A Real Pivot to Asia Is Critical to U.S. Interests, Blackwill and Fontaine Argue in New CFR Book

“Washington’s collective inability to respond adequately to growing Chinese power across the 2010s stands as perhaps the most consequential U.S. policy omission since 1945,” argue Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill and Richard Fontaine in their important new book, Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power (Oxford University Press). The authors assert that the period from 2011, when the United States announced its planned “Pivot to Asia,” “to roughly 2021, when the Biden administration started a partial and belated shift of focus to Asia, represents a lost decade.”  

Designed “in part to deal with rising Chinese power,” the Pivot to Asia declared a change to the United States’ strategic orientation: “Asia would henceforth serve as its priority region, and the United States would refocus its military, diplomatic, and economic emphasis on the Indo-Pacific.”

More than a decade after the policy’s announcement and the subsequent U.S. failure to execute its Pivot to Asia, Blackwill, Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security, argue that a renewed pivot is critical. 

“Even after a lost decade, the Pivot remains America’s proper strategic orientation, and one that should ground U.S. foreign policy . . . given Asia’s crucial economic and diplomatic importance, and China’s abiding threats to international order.”  

Blackwill and Fontaine conclude that, while the Pivot’s strategic logic was strong, its execution highlights “how America’s attempt to maintain global commitments while shifting attention and energy to Asia proved controversial, complicated, and painful.” Domestic concerns, continued conflict in the Middle East, and commitments to traditional European allies made it difficult for the United States to fully shift its strategic focus as planned.  

Partly as a result, “China’s power is greater than ever” and “America’s position in Asia today is weaker than when the Pivot was announced.”  

The book lays out a path for policymakers to focus U.S. foreign policy on the Indo-Pacific while maintaining vital commitments in Europe and the Middle East. These policy recommendations include:   

• strengthening U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific
• joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and de-risking economic ties with China
• increasing the U.S. defense budget and boosting U.S. military assets and power projection in Asia  
• shifting military resources from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific   
• making European allies central to U.S. China strategy 

“Though much time has passed since the initial effort took shape, the United States and China remain closer to the beginning of their long-run, indefinite rivalry than to the end,” the authors conclude. “A substantial pivot of U.S. focus, time, and resources to Asia would increase the likelihood of American success in this generation’s defining competition.”   

U.S. political leaders, Blackwill and Fontaine write, should “make the necessary moves before they are forced upon them, and demonstrate that a democratic America can, in fact, shift its strategic focus and policy attention to Asia, even in a world of competing priorities.” 

Read more about Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power and order your copy at https://www.cfr.org/book/lost-decade.  

To interview the authors, please contact CFR Communications at 212.434.9888 or [email protected].