“With the United States facing divisions at home and distractions abroad, it has become clear that deep engagement across all of Asia is no longer realistic,” writes Zack Cooper in a new essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. After 15 years of American leaders pledging substantial investment to prevent Chinese dominance in the region, “the pivot to Asia has failed,” and allowing the gap between pledges and action to persist risks “a catastrophic failure of deterrence.”
The United States must now choose where in Asia to maintain its commitments and where to pull back—decisions that “will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people” across the continent, Cooper writes. “Moving on from the pivot and accepting retrenchment is not the best way to protect U.S. interests in Asia,” he warns. “But it is unavoidable.”
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