By Ankit Panda
Sure, the U.S. pivot to Asia is slower than expected, but that’s a good thing.
Optimism about the “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia seems to be dropping with every passing week. While Asia hands lauded the initiative when it was announced during President Obama’s first term in office, in 2014 they sigh at the United States’ inability to extricate itself from crises the Middle East and, more recently, Eastern Europe. Furthermore, several enthusiastic backers of the pivot — Hillary Clinton, Kurt Campbell, and Tom Donilon, for instance — are long gone from the administration. Meanwhile, critics of the administration’s foreign policy see the pivot as “myth” or a sign of American “retreat.” As analysts have noted, 2013 wasn’t the best year for the U.S. pivot to Asia. The year ended with China having declared an Air Defense Identification Zone over a large swath of the East China Sea, rampant investment in naval assets and procurement in Southeast Asia, and a visit by Shinzo Abe to Yasukuni Shrine, provoking China (and others) in the process.
Strategically speaking however, U.S. sluggishness and lethargy towards the pivot has had some benefits. Particularly, the United States may have found a way to remain influential in Asia without allowing its friends and allies in the region to slump into the moral hazard of relying on the United States for the ultimate guarantee of maintaining the status quo in the Asia-Pacific. Imagine the alternative: the United States flawlessly and swiftly pivots to Asia, reallocating its military assets proportionately around the region. Its allies are assured that this massive U.S. presence in the region will prevent Chinese adventurism in the Asia’s inner seas and give little thought to building up their own domestic capacities. In such a scenario, even Shinzo Abe might have been less zealous on the issue of collective self-defense in Japan, content to continue Japan’s post-war trend of fielding a modest Self-Defense Force and relying on the United States for all else.
Read the full story at The Diplomat