After one year in office, the Trump administration’s foreign policy has drawn mostly negative reviews.
Major efforts to bring peace to both Eastern Europe and the Middle East—both admittedly tall orders—have resulted in meager progress. That is to say nothing of the intense nervousness neighbors and allies feel over Washington’s unique new vision for hemispheric defense.
Amid that bleak overall picture, China stands out as a possible bright spot. While many pundits have forecast an intensifying great-power rivalry in the Asia-Pacific, it has not yet meaningfully materialized.
The second Trump administration has rejected the ideologically charged anti-China position that hawkish figures like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton brought to Trump’s first term. Trump’s new approach in the Asia-Pacific considers deterring China as a secondary priority to the primary objective of securing the homeland.
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