Foreign Policy in Focus.
A year ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signaled a major transformation in U.S. foreign policy in an article titled “America’s Pacific Century,”
which announced the U.S. “pivot” toward Asia, the Pacific, and the
strategically important Indian Ocean. “One of the most important tasks
of American statecraft over the next decade,” she wrote, will be “to
lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic,
strategic, and otherwise— in the Asia-Pacific region.” The increased
engagement, she wrote, would be underwritten in part by “forging a
broad-based military presence.”
Shortly thereafter, the Pentagon published its new “strategic
guidance” paper, which, signaling at a shift away from Iraq and Central
Asia, named the Asia-Pacific region and the Persian Gulf as the nation’s
two geostrategic priorities. To emphasize the new commitments, Clinton,
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and President Barack Obama made
high-profile visits to allied Asian and Pacific nations. Republicans, in
Mitt Romney’s foreign policy white paper,
upped the ante, insisting that the United States “expand its naval
presence in the Western Pacific” and pressure its allies to “maintain
appropriate military capabilities.”
