The United States: A Comprehensive Strategy with Challenges Ahead

Abstract

The United States:A Comprehensive Strategy with Challenges Ahead Jeffrey W. Hornung (bio) The importance of the Indo-Pacific region to the United States stretches back to the founding of the American republic. For over two centuries, political, diplomatic, commercial, and people-to-people ties with Asian countries have helped the United States build the country. World War II demonstrated that conflict and instability in the Indo-Pacific region can have a direct impact on the United States. The war, as well as subsequent others, reinforced the United States' security interests in the region, which have since been strengthened through decades of treaty alliances with key regional actors. In February 2022, the Biden administration released its Indo-Pacific Strategy, which advocates freedom and openness through regional connectivity, trade, investment, and deeper bilateral and multilateral partnerships. In this strategy, the Biden administration follows in the footsteps of its predecessors. The Obama administration, though, was the first to declare a U.S. pivot—later rebranded a "rebalance"—to Asia, which followed the Bush administration's push for greater cooperation with Japan and India and closer engagement with China. In 2019, the Trump administration issued its "free and open Indo-Pacific" strategy.1 It is with this last effort that President Joe Biden's strategy shows the greatest continuity. Not only does Biden's strategy maintain the focus on a free and open Indo-Pacific—a concept directly adopted from Japanese policy—but the core tenants of the strategy essentially remain the same as Donald Trump's strategy. Despite their varied approaches to the Indo-Pacific, these Republican and Democrat administrations maintain a shared consistency in their understanding of the region's relative importance, one that places an emphasis on allies and partners and—particularly since Obama—advocates the goal of keeping the region free from coercion and [End Page 7] open to trade, investment, and ideas.2 Collectively, this suggests that, despite centuries of engagement with the region, U.S. strategy toward the Indo-Pacific has been formalizing over the past twenty years, with the Biden administration's policy being the most recent iteration. This essay seeks to assess Biden's Indo-Pacific Strategy by examining what it is and where potential challenges in its implementation lie. What Is the United States' Indo-Pacific Strategy? Despite President Biden's critique of the Trump administration's approach to the Indo-Pacific, both Biden and Trump pursued strategies that were more similar than different. The strategy contains five key objectives that the United States intends to pursue with its allies, partners, and regional institutions. These objectives are (1) advance a free and open Indo-Pacific, (2) build connections within and beyond the region, (3) drive regional prosperity, (4) bolster Indo-Pacific security, and (5) build regional resilience to transnational threats. To achieve each of these objectives, the strategy identifies the following tasks: • Advance a free and open Indo-Pacific:3 ∘ Invest in democratic institutions, a free press, and a vibrant civil society. ∘ Improve fiscal transparency. ∘ Ensure the region's seas and skies are governed and used according to international law. ∘ Advance common approaches to critical and emerging technologies, the internet, and cyberspace. • Build connections within and beyond the region:4 ∘ Deepen regional treaty alliances. ∘ Strengthen relationships with regional partners (with specific mention of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam). [End Page 8] ∘ Strengthen the Quad (i.e., the security dialogue grouping of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States). ∘ Deepen cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (with specific mention of ASEAN centrality). ∘ Partner with the Pacific Islands and prioritize negotiations with the Compacts of Free Association (COFAs).5 ∘ Expand U.S. diplomatic presence (with specific mention of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands). ∘ Forge connections between the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic. • Drive regional prosperity:6 ∘ Propose an Indo-Pacific economic framework (with mention of new approaches to trade, governance of digital economies and data flows, and supply chains). ∘ Promote free, fair, and open trade and investment through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping. ∘ Close the region's infrastructure gap through the Build Back Better World partnership with G-7 members. • Bolster...