Washington’s Indo-Pacific approach is changing – and Beijing may find parts of it surprisingly acceptable
The absence of China’s top military leadership from this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue – a key annual inter-governmental security conference focused on the Asia-Pacific – prompted predictable speculation about worsening US-China relations. Yet the more important development took place away from the conference hall.
Just hours earlier, American and Chinese military officials met in Hawaii under the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement to discuss maritime safety, crisis management, and ways to reduce the risk of incidents at sea. This was in line with the trend of Washington and Beijing rebuilding lines of military communication despite their strategic competition.
Rather than pursuing either liberal-globalist ambitions or a new Cold War against China, US President Donald Trump’s second-term administration appears to be advancing a strategy built on realism and balance-of-power politics.
The end of the globalist consensus
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue offered perhaps the clearest articulation of this approach.
Hegseth argued that the US has abandoned what he described as the “old toothless, utopian, and globalist course of foreign policy.” Meaning that appeals to universal values and abstract international norms are giving way to a foreign policy centered on national interests, military strength, and strategic realism.
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