The Trump administration has taken the next step toward fleshing out its approach to China, by releasing the Pentagon's Indo-Pacific Strategy Report. The 64-page paper deals with a number of regional security issues, but it focuses primarily on how to preserve a congenial climate as an ambitious, autocratic China asserts its growing influence.
Those who are looking for a fresh, definitive answer to this question are going to be disappointed. The main thrusts of the document are familiar; they date back to the Barack Obama years and even before. Where the Indo-Pacific report is more interesting is in highlighting — intentionally and unintentionally — the key challenges the United States has yet to overcome.
The Indo-Pacific strategy is essentially a follow-on to the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, two documents that put the threat from revisionist great powers — especially China — at the center of U.S. policy. The report describes the Indo-Pacific as America's "priority theater," because that region is likely to be the engine of economic growth and the epicenter of geopolitical rivalry in the 21st century. To shore up an eroding U.S. position and prevent China from achieving hegemony, the Defense Department will pursue three interlocking initiatives.