Asia & the Pacific

16 Items

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, second right, walks during a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, second left, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, left, at Point Loma naval base

Stefan Rousseau/Pool Photo via AP, File

Analysis & Opinions - Real Clear Defense

America's Allies are More Dependent on Washington than Ever Before

| June 13, 2023

Grant Golub writes: For decades, Washington has called on U.S. allies to sustain greater shares of the defense burden while largely neglecting to take concrete actions to make this happen. This has helped allow other countries to become dependent on American military protection while letting their own defense capabilities atrophy.

Bernard D. Fall, left, talks with Major Robert Schweitzer

AP

Analysis & Opinions - Modern War Institute

The Overlooked Irregular Warfare Expert the Pentagon Should Study Today

| Jan. 31, 2023

Nathaniel L. Moir explains why, given the U.S. military’s recent prioritization of large-scale combat operations, Howard University Professor and former French Resistance fighter Bernard Fall's thoughts about a similar prioritization of conventional warfare in Vietnam seem prescient. 

Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG 54) is underway off the coast of Japan near Mt. Fuji.

Mass Communication Specialist Seaman David Flewellyn/U.S. Navy via AP

Analysis & Opinions - The National Interest

A Global America Can't Pivot to Asia

| Sep. 22, 2022

Grant Golub argues that the root cause of the so-called pivot to Asia's failure is Washington's continued belief that U.S. power and interests are global and universal. If U.S. decisionmakers truly seek to reorient U.S. strategic priorities, they need a clear hierarchy of the country's interests and obligations.

Raising the American flag over Fort Santiago, Manila

Public Domain/George W. Peters

Analysis & Opinions - War on the Rocks

The Psychology of Stickiness: What America Can Learn from Its Annexation of the Philippines In 1898

| May 05, 2022

Aroop Mukharji writes that the moment the United States became a major military power in Asia can be traced to a single day, Oct. 28, 1898. It is a story about the difficulty of letting go, and it teaches scholars and policymakers an important lesson: An everyday psychological bias can lead to years of entanglement. Foreign policy commentary is awash with debates about why one region or another is more or less relevant to U.S. national interests. Those debates are important, but they miss a general point. It is always hard to let go.

Taliban special force fighters arrive inside the Hamid Karzai International Airport

AP/Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi

Analysis & Opinions - TRENDS Research & Advisory

An Unassailable Position of Total Weakness — U.S. Foreign Policy Since 9/11

| Sep. 11, 2021

Nathaniel L. Moir writes of historical cases in which a U.S. tendency to over-rely on military capabilities and American economic strength proved unwise and how such power eventually proved to be irrelevant. In addition to the Vietnam War as an example, the rapid collapse of the Republic of China and its large military forces in late 1948 and 1949 offers some parallels with the collapse of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Government, despite the United States investment of trillions of U.S. dollars.

boy lying on couch with ice bag

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - Real Clear Defense

This Virus Is Tough, but History Provides Perspective: The 1968 Pandemic and the Vietnam War

| Apr. 24, 2020

Nathaniel L. Moir recounts the events of 1968: The war in Vietnam and extensive civil unrest in the United States — and yet another big problem that made life harder. In 1968, the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the United States than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars.