-standing objectives of extended deterrence in a general way and in some cases—as in the discussion of the Taiwan Strait and the first island chain—arguably extends them; James Lee takes up that issue in more detail.

Nonetheless, the discussion of China is not overt and is focused overwhelmingly on economic issues. The discussion of allies is overwhelmingly cast in terms of burden-sharing and economic issues as well, and trade deals have been focused on extracting short-term tactical advantage and seem to lack a broader strategic rationale. Moreover, the text of the NSS needs to be read both against actual policy and its own stated priorities. This background includes the on-again, off-again way of dealing with Putin’s endless gamesmanship, which necessarily raises the question of whether Donald Trump would personally be happy with a spheres-of-influence rather than balance-of-power approach to Asia. Any claims about the region also need to be read in the context of the stated focus on the Western Hemisphere, immigration, and border control, and a largely gratuitous quarrel the administration wants to pick with our allies in Europe. If I were sitting in an Asian capital, I would be thinking hard about hedging U.S. risks.

Restating Commitments

For those looking for silver linings, some historical continuity can be found in the document and some of it does figure prominently. In the most focused set of five priorities, the Indo-Pacific does get its own bullet point. But the objectives are articulated with a twist toward the economic rather than strategic dimensions of the Indo-Pacific and include sideways jabs at the costs of our relationship with region:

“We want to halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy while keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials.”

The Asia section of the report similarly highlights the economic importance of the region and makes reference to it as home to “the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds.” The report also explicitly introduces “balances of power,” which sounds like the familiar strategic concept of “preventing the emergence of dominant adversaries, and the “timeless truth…of working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.”

But at that juncture in the report, no mention of China is made. There are many ways to think about the challenges that China poses to the United States and its partners in the Asia Pacific, and not all responses to it need to be military or bellicose. But it is hard to outline a regional strategy unless the scope of those challenges is articulated.

Economics First

The section on Asia in the report does include a lengthy discussion of China, and it is focused entirely on economic issues, which repeatedly get dominant attention over military strategic ones. Deterrence is useful because it “opens up space” for economic action. Economics constitute the “ultimate stakes” in the region and lead the Asia section of the report, which outlines virtually all that the NSS seeks with respect to its Asian allies. Some of the silences are suggestive. As Miki Hayashi notes in her analysis of the NSS, there is no mention of the Japan alliance. Nor is there mention of the Korean one (nor North Korea), nor Australia and AUKUS and perhaps most surprisingly Southeast Asia, which contains by far the most significant “swing states” in the region. It is a document purportedly emphasizing our allies, while making scant mention of them and in doing so usually emphasizing shortcomings and costs.

If there is a silver lining for the region in this new economic focus, it would lie in the “economic deals” that the United States has been striking around the region, including on President Trump’s trip to Asia with Malaysia, Cambodia, Japan, and Korea. There is one line of thought that is innovative and valuable in the report and in recent policy. We should not think of alliances solely in terms of their military dimensions but in the opportunity they provide to build joint capacity; discussions of Korea’s role in the American shipbuilding industry are a positive example.

But the underlying character of these deals is widely known and for the countries of the region they are for the most part a step backward from the status quo ante. Countries that effectively had near free-trade relations with the United States—including Korea, Singapore, and Australia—are now subject to tariffs that are hardly “reciprocal.” Surplus countries are being asked to make large and almost certainly unrealistic investment and purchase commitments with the United States, and compounding the issue, increased government involvement in private sector investments heighten deal uncertainty. Across the region, countries are scrambling to diversify their relations and China is doing its level best to exploit the opportunity by claiming the mantle of global public goods provider.

Hedging U.S. Risk

Barry Naughton argues that the narrowing of focus to the Western Hemisphere and immigration as the core foreign policy priorities should be taken with a grain of salt. But this underestimates the extent to which a strategy of continually manipulating uncertainty for tactical advantage has costs. Allies need to assess risks, and they are doing so. There are strong and deep institutional relations that have been built up over the postwar period with our Asian partners, from military-to-military ties to expansive U.S. investment and intricate supply chains. These constitute the underlying glue that holds alliance relations together and those relationships will not disappear. But it is equally shortsighted to think that a garden does not require tending or that it could not go to seed. If the United States is focused solely on short-term gains and sees its alliances and partnerships as a burden rather than a way of augmenting capabilities, damage will be done not only to American interests but to the capabilities we need to compete effectively with China and the other autocratic regimes that wish us ill.

Stephan Haggard is distinguished research professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and research director for Democracy and Global Governance at IGCC.

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