The hard truth behind the US-Indo Pacific strategy
By Mihir Sharma
MOST of the world knows how to respond to the US’ new National Security Strategy. As my colleague Marc Champion has written, Russia loves it. Liberal Europeans are dismayed, and the Gulf monarchies overjoyed.
In the rest of Asia — and what, until now, Washington has called the Indo-Pacific — the dominant emotion is uneasiness. There are words, phrases, and entire sections in the document that are exactly what we want to hear. But the underlying worldview is at odds with its rhetoric.
The strategy promises that the US will build a military capable of deterrence in the First Island Chain and the Taiwan Strait, and an insistence that the South China Sea cannot be controlled by any one actor. There is a promise to defend “global and regional balances of power,” and to fight “predatory” economic practices.
The Indo-Pacific shares all these priorities, and many are relieved that the second Trump administration has taken the trouble to restate them. And yet there’s disquiet, because some of these commitments look like they have been grafted on to a strategy that could push American policy in a fundamentally different direction.
This is a startlingly ideological document even by the standards of today’s Washington. It extends MAGA domestic obsessions — the border, DEI, climate denialism — beyond America’s shores. US soft power is listed as one of its greatest assets, without the recognition that illiberalism and xenophobia erode its value daily.
But MAGA’s most dangerous export, as far as the security of the Indo-Pacific is concerned, is its distaste for the liberal order.
America might not always have lived up to its ideals, but since the Second World War, it has defined its role in the world around promoting them — defending the practice of liberal democracy and evangelizing the benefits of global norms. They include shared prosperity, for both Americans and the citizens of partner nations.
It is here that the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) makes its most impactful break with the past. The security and stability of the Indo-Pacific may remain a stated priority, but not because freedom and openness will enrich the region and keep it loyal to the rules-based order that benefits Americans more than anyone else. Instead, a much narrower and more fragile link is being drawn, between deterring China and Trump-era economic priorities: Big Tech profits, the securing of global resources, and a “rebalanced” global economy that forces production back onshore.
This link could snap at any time — particularly if Trump is deceived into thinking that cooperation with Xi Jinping won’t cost the US in the short run, while confronting Beijing’s designs in Asia might. He’s certainly being tempted down that path: Nvidia Corp. being granted permission to sell high-end chips to China is not a good sign. Trump has said it’s “good business,” as long as the federal government gets a 25% cut. A short-term revenue boost is sufficient to risk America’s tech leadership, apparently. How can we take the solemn pronouncements in the NSS seriously?
The president’s mercantilist instincts are well-known. This piece of paper reminds us that he also believes in another throwback theory, that of spheres of influence. The strategy states that “the outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.”
A revanchist Russia won’t be the only beneficiary of this belief. China is larger, richer, and stronger than anyone else in its region; why not permit it a sphere of influence in Asia, if it gives Trump an economic deal “better” than his predecessors could extract? Beijing might break that promise later, but by then it will be some other administration’s problem.
Over the past few decades, a bipartisan consensus had developed in Washington that China was a systemic rival, and not just another economic challenger. But those running policy in the second Trump term are arguing from different premises. It’s centered on domestic economic considerations and not to preserve the world order. They do not fear the loss of global leadership; they might even welcome the dissolution of current economic arrangements. All they want is to contain the economic shocks accompanying China’s rise.
Written into the silences in this document is an unpalatable truth: An establishment in Washington that intimidates large companies, that conscripts tech into politics, that guards its domestic markets and weaponizes its trade will hardly see the Chinese system as an ideological threat.
This is what unnerves Asian capitals. One day soon, MAGA’s ideologues and populists may decide that granting Beijing overlordship of Asia will not affect jobs or profits in the US. From that day on, they will not lift a finger in defense of the Indo-Pacific.
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