Elected leaders and career professionals in national security have recognized for 25 years that the center of geopolitical gravity has tilted toward Asia. It’s long past time for a much-needed U.S. policy shift.
Pivoting is made increasingly urgent by the fact that China – America’s chief global adversary and arguably the lynchpin of the loose alignment of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea known as CRINK – is eyeing Asia as a playground to impose its political, economic and military will. However, despite continued cycles of bipartisan support, this change in strategy has barely been realized.
The United States’ grand strategy must summon the old truth: Values-based foreign policy is in our national security interest. Through this lens, it is a mistake to delay the U.S. prioritization of Asia and a comprehensive strategy toward the increasing alignment of CRINK.
Each time the United States begins to push resources, attention, and our global weight to Asia, events pull us elsewhere. Cascading conflicts in the Middle East. Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2021. Migration crises in our own hemisphere. The current conflagration in Iran.
To be clear, every one of these challenges required, and benefited from, American leadership. But while America balanced its global responsibilities, China’s economic and diplomatic coercion and military power continued to grow, not just in Asia, but Africa, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere.
CRINK nations recognize that they profit when the United States divides its attention, military capabilities, and resources across hotspots in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. So these conflicts, and CRINK’s increasing focus on manipulating multilateral institutions, are connected.
Our approach to China – and broader CRINK strategy – must be, too. The question isn’t if we should move faster to refocus on Asia. It’s how we sustain it.
The new policy should play to American strengths – our allies and partners in the Asia Pacific. Across the Indo-Pacific, the United States has a clear advantage from something Beijing has struggled to replicate – a network of countries that prefer working with America. Our democratic values are key to this strategy, and our inherent advantage. When countries choose to partner or ally with the United States, they are making a deliberate choice to side with values, to work in an environment where decisions are not imposed on smaller states or on their citizens.
The United States’ approach must fundamentally differ from Beijing’s vision, which favors control over freedom.
American power reflects the best of our founding ideals when our national, geopolitical, security, and economic strategies reinforce those underlying values abroad. America’s strategic policy shouldn’t be reduced to leveraging every relationship for a transaction. America should have a values-based policy that integrates human rights and democracy. America does not need to develop a new policy but should focus on the execution, grounded in our values.
There have been steps forward. The past five presidential administrations have acknowledged China’s rise and Asia’s centrality in geopolitics. The snarl remains consistent, sustained execution.
- Under President George W. Bush, the United States focused on expanding ties with Asian nations based on the pillars of freedom, prosperity, deterrence, and strengthening alliances through economic engagement. This included championing human rights and democracy.
- During the Obama Administration, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed “America’s Pacific Century” in 2011.
- The first Trump Administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy explicitly named China as a strategic competitor and reemphasized the idea of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
- The Biden Administration announced new partnerships – AUKUS with Australia and the UK; the Quad with Australia, India, and Japan; and the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. It also negotiated increased military partnerships, basing access in both the Philippines and Australia.
Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in 2022 described China as a “pacing challenge,” but in 2026, China is no longer something to just track and pace. China is increasingly dominant, flexing a stronger military, economic, and technological edge.
The strategic environment is also profoundly different because China is not operating in isolation. While Russia, China, Iran and North Korea aren’t a formal alliance, their growing collaboration has real geopolitical, diplomatic and strategic outcomes.
In Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, North Korea has supplied Russia with troops and munitions, while Iran has shipped drone technology. China has reportedly provided economic lifelines and dual-use technology to both Russia and Iran to enhance military capabilities.
We know the threat; we need to sustain the execution. CRINK, working as this loose alignment, is increasing the cost of delay. Our competitors know, and exploit, that conflict theaters are connected, and they relish when American attention is fragmented.
Focusing on Asia doesn’t mean America can or should abandon Europe or the Middle East. Both regions are both political and literal battlegrounds against CRINK, and the United States should be supporting and coordinating with allies in ways that increase burden-sharing and make them amplifiers of U.S. power and influence. At the same time, America needs to be clear-eyed about where our priorities lie regarding Asia (particularly in countering China) and ensure our actions reflect that reality.
Strategies require prioritization and difficult policy questions about our diplomatic, military, and intelligence commitments. We have spent over 25 years talking about an Asia pivot in one form or another; now, in the face of China and CRINK, we need to actually sustain it.
The shift to Asia has been long promised. Today’s threats, and our values, demand that we finally do it.
