Description
Can the United States pivot to Asia? Borrowing the terminology of the Obama era, we define a “pivot” as a strategic adjustment characterized by relative and absolute increases in economic, political, and military attention given to a specific geographic region. We argue that President Obama failed to bring about a successful pivot to Asia because of domestic impediments; that President Trump similarly failed to implement a comprehensive pivot to Asia; and that President Biden has enjoyed only mixed success in this regard. We conclude that domestic politics in the United States places strict limits on how far US leaders can make good on supposed commitments to the Asia-Pacific. As well, we provide an argument for how these domestic-level barriers to power projection in the Indo-Pacific reflect underappreciated limits to US material interests in Asian security. In the words, there is a mismatch between US rhetoric on Indo-Pacific policy and material US interests in the region's future.
