In 2011, during the first term of President Barack Obama, the United States trotted out a new orientation for its foreign policy, which it dubbed a “pivot to Asia.”
The central goal underpinning this strategy was to gradually downscale the United States’ profound, extravagantly costly, and—over a succession of administrations, both Democratic and Republican—ever-deepening security commitments in the Middle East so as to better face what it expected to be the most daunting challenge to U.S. power in the remaining century: a fast-rising China.
In 2011, during the first term of President Barack Obama, the United States trotted out a new orientation for its foreign policy, which it dubbed a “pivot to Asia.”
The central goal underpinning this strategy was to gradually downscale the United States’ profound, extravagantly costly, and—over a succession of administrations, both Democratic and Republican—ever-deepening security commitments in the Middle East so as to better face what it expected to be the most daunting challenge to U.S. power in the remaining century: a fast-rising China.
For a time, Washington worked hard to convince both its traditional Asian allies, such as Japan and South Korea, and more neutral countries, such as Vietnam, that this shift was serious and no short-term fancy. In fact, however, the Middle East and its wars never relinquished their hold on the United States’ military and diplomatic resources. Any careful reading of U.S. foreign policy over the preceding administrations would have already suggested as much. Clear antecedents of Obama’s so-called pivot could be found in the speeches and policy papers of both the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies.
As with so much else, the first term of President Donald Trump seriously degraded this convention, however little its goals had been realized. The Trump government publicly cast doubt on Washington’s likelihood of defending Taiwan in case of a Chinese attack, engaged in a scarcely concealed extortion of Japan and Korea by exacting trade concessions in connection with the continued presence of U.S. troops in those countries, and invested little in broadening or deepening alliances with Asian governments as a way to firm up U.S. power in the world’s most populous and economically dynamic region.
In the past week or so, though, the Trump administration has advanced immeasurably further toward demolishing some of the leading relationships in U.S. foreign and national security policy. And remarkably, it has done so simultaneously against two of the most traditionally important pillars of the United States’ interests and commitments abroad: East Asia and the Middle East.
What has transpired in East Asia and the Middle East in recent days is singular and worthy of description as breathtaking. Even more remarkable is the way in which these two developments are linked.
Barely had a major, annual joint defense drill conducted between Washington and Seoul begun in South Korea than Trump, with no forewarning, ordered it on Tuesday to be shortened by half. In response, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun made no effort to conceal his country’s surprise. “Neither our government nor U.S. officials had any prior knowledge of what President Trump revealed,” he said. “We received no advance notice.”
There was more to this story, though, than a failure to consult Seoul or a breach of diplomatic decorum. Although Trump did not explain his decision with any clarity, he hinted, in the loose and allusive way that he frequently speaks, at the reason behind it. In the space of a few sentences, he invoked his imaginary friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the man whose regime the U.S.-South Korean alliance is most focused on defending against, and implied that his motivation might have arisen from pique at South Korean President Lee Jae-myung for having declined to assist U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf. Never mind that by Trump’s own account, he told Lee that holding the line against Iran in the Gulf was easy and that Washington didn’t really need South Korea’s help.
Shortly after, North Korea issued a public message to say how unimpressed it was by Trump’s abrupt war games move, calling it an ineffectual gesture. On Thursday, Pyongyang fired around 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea.
As this debacle was unfolding this week, the Trump administration ordered the USS George Washington, the last of its aircraft carriers in East Asian waters, to sail to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln. This urgent necessity had arisen from the gross mismanagement of the U.S. war with Iran, which resulted in the Lincoln sustaining the longest continuous deployment of any U.S. aircraft carrier without a port call in decades, distressing its crew to the point that some have reportedly attempted suicide, and depleting food stores and other supplies.
This was not the only recent catastrophe suffered by the U.S. Navy that has affected the country’s commitments in East Asia. This week, it was revealed that a catastrophic power failure had left a U.S. destroyer, the USS Benfold, adrift in the South China Sea for four days last month. This may sound like a symbolic problem, or an unimportant one-off, but the South China Sea—home to Taiwan and numerous disputed islands and waters—is the precise area in East Asia where U.S. security commitments are facing their most serious test. China’s contested claims to virtually the entire waterway, and its vast expansion and modernization of its navy over the past two decades, are the leading rationale for a pivot to Asia in the first place.
The way Washington has mismanaged its ongoing war of choice against Iran will also almost certainly affect the United States’ position in Asia. U.S. readiness and deterrent credibility have been severely impacted by the profligate use early in the Iran war of many of the country’s most advanced weapons systems, both offensive and defensive. Depleting stocks of costly, high-tech U.S. munitions against a medium power such as Iran, which has learned to use far less expensive and sophisticated weapons systems to devastating effect, has almost certainly left U.S. forces in Asia less prepared to back up their security commitments to allies against a near-peer China. And this fact is unlikely to have gone unnoticed in Beijing, plausibly raising the risk of conflict in the region.
As bad as all of this sounds, the story of the debacle of Trump’s foreign policy in East Asia and the Middle East doesn’t end here. Far from it.
Washington has never carried out its pivot to Asia because of an enduring bipartisan and institutional attachment to defending Israel and preserving a dominant military posture in the region that is the world’s most important source of oil and natural gas. This has meant frequent U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern wars and a hair-trigger readiness to flex military and diplomatic muscle at the least sign of crisis in that part of the world.
These reflexes, by now highly developed, have fed huge arms sales to the Middle East and—to an extent little perceived by the U.S. public—led to a proliferation of military bases throughout the region. The careless and bumbling approach to war with Iran has now called decades of what I’d describe as U.S. presence-building into question. That is because Iran, which has spent years preparing for asymmetric war with the United States and Israel, has revealed the vulnerability of Washington’s Middle Eastern military outposts. Tehran’s rocket and drone forces have been able to pound U.S. bases with remarkable effectiveness.
This has not just meant killing U.S. soldiers, but also destroying top-drawer radar systems, evading costly U.S. anti-missile systems, and even precision targeting a reputed CIA station housed in the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh. Iran’s demonstrated prowess in these attacks is the very reason that the USS Abraham Lincoln has been unable to resupply itself or grant shore leave to its crew for nearly 270 days.
Although never inclined to public shows of humility, the Trump administration has reportedly begun to consider dramatically scaling back the dense base architecture in the region that successive administrations have spent years building. Easily as important, as Iranian weapons have rained on economic infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, the war has almost certainly caused some of the United States’ most important security partners and client states in the Middle East to question the value and effectiveness of U.S. defense guarantees, and to quietly seek alternative partners and arrangements.
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East—which has long been based on unreserved support for Israel even amid mounting atrocities, mere lip service to rights for Palestinians, and unremitting hostility toward Iran—has been bankrupt and stagnant for ages. What today’s linked tragedies in the Middle East and Far East reveal, though, are real and important reversals for the United States. Under the second Trump administration, Washington has suddenly gone from not being able to downsize its commitment in one of these regions in order to boost its posture in the other, to a kind of unmanaged calamity in both.