Unthinkable: If America Walked Away from Asia

Harry J. Kazianis

Security, Asia

Imagine if Washington decided to simply leave Asia and abandon its 'primacy'? 

China’s ‘rise’ in Asia is creating considerable tension with Washington and its allies. There are disputes in the East and South China Seas, heated rhetoric over freedom of navigation operations, economic competition, a growing ‘access’ challenge pitting Chinese A2/AD vs. American Air-Sea Battle/JAM-GC—the laundry list these days seems almost endless.

So what should America do about it? One idea, boldly put forward by the talented John Glaser in a recent piece in these very pages, is to “abandon our strategy of primacy” and that “the United States can relinquish its outsized hegemonic role in East Asia without damaging its core interests.”

He explains:

“China threatens the United States only insofar as America insists on being the dominant power in China’s backyard, a policy that actually contributes very little to U.S. security. If we abandon our strategy of primacy, the risk of a clash will shrink away. If we try to contain China’s rise, on the other hand, these predictions of doom may prove right.”

Glaser continues on:

“The current approach to China boils down to a kind of measured containment. It manifests in essentially in three ways:

1) maintaining and strengthening U.S. “treaty alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand,” which “are the fulcrum for our strategic turn to the Asia-Pacific”;

2) increasing overall U.S. military presence in the region to develop “a geographically dispersed, politically sustainable force posture in the region”; and

3) further integrating U.S. economic engagement in the region in a way that marginalizes, and in some cases excludes, China.”