The Trump Administration’s Pivot Away from the Indo-Pacific By By: Husain Haqqani, and Aparna Pande
The Trump Administration’s Pivot Away from the Indo-Pacific By By: Husain Haqqani, and Aparna Pande Without much debate or consultation with allies, the White House has executed a critical change in US China strategy.
For the last several years, US presidents and other officials talked about a pivot to Asia in America’s foreign and national security policy, designed to limit China’s rising influence. The first Trump administration defined the region where it would expand US presence and contain China as the “Indo-Pacific.” But the Trump administration now appears to be gradually dismantling the security architecture created for that purpose. Without saying as much, the United States seems to be shifting its focus away from the Indo-Pacific, and possibly even from the notion of containing China except through economic measures.
The Hawaii-based unified combatant command, named US Indo-Pacific Command in 2018, was renamed US Pacific Command in June 2026, signaling a more limited defensive role than earlier envisaged. The Quad, comprising Australia, Japan, India, and the United States, was meant to be the core of an Asian NATO but has, in the administration’s eyes, effectively lost significance.
Speaking in Manila in August 2026, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby implied that US Indo-Pacific ambitions might have represented “high-flown abstractions and comfortable illusions of permanent unipolarity.” He also tried to tie it to the “legacy foreign policy of the post-Cold War period,” calling it “out of date and ill-advised,” without acknowledging that President Donald Trump embraced maintaining American primacy in the Indo-Pacific during his first term.
The end of the pivot to Asia and the Indo-Pacific strategy is a major shift in US policy. Still, like many other major shifts under this administration, it has been executed without focused debate. There are some unanswered questions. Does American grand strategy (if there is one) no longer seek to prevent China’s rise as a peer competitor? Or is dominance of the Indo-Pacific no longer deemed to be the key to keeping China’s rising power in check?
It would be understandable if someone argued that preventing the rise of a peer competitor is no longer feasible, but no one in the administration has publicly made that argument. That China’s rise cannot be checked without maintaining freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific with the support of allies is so obvious that no one will probably try to suggest the alternative as a policy option.
The second Trump administration has reversed course from the first Trump administration, which championed the bipartisan strategic concept of a free and open Indo-Pacific. It identified the Quadrilateral Security grouping, or Quad, as the centerpiece of a network of alliances and partnerships in Asia, which it said were necessary to keep China’s ambitions in check.
Six years ago, in 2020, the United States military, with President Trump as commander-in-chief, designated China as the “primary pacing threat.” Then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl defined this in 2021: “China is the only country that can pose a systemic challenge to the United States in the sense of challenging us, economically, technologically, politically, and militarily.”
But the current Trump administration appears to view the region not as a principal area of competition, but as just another sphere where the United States competes with China. Instead of strengthening long-term, strategic partnerships with Indo-Pacific countries, the administration now prefers a transactional approach that lacks a grand strategy. This is clear from the speeches of high-ranking officials as well as the National Security and National Defense Strategies.
The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) suggests managing competition with China through reduced hostility and relative cooperation, rather than the long-term strategy argued in the 2017 NSS of the first Trump administration. The mercurial trade war between the United States and China in 2025 reflects a preference for dealmaking over mobilizing a coalition, backed by American hard power, for greater leverage.
While broader technological competition and the need to ensure resilient, reliable supply chains remain areas of friction, the current administration does not particularly highlight China as the threat to the United States. That may not be a bad thing, but it amounts to a key policy change without alerting allies or explaining it to the American people.
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Both the first Trump and Biden administrations recognized the need to cooperate with China as a global power, but they envisioned a mix of cooperation and competition. Previous administrations sought to create a comprehensive security architecture with Indo-Pacific allies and partners to deter Chinese aggression.
The Biden administration declared that US national interests were strengthened through “a latticework of strong, resilient, and mutually reinforcing relationships that prove democracies can deliver for their people and the world.” Its National Defense Strategy emphasized Indo-Pacific multilateral organizations such as the Quad and AUKUS as part of the region’s broader security architecture. Similarly, in the western Indian Ocean, the administration supported the I2U2 minilateral comprising India, the UAE, Israel and the United States.
In 2023, the idea of an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) emerged, and the United States supported it to promote regional economic connectivity. All these groupings had a strategic underpinning: they were intended to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which helped China expand its influence over various countries through infrastructure development. The Trump Administration’s Pivot Away from the Indo-Pacific
The current administration appears uncommitted to this security and cooperation architecture. Like the US containment strategy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Indo-Pacific strategy was a construct aimed at China. The aim was not only to maintain American military, economic, and technological power, but also to build up the capabilities of allies and partners in the region and thereby prevent Chinese dominance over Asia.
The difference is visible when comparing the 2018, 2022, and 2026 National Defense Strategy documents. The first Trump administration recognized the need to strengthen alliances and partnerships to build “a networked security architecture capable of deterring aggression, maintaining stability, and ensuring free access to common domains.”
The Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy called China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences” as the biggest threat facing the United States. But now the US goal is stated as seeking “a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China.” As in Europe, demands for burden-sharing and notions of burden-shifting have replaced the notion of US leadership in Asian security. The Trump Administration’s Pivot Away from the Indo-Pacific
At the 2026 Shangri-La Dialogue, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth castigated the Indo-Pacific as a region with “constant escalation, rhetorical theatrics, or a region defined by public confrontation.” The top American defense official called on Asian nations to increase their defense spending, noting that, moving forward, the United States would invest in its own capabilities, saying, “less Shangri-La, more ships.” Those ships will, obviously, take years to build, but in the meantime America’s regional partnerships might wither.
For now, the Quad, IMEC, I2U2, and AUKUS continue to exist, but Washington sees them through a purely transactional and operational prism. This transactional, mercurial approach to the Indo-Pacific is unlikely to produce a world order that is “fairer” to American interests. Without reliable and effective allies in Asia, the United States would yield the region to China’s pre-eminence. A major shift of this magnitude should not happen without adequate debate among Americans or discussions with allies.
About the Authors: Husain Haqqani and Aparna Pande
Husain Haqqani, former ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, is diplomat-in-residence at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Amb. Haqqani is the author of four books: Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding, India vs Pakistan: Why Can’t We Just Be Friends?, and Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State.
Aparna Pande is director of the Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia at the Hudson Institute. She is the author of Explaining Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: Escaping India, From Chanakya to Modi: the Evolution of India’s Foreign Policy, The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Pakistan, and Making India Great: The Promise of a Reluctant Global Power.
SOURCE: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-trump-administrations-pivot-away-from-the-indo-pacific
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