Experts link the formal and strategic narrative shift in U.S. global military posture to the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and the practical elements of the “pivot to Asia” or “rebalancing” policy. From that point onward, the Asia-Pacific region gained increasing prominence in U.S. strategic documents, and by 2020, this approach had conceptually expanded into the Indo-Pacific region. The primary objective became counterbalancing and strategically encircling China—now clearly regarded as a global challenger and a “revisionist” power seeking to reshape the liberal international order.
To achieve this, U.S. military strategy increasingly relied on the region’s strongest states—Japan, India, and Australia—as well as smaller regional allies such as South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
The other side of this shift involved the gradual reduction of U.S. military presence in Europe, despite the fact that since 2014, Russia’s strategic containment has received more attention within NATO through enhanced forward presence and deterrence measures.
These two significant developments reflect the re-emergence of great power competition in the 21st century, to which the United States has had to adapt. Another essential factor that enabled global force redistribution was the effective winding down (to varying degrees) of the two major armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq—both previously classified as stabilization operations.
This analysis outlines and interprets this global shift in focus based on the main currents of strategic discourse and data from the U.S. Department of Defense.
