When Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe visited President Obama in April 2015, I was an analyst several years removed from my previous government service and a few months away from joining the Obama administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. I was invited to the White House. for the ceremony welcoming the prime minister on the South Lawn. It was a beautiful spring day in Washington, and I enjoyed the sun next to the South Portico while Abe and Obama reviewed the troops and gave brief remarks to the assembled crowd.
It was a day when the United States and Japan would begin a new chapter in their decades-old alliance and dramatically shape the tour in government upon which I was about to embark. It was also a day of remarkable, if largely unnoticed, historical significance. In 1960, Prime Minister Abe’s grandfather—Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi—had likewise agreed with President Dwight D. Eisenhower to amend and update the US–Japan alliance. Standing in the sun at the White House fifty-five years later, I thought about the history of those two men and marveled at their ability to overcome wartime enmity and adjust their nation’s policies to the geopolitical realities of the day.
There was a sense that Abe and Obama were building on the accomplishments of their predecessors by updating the defense guidelines that defined the scope of defense cooperation between the two sides. It heralded the beginning of a new era for the alliance, in which Japan would finally begin to contribute more to its own defense and in which US and Japanese forces would be more flexible and better prepared to cooperate on a range of challenges, from maritime security to disaster response, by planning, training, and operating together.
This was especially important for me at the time, because I was in the midst of researching strategies to encourage allies and partners in Asia to do more—a project that resulted in this book. Through this research, and then through my experiences in the Pentagon, I became increasingly convinced that the United States faces profound challenges in the Indo-Pacific, and became committed to the idea that we should again adjust our policies for these new geopolitical realities.
I began to write this book during the middle of the Obama administration, when I was working at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). The project was shelved when I was appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia in 2015, and I was delighted to be able to return to the project after the end of the Obama administration. Yet I found myself needing to revise my thinking substantially—both because of what I had learned during my time in the Pentagon, but also because of President Donald Trump.
President Trump has been clear in his desire to see our allies and partners to “do more,” even while questioning the utility and fairness of those alliances themselves. This had several implications for the book I was writing, and I realized that it should go beyond describing how the United States should do more with its allies and partners, to also describe why. More fundamentally, this book seeks to describe the utility of alliances and partnerships themselves and why they are critical for American power in the world’s most geopolitically important and dynamic region.
This book is also, though implicitly, an argument for the critical role that allies and partners should play in American foreign policy and national security strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Within this context looms President Trump, who has regularly expressed deep skepticism about the utility of allies and partners while—often in the same breath—praising America’s enemies.1 Because this book was written during the Trump administration and was completed in the midst of its third year, it does not attempt to catalogue the administration’s approach to alliances and partnerships in Asia; nor does it attempt to grapple with the inheritance of its policies. This is an ongoing story, and one beyond the scope of this book. Yet the Trump administration also provides a context that cannot be ignored.
I would like to express my deep appreciation to the Smith-Richardson Foundation, the NBR, and the Wilson Center for supporting this project, and for their patience as I navigated its rapidly changing subject matter. I am especially thankful to Al Song for his thoughtfulness, support, and partnership. I am also deeply thankful to Lindsey Ford, Prashanth Parameswaran, Eric Sayers, Ashley Townsend, Van Jackson, and Thomas Wright for their thoughtful reviews of drafts. I would also like to thank Allison Szalwinski at NBR for her exceptional project management, and to Melanie Berry, Brian O’Keefe, Mary Ratliff, Nicole Smolinske, Taylor Washburn, and Zane Zovak for their research and editing support. I am also deeply grateful for my editors—Alfred Imhoff and Stephen Wesley—as well as my colleagues at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars—especially Robert Litwak and former US representative Jane Harman.
Finally, I am thankful to my wife, Laura, for her support in the late nights and during weekend writing sessions. Taking care of two small children is difficult under any circumstance; doing it with a husband first working at the Pentagon and then glued to a laptop has been above and beyond the call of duty.
The views expressed here are mine alone, and not of the U.S. government or any of its departments or agencies.