How Donald Trump Can Make the Pivot to Asia Great Again

Harry J. Kazianis

Security, Asia

A plan to make the pivot even stronger. 

Amid an endless stream of policy elite speculation over the greater meaning of a President-elect Trump, there are very real foreign policy challenges the next administration will need to tackle on day one — a long list of problems that the Obama administration failed to address time and time again.

I would argue there is no more pressing long-term challenge facing America internationally than the behavior of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing has made it clear that the regional order in Asia is not to its liking, and that it aims to change it. China pushes against Japan in the East China Sea, asserts that Taiwan is no more than a renegade province that needs to ‘come home’, and engages in endless so-called salami-slicing — island building in the South China Sea.