No Dominant Power: The U.S. Asserts Its Pacific Indispensability – OpEd
The release of the United States (US) National Security Strategy (NSS) in late 2025 sent waves of skepticism across policy circles. The strategy’s immense focus on ‘Western Hemisphere’ was taken by many analysts as the grand bargain where eastern sphere was to be conceded to China while the US retreats to its backyard. This false impression was effectively deflated when US secretary of war Pete Hegseth spoke at Shangri-La dialogue recently. He mentioned that Pacific has great importance for prosperity and security of the US and therefore the US would not let any power dominate it. His statement buried the sphere-of-influence thesis that the NSS had inadvertently encouraged. The analysis offers a corrective to that misreading, arguing that the NSS’s focus on the Western Hemisphere was never a concession of Asia to China, but a restructuring of how America stays in the Pacific.
Before moving into what Hegseth said at Shangri-La, let’s take a dive into the discourse that prevailed about US foreign policy soon after the release of NSS. While breaking down NSS 2025, Brookings Institution published a comprehensive analysis on what Trump’s policies in his second tenure would look like. While portraying China as the ‘most formidable state military threat to the United States since the end of the Cold War,’ this piece argues that NSS puts Western Hemisphere at the core of US interests while ‘deprioritizing Pacific.’ The author claims that seeing China as a competition in pacific from purely economic lens fails to emphasize the region’s role as a battleground for international “rules of the road,” such as freedom of navigation. It concludes that by neglecting international law and the rules-based order, an overzealous “America First” approach inadvertently weakens the very foundations of American global power.
Another piece published by The National Interest addressed the same issue while identifying ‘The Fatal Flaw in National Security Strategy.’ The author argues that Trump’s tilt towards sphere of influence paradigm is destructive for the international order that the US built after WWII. It further adds that this strategy demonstrates a shift from hegemony while degrading strategic competition that is vital to achieving the objectives Trump administration wants to achieve. Similar strategic concerns have been analyzed extensively by other prominent institutions, including the Orion Policy Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and many others.
The events that unfolded soon after the release of this strategy to some extent substantiated many assumptions. The US military intervention in Venezuela in January 2026 Operation Absolute Resolve was the practical example of this. In the context of the NSS, Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela wasn’t just about anti-narcotics or democracy promotion; it was about removing a major hostile node in the Western Hemisphere. The Trump administration’s push against Greenland came as another validation for such claims that the priorities of administration lied somewhere else than the Pacific. However, it is a serious misinterpretation of the administration’s strategic sequencing to see Operation Absolute Resolve and the Greenland pressure campaign as evidence of an American withdrawal from Asia. Securing the Western Hemisphere was a prerequisite for a more long-term, sustainable balance of power, not an act of global abdication.
While speaking at Shangri-La dialogue, US defense secretary cleared the air by stating Beijing as main geopolitical challenge as its military and economic presence grow in Asia pacific. His vision of the future pacific was clearly demonstrated in his speech where he talked about two things: first is the challenge that China is posing in the region and second is the expectations that US has from its allies in the region w.r.t China. While talking about China he clearly said that ‘there is rightful alarm regarding China’s historic military buildup and the expansion of its military activities in the region and beyond.’ While calling pacific as indispensable for security and prosperity of the US, he shared the understanding with allies that this region should not be dominated by a hegemon. This would greatly alter the balance of power and stability that Washington is seeking to achieve. Hegseth grounded this directly in the architecture of the 2026 National Defense Strategy, which he said rests on four pillars: homeland and the hemisphere, deterring China in the Indo-Pacific, burden-sharing with allies, and rebuilding the defense industrial base. When Japan’s defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, pressed him from the floor, noting that while he personally felt American commitment was unwavering, “some countries might underestimate the U.S.” Hegseth responded as simply as possible: “too many people were focused on the fact that number one is homeland and hemisphere,” he remarked, failing to acknowledge the existence of the other three pillars. He explained that the hemisphere was not a replacement for the Pacific, but rather a “reorientation toward a forgotten aspect” of military strategy. The two were intended to operate concurrently rather than competing for the same attention.
The speech duly mentioned the mechanisms through which the US will sustain this posture. He categorically mentioned that ‘We seek alliances built on shared responsibility, not dependency.’ This shows clarity on the part of the US that it retains the forward presence and the final word on deterrence, while allies are expected to close the gap on their own investment and readiness. He made a clear and purposeful comparison with Europe, saying that “Europe and NATO have some big decisions to make” as a result of NATO members’ decades-long treatment of American protection as a permanent subsidy. Asian allies were implicitly warned that the Pacific would not be permitted to follow suit. Another, and perhaps more important, question is whether regional partners can or will take on that load quickly enough.
The credibility of American strategy is still seriously undermined by transactional diplomacy at the presidential level, despite institutional attempts by U.S. defense officials to reassure Indo-Pacific partners of a strong a robust commitment. The ultimate trajectory of U.S. Pacific strategy is thus halted until Washington determines whether to maintain its traditional deterrent role or trade it away for economic concessions. As a result, regional allies like Japan are left navigating a contradictory signal –the doctrinal commitment voiced by defense leadership versus the personal, deal-making approach of the White House. In any case, the Pacific will remain the unavoidable epicenter of global geopolitics, as the region’s critical economic chokepoints and the fundamental credibility of U.S. alliances ensure Washington cannot walk away.
