The White House Is Abandoning Its Indo-Pacific Partners

Over the past fifteen years, at least until 2025, U.S. strategic policy had gradually shifted, at least rhetorically, toward a primary focus on Asia, also known as the Indo-Pacific. After the George W. Bush presidency, which was centered on the war in Iraq and the Middle East, the Obama administration launched what it called a “pivot” to Asia in 2011, with the aim of developing stronger military, diplomatic, and economic ties with the region. Overall, the pivot was supposed to make clear that Asia was increasingly the center of U.S. economic and strategic interests, and would only become more so in the future, and Washington needed to recognize this shift.  

As part of the pivot, the Obama White House deepened engagement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It also, in its National Security Strategy, made clear that Asia would become the center of U.S. interests, and promised to move a higher percentage of U.S. military assets to the region. The administration also upgraded alliances with South Korea, Japan, and Australia, and created a much closer partnership with Vietnam, despite ongoing major human rights concerns about Hanoi’s human rights record. It planned to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive, region-wide trade deal. The White House expanded defense exercises with many regional partners.

The promises of the pivot did not always come to fruition. The U.S. ultimately did not join the TPP, which became unpopular with the public and portions of both political parties. Some Southeast Asian states complained that, despite Obama’s promises, the administration, like its predecessor, failed to continually send high-ranking officials to regional summits.

Still, the shift to a focus on the Indo-Pacific seemed to have become ingrained in U.S. policy. In the first Donald Trump administration, policymakers revived the largely dormant Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, an informal gathering of leaders from Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. The Trump administration, along with its partners, turned the Quad, which had basically been abandoned, into a productive forum for regional strategic dialogue.  

The first Trump White House also, in its National Security Strategy, clearly viewed China as a competitor, saying that Beijing was attempting to “displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor.” Responding to the China challenge, the first Trump administration, working well with partners, imposed export controls on sending a wide range of high-technology items to China. It also deepened ties to India, with Trump hosting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a raucous gathering in Texas.

When Joe Biden became president, his administration maintained—and even hardened—some of Trump’s policies toward China, while deepening ties to Pacific partners in other ways. Indeed, Biden toughened export controls, and also built close defense ties with the Philippines, a key U.S. ally in the region that would be essential in the case of war in Southeast Asian waters. Biden also publicly announced that the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, a major statement.

However, the second Trump administration seems ready to abandon what had been a bipartisan approach to the Indo-Pacific now dating back at least fifteen years—and one that Trump’s first administration had embraced. The most recent National Security Strategy (NSS), released in November 2025, makes clear that the White House’s top priority is maintaining U.S. dominance of the Western Hemisphere, and spends relatively little time talking about the strategic importance of the Indo-Pacific. China does not appear in the NSS until the nineteenth page of the 29^th page document, as CFR’s David Sacks has noted. Meanwhile, the White House has spent a considerable amount of its time feuding with European defense partners and questioning alliances with Europe, leaving even less time to focus on Asia.

The administration has further cast doubt on the reliability of its defense relationships with some of its closest partners in Asia, such as Japan. Further, despite close ties in his first administration, the second Trump administration has seen a rapid downgrade of links with India, a major regional player and one that multiple administrations had cultivated. Trump’s imposition of fifty percent tariffs on India and seeming outreach to Pakistan, an economy nowhere near the size of India’s, has shattered the U.S.-India relationship.  

In addition, the administration had already alienated some Asian partners through its repeated tariff negotiations, some of which fluctuated wildly, and raised concerns among Asian partners that the White House would come back with demands for higher tariffs. The unpredictability has impacted supply chains and could be a drag on growth in Asia this year.

Regarding Taiwan, the biggest flashpoint in the region, the Trump White House also seems less sure than it was in Trump’s first term. As my colleague David Sacks has noted, in the new NSS, the language notes that the U.S. will no longer “oppose” any “unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” but will simply “not support” it, a move that stands to heighten uncertainty in Taipei. The NSS also focuses less on China as a strategic competitor and more on economic ties, and the White House recently agreed to sell advanced chips to China, a turnaround from its first administration and a move opposed by many U.S. partners.

Further, the new National Defense Strategy also focuses on the Western Hemisphere and on defending the United States homeland. It does discuss deterring Beijing, but downgrades China as a threat to U.S. interests, contrary to prior U.S. strategy. The NDS does not even mention Taiwan, a shift from prior versions, or the Quad, even though that had been a Trump success story. And as Wen Ti Sung of the Atlantic Council notes, “The NDS mentions five areas where the United States will prioritize the provision of ‘critical but limited support from U.S. forces,’ and the Taiwan Strait is not one of them.”

Asian states are already responding. Some, like Japan and South Korea, are becoming clearer about needing to provide more for their own defense. Others, like India, are moving toward other major powers, including Russia and others. But all of them are reconsidering the reliability of U.S. partnerships.