The Center for New American Security released a report on the importance of the Asia-Pacific region to the United States. Despite Asia-Pacific’s growing political and economic weight, China’s rise, the fear of nuclear proliferation and the need for multilateral cooperation to solve the world’s ills, the US has “often been focused elsewhere” over the past decade. The authors call for stronger US engagement in the region.
The clip below summarizes the report in greater detail.
On a related note, Sunday’s New York Times includes an article discussing why the Pentagon is rethinking its old doctrine of being prepared to fight two wars at once. With US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for over six years and the emergence of new threats, the US is reassessing its needs. Thomas Donnelly, a policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, highlights China’s military might and believes the US will seek “a multiwar, multioperation, multifront, walk-and-chew-gum construct.”
“We have to do many things simultaneously if our goal is to remain the ultimate guarantor of international security. The hedge against a rising China requires a very different kind of force than fighting an irregular war in Afghanistan or invading Iraq or building partnership capacity in Africa.”