The US Risks Irrelevance in Asia

U.S. President Joe Biden was once again absent from the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which concluded last week in Vientiane, Laos. This marked the second year in a row the United States’ leader chose to skip the gathering. This year the administration sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his place, a further downgrade from Vice President Kamala Harris’ participation in 2023. 

By most objective measures, the United States’ position in Asia at the end of 2024 is more secure than it was in 2020. The Biden administration has secured access to nine bases in the Philippines as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which was put on hold under former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022). In the span of one month in 2023, the Biden administration established a new, Japan-South Korea-U.S. trilateral with its two East Asian allies and concluded a double upgrade in the U.S.-Vietnam relationship. 

The Lowy Institute’s newly released Asia Power Index confirmed this positive trendline, finding that the United States remains the most powerful country in Asia. While Beijing continues to chip away at Washington’s lead, the index found that “China’s power is plateauing,” rather than surpassing that of the United States.

But these metrics obscure a more worrying reality: While the Biden administration has shored up U.S. influence in the short term, the bigger picture for Washington over the long term is one of increasing irrelevance in Asia compounded by inattention and inconsistency. 

While U.S. policymakers frequently make the point that the United States is the largest source of foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia, that is only true if you consider total investment stocks. New data from the Lowy Institute indicated that over the last decade China has invested significantly more in the region than the U.S. ($218 billion from China to $158 billion from the United States). 

Cognizant of China’s dominant economic influence in the region, more Southeast Asian elites now say that they would choose China over the United States if forced to pick between the two, according to a recent survey by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. It’s the first time Beijing has eclipsed Washington as the partner of choice.

Washington’s credibility problem would be easier to address if U.S. policymakers knew what they wanted in Asia. Is it to retain primacy (which by all indications it no longer enjoys)? Deter China? Or enshrine a multipolar balance of power in which China’s ability to coerce smaller countries is blunted by competing poles or middle powers like Japan and India?

Official speeches, strategy documents, and press briefings lay out several interrelated goals of U.S. strategy. According to the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy, “the United States is determined to strengthen our long-term position in and commitment to the Indo-Pacific.” When it comes to China, the document explains, “Our objective is not to change the PRC but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share.”

The National Defense Strategy released the same year lists among its top priorities “Deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary – prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific.” Central to the administration’s approach has been the concept of “integrated deterrence” – working with allies and partners to push back on Chinese efforts to upset the existing U.S.-centric order.

Along these lines, administration officials such as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs Daniel Kritenbrink have underscored that the United States can only accomplish its goals with the help of allies and partners, hinting at the possibility of a less powerful U.S. and increasingly multipolar balance of power in the Pacific.

Increasingly bellicose anti-China rhetoric in Washington – never more evident than in an election year in which each party seeks to outbid the other as tougher on China – has not been matched by a positive vision for regional stability that embraces economic statecraft or conventional tools of diplomacy.

The next administration has a chance to reimagine an Asia policy that reflects regional interests and responds to the palpable desire for a more active and balanced U.S. role in the region. The next president should consider three guiding principles to get the balance right.

First, Asian states want a more benign and sustainable U.S. presence, one not simply predicated on security partnerships and military bases but capable of delivering much needed public goods such as economic investment and development finance to meet the needs of Asia’s rapidly growing middle classes. Asia’s middle class is expected to grow to 3.5 billion by 2030, making it the largest in the world. A 2019 report by the Asian Development Bank estimated that the infrastructure needs of developing countries in the Indo-Pacific would amount to $1.7 trillion a year through 2030 when climate change adaptation was factored in. Yet according to one recent study, official development finance to Southeast Asia in 2022 was at its lowest level since 2015 in real terms.

Second, the United States need not be the single most powerful player to make positive contributions to regional order. Washington policymakers are deluding themselves if they are crafting regional strategy from the assumption that the United States still enjoys unchallenged primacy in Asia. That ship has sailed. Primacy should no longer be the lodestar of U.S. strategy; it is an unrealistic goal. This reality check should not lead to a crisis of confidence, however, and opens up opportunities for smarter strategic choices. 

As Van Jackson pointed out recently, “there’s power in restraint.” As Jackson argued, “preserving dominance requires exercising force, but exercising force accelerates hegemonic decline.” Instead, the United States could presumably be rectifying growing inequality, spending more on health and education, and providing basic services to underserved domestic constituents.

Third, smaller states want options. While it has become cliché, the reality is that Asian states do not want to be forced to choose between China and the United States. China has been the dominant economic partner for the entire region for some time, and it isn’t going away. By contrast, the United States is seen as fickle and often a source of instability. 

In Indonesia and Malaysia, citizens have boycotted U.S. companies such as McDonald’s and Starbucks to express their outrage over Washington’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Indonesia and Malaysia are both significant regional partners for Washington and proverbial “swing states,” whose populations frequently put pressure on their political leaders to distance their countries from the United States. Policymakers in Washington therefore need to be more cognizant of how their country is perceived in the region. 

Lastly, U.S. policymakers should not fear multipolarity, which may be second best to a unipolarity in which the U.S. predominates the regional balance of power, but is certainly preferable to the current frictions of bipolar competition between the United States and China. The administration’s “latticework” approach is one step toward such a regional operating system. Washington should continue to empower allies and partners that are willing to play a constructive role in preserving a rules-based (not necessarily liberal) international order.

If the United States can take these lessons to heart, it may play a small role in shaping a smarter and more realistic Indo-Pacific strategy, which appeals to the interests of regional states.