U.S. Needs to Deny, Not Dominate, China in the Indo-Pacific
A newly declassified Trump administration report gives Biden some good policy suggestions but the wrong overall idea.
In denial.
Photographer: Shigeki Miyajima/AFP/Getty Images
The Donald Trump administration was not known for its transparency. Yet on its way out the door, it did something unusual, declassifying the National Security Council’s strategy for the most important region in the world.
The “U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific” — at its core, a plan for countering China’s rise — underscores several constructive legacies that the Trump administration handed down to its successor. But the document also betrays a certain confusion — which President Joe Biden’s administration would do well do clear up — about what, exactly, the U.S. is seeking to accomplish in the Indo-Pacific, and what makes it such an unusually effective superpower in the first place.