Asia: the United States faces three fundamental strategic alternatives

Asia in the balance: Transforming US military strategy in Asia
Thomas G. Mahnken, Thomas Donnelly, Dan Blumenthal, Gary J. Schmitt, Michael Mazza, Andrew Shearer | American Enterprise Institute

Since the end of World War II, the United States has developed a characteristic approach to protecting its interests in Asia. In peace and in war, the US position in Asia has rested on a set of alliances, ground and air forces deployed on allied and US territory, nuclear-strike forces, and carrier-strike groups operating in the Western Pacific. But China has been working systematically to undermine the American approach to assurance, deterrence, and warfighting. Specifically, China’s military modernization, if it continues apace, may allow it to decouple America’s allies from the US extended nuclear deterrent, to destroy US and allied fixed bases in the region, and to threaten US power projection forces. This, in turn, could allow China to coerce US allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific region, hold US forces at arm’s length, and control the seas along the Asian periphery. 

The United States faces three fundamental strategic alternatives as it seeks to match its ends and its means in an increasingly turbulent environment. 1) The first strategic alternative is to continue America’s current approach to the region—that is, to pursue broad objectives even as the military balance shifts against the United States. 2) The second alternative, favored by neo-isolationists in both US political parties, would be to scale back US commitments and to accept a narrower definition of America’s role in the world than the nation has played for the better part of a century. 3) A third and more favorable approach would be to adopt a forward-leaning strategy that would balance the need to reduce the vulnerability of US forces while maintaining US commitments. 

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