Last Chance to Sell the Pivot

Last Chance to Sell the Pivot

President Obama’s signature foreign-policy doctrine for Asia has yet to be realized—and time is running out.


By MICHAEL AUSLIN
April 7, 2015
The Wall Street Journal


America’s new secretary of defense, Ash Carter, heads to the Pacific this week, with stops planned in Tokyo, Seoul and Honolulu. While this is Mr. Carter’s first trip to the region as defense secretary, it may be the last chance to sell President Obama’s so-called pivot.

This being college basketball season, the Pentagon stressed that Washington is committed to a “full-court press” on Mr. Obama’s plans to rebalance America’s focus toward Asia. There is much to be praised in the Obama administration’s emphasis on the Indo-Pacific, and Mr. Carter is one of its most articulate defenders.

Yet a full five years after the pivot began to take shape, the administration is still reacting to the pace of events in Asia rather than actively shaping them. What once seemed like a bold policy that might transform the U.S. position in Asia, even if not a grand strategy, appears to have emptied its quiver early on.

China and Japan are far more responsible for driving events than is America. And to some degree that makes sense, given that the U.S. is a status quo power. It does not want the balance of power in Asia to change.

That makes it difficult for Washington to acknowledge that the region’s politics are shifting. Opportunities to deflect Chinese coercion over territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas have been passed by. Instead Washington seems overly reliant on rhetoric to assert its bona fides.

The administration’s assertion of its priorities is challenged by a deteriorating global security environment. Washington is dealing with the spread of the Islamic State and other jihadist groups throughout the Middle East.

Meanwhile the U.S. has failed to dislodge Russia from eastern Ukraine. Iran has scored point after point in the negotiations to end its nuclear program. Mr. Obama will be hard pressed simply to hold the line for the rest of his time in office.

Chinese President Xi Jinping may be most focused on his domestic anticorruption campaign and economic reform, but he has pressed ahead aggressively with China’s decades-long military buildup. The People’s Liberation Army has dramatically expanded landfill activities in the South China Sea for military and diplomatic purposes.

Mr. Xi has refused to back down on any territorial disputes. This spring, he succeeded in getting every major power and U.S. ally aside from Japan to join his new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, leaving Washington and Tokyo scrambling in response.

For a country facing a significant economic slowdown and having squandered much of the goodwill it built up during the 2000s, recent months have seemed like anything but a retreat. Instead, China seems more powerful and confident than ever.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is attempting to balance Chinese power by deepening his relationships throughout the region. He has increased Japan’s defense budget, scrapped restrictions on the sales of arms and begun setting the stage for collective self-defense efforts.

Mr. Abe signed agreements with Australia and India, and provided military equipment to Vietnam and the Philippines. In addition, he has continued discussions with Washington about updating the U.S.-Japan security alliance to tackle 21st-century threats such as cyberattacks.

While distrusted by South Korea, Mr. Abe is steadily amassing capabilities to blunt China’s influence. What Japan can do concretely is limited today, but it may set the stage for a community of security-minded nations to oppose Chinese policies.

Some in America’s security circles understand the trend lines. Vice Admiral Robert Thomas, the commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, recently expressed his hope that Japan would take up an even more active role in collective self-defense, and not just with the U.S., but other nations. Adm. Thomas also drew Chinese ire for encouraging Southeast Asian nations to form joint maritime patrols in waters contested by the Chinese, asserting that his ships “would be ready to support” such an initiative.

Adm. Thomas’s comments may look like “leading from behind,” but they also make clear that the U.S. can only go so far to enhance its traditional role in Asia. Pacific nations will have to bear an increasing share of the burden of providing collective security in the coming years, and Washington will have to figure out how to support them.

That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes Mr. Carter’s message to the region more difficult. He has to sell the idea that his boss will not falter during his last year and a half in office. But he also must acknowledge that his country will be consumed for years with pressing security threats that will drain resources and attention from Asia.

Discussing his coming trip at Arizona State University, Mr. Carter eloquently explained that the pivot was an attempt to rebalance U.S. focus after a decade of war in the Middle East, and to prepare for a future in which Asia plays an even larger global role than today. Unfortunately, in a region whose balance of power is changing so rapidly, Washington’s status quo policy runs the risk of being an inadequate response.

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