What Is the Meaning of America’s Strategy "Shift"?

Last week, while being interviewed by “The Australian,” America’s Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (equivalent to China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry assistant minister) Kurt M. Campbell indicated that American foreign policy is currently going through a transition, namely that America is going to “shift” the priority of its foreign policy from the Middle East to Asia.

What needs to be explained is that Washington’s conception of “Asia” is not the same as that of China and other Asian countries. This Asia is still the West’s Asia, meaning an Asia that doesn’t include West Asia (the Middle East) or Russia (stretching across the Eurasian continent), that is, an Asia that stretches only from the Korean Peninsula to India. As to Pakistan, Americans regard Islamabad as Asian one moment and include it in the Middle East the next.

The Essence of “Shift” is “Retreat”

Campbell’s explanation once again confirms the direction of the adjustment in the strategy of American power. In July, Campbell’s boss, Hillary Clinton, indicated this American policy priority very clearly already, while visiting India and Indonesia.

In fact, there’s no need for the slightest doubt as to whether the center of America’s strategy will be Asia, because the global power “center of gravity” has already concentrated on Asia. Besides, Asia has always been one of the foci of American strategy. The “shift” referred to by the aforementioned diplomat should be correctly deciphered as a “strengthening” and “prioritizing” of all of America’s activities and defenses in the Asia-Pacific region.

However, saying that America’s strategic focus will shift toward Asia and actually shifting America’s strategic focus to Asia are two entirely different things.

From a global perspective, American power is going through a strategic decline or withdrawal, that is, “waning” (but not necessarily “falling”). Because Asia, particularly the Asia-Pacific region, is America’s “periphery” (America has always claimed that it is a “Pacific nation”), the so-called shifting of strategic priority toward Asia, in the context of “waning,” can guarantee that America maintains its influence on its own doorstep, or even somewhat strengthens its position. In other words, the so-called “shift” from the Middle East toward Asia is simply a pleasant-sounding, face-saving phrase. What an objective observer would say is that this so called shift is in fact America “retreating” from the Middle East to Asia.

America’s debate over the defense budget’s importance in the reduced federal budget is just one bit of evidence for this. During the course of resolving America’s public debt crisis, no matter how it’s done, if you want to address the root of the problem, reducing expenditures is the fundamental solution. One of the biggest expenditures of the U.S. government is defense spending. Otherwise, if defense spending continues to surge or remains at a constant level, the mechanism behind the American government’s large deficit and borrowing won’t fundamentally change.

America’s strategists, including people like Campbell who work at the State Department, are in fact the Defense Department’s people. The reason they emphasize the need for a shift in strategic focus is that, in reality, they want to use Asia’s geostrategic importance as they search for reasons to help the Pentagon maintain (or even increase) the defense budget.

Thus, when people like Campbell talk about an American strategic shift, they are simply expressing a department’s viewpoint and reflecting the intense political debate within America. For China and other Asian nations, it is not worthy of too much attention because this kind of talk hasn’t actually put forth any new ideas.

America’s Shift in Strategic Focus is Still Undetermined

In the author’s view, how America’s next strategic focus will shift is still far from determined.

America wants to formulate a global strategy for the “post-American age,” but it’s not that easy. The difficulty stems from the fact that America requires a period of time to recognize its “wane.” At present, many Americans still have no intention of acknowledging America’s “wane.” This is completely understandable, since the ancient Roman Empire, and in recent times the Chinese Empire and British Empire, all took quite a long time to recognize their “wane” periods.

The reality of the future may be that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unipolar world that America at one time firmly believed in was also a flash in the pan. But the American-centered unipolar world hasn’t been replaced by another hegemony, or a multi-polar world, but rather by a dispute-filled, chaotic, disorderly world.

America’s strategic battle lines are excessively long. Battle lines are overstretched; there is a military strategy “bubble.” This is fatal. The reason that historian Paul Kennedy proposes an American decline theory, in fact, is that as early as the 1970s and 80s he was researching the real strategic crises brought about by overstretched strategic battle lines. What many who dispute Kennedy’s American decline theory are unwilling to face up to is that America’s global battle lines have been overextended, causing American military power to be “too big,” to the extent that failure is inevitable.

In 2008, in order to rescue Wall Street’s big investment banks, the Bush administration’s Treasury Department put forward the absurd and selfish “too big to fail” concept. As a result, the U.S. government used its own power to “rescue the market,” throwing itself in after the banks, the end result being this year’s exploding debt crisis. America’s national defense is also “too big,” as per Kennedy’s “overstretched battle lines.” Now, has America really thought through retreating from the Middle East to Asia? I believe that Campbell, currently serving as a diplomat, says one thing but thinks another.

For America to actually “shift” out of the Middle East would in reality be extremely difficult, even impossible. In this context, Middle East is not used in the narrow sense, but in its wider meaning, the “Big Middle East” including North Africa and Pakistan. America’s geostrategic interest in the Middle East is deeply rooted, enormous and involves the security of Atlantic Europe and Israel. Even if America’s intentions were genuine, it would be hard to achieve success and then withdraw. Israel would block America, in order to make the United States maintain its presence in the Middle East.

Ultimately, America’s so-called “return” to Asia is in fact not an investment of its own. At present, America is unable to make additional investments. Rather, America wants to make use of the strength of its allies and friends to preserve and strengthen itself. In contrast with Europe, America’s Asian allies are doing well economically and financially. Apart from Japan, from Korea to India, America’s friends old and new are using their vigorous economic growth to expand armaments and prepare for war and military revolution. This strategic circumstance fits perfectly with America’s needs. Hence, America and her allies old and new are going to form a new strategic division of labor. From Clinton to Campbell, the talk of India’s role in American-Asian strategy shows us that America urgently desires to exploit Asia’s “emerging” powers such as India to make up for its own “waning” power.

The rebuilding of relationships between America and its Asian allies, rather than America’s own power being “shifted” towards Asia, is what is most worthy of attention in the near future.

The author is Professor and Director of the Center for New Global Governance, Renmin University of China in Beijing.