AILSA CHANG, HOST:
A decade ago, the U.S. was in its pivot-to-Asia era, focusing diplomatic and military resources on countering a more powerful China, while also nurturing closer ties with fast-growing Asian economies. But today, conflicts in the Middle East are once again taking up most of America's military resources. This week, the only American carrier formation in the Pacific was diverted to the Middle East. And analysts say that pivot to Asia is over if it really ever began. NPR's Emily Feng reports.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: On paper, Trump administration officials say Asia remains a priority. Here's Elbridge Colby, under secretary of war for policy, speaking earlier this month to reporters about countering Chinese aggression after a trip to Southeast Asia.
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ELBRIDGE COLBY: They don't want a big war. Nobody wants a big war.
FENG: Including the Philippines, he said, a key U.S. ally in the Pacific region.
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COLBY: But you understand that you have to be strong to ensure that you can prevent that outcome.
FENG: He was speaking about deterrence, mostly against the Philippines regional competitor, China. But Asia is far from the U.S. president's agenda these days. In August, Trump reduced the number of joint military drills with South Korea, citing a long-held grudge about U.S. security.
DREW THOMPSON: It's inconsistent with published U.S. strategy documents and policy speeches, which really hurts U.S. credibility.
FENG: That's Drew Thompson, a former senior defense official in the Obama and first Trump administrations. Now he's a fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. No ally expects unconditional support from Washington, he says.
THOMPSON: But sudden policy reversals and arbitrary shifts cause allies to increase their hedging behavior, and that reduces the strength of alliance relationships.
FENG: An assessment released this month by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation found the U.S. only had a fraction of the key interceptor missiles needed for defense in the event of any potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That was true even before the Iran war further depleted American munition stocks. Randall Shriver, a former assistant secretary of defense during Trump's first term, says that could embolden China.
RANDALL SHRIVER: It's possible that China's looking at all of this and saying, you know, perhaps we're the ones who should engage in opportunistic aggression when we look at some of our long-held ambitions like those related to Taiwan, the South China Sea.
FENG: The South China Sea, where China's been trying to claim more territory. Dan Blumenthal, a senior fellow at the think tank the American Enterprise Institute, says there have been long-term shortages in munitions and logistics in the Western Pacific region.
DAN BLUMENTHAL: We could see the shortfalls coming.
FENG: That are now painfully obvious. As early as the Bush administration in the early 2000s, when Blumenthal was senior director for China and Taiwan at the Defense Department, he saw the U.S. was trying to pivot more to Asia, but...
BLUMENTHAL: The pivot never was properly resourced. Never took off.
FENG: Middle East conflicts and budget battles kept drawing resources away. China was watching the entire time, says Mike Dahm, a former Naval intelligence officer, now a fellow with the Aerospace Research Center at the Mitchell Institute.
MIKE DAHM: I was working at the U.S. embassy in Beijing in 2014 when Admiral Wu Shengli, who was the commander of China's navy at the time, thanked the U.S. Navy admiral for what was supposed to be the rebalance of U.S. forces to the Pacific.
FENG: Thanked the U.S. in front of Dahm.
DAHM: The Chinese admiral noted the U.S. never really rebalanced its forces in any meaningful way.
FENG: Meaning the U.S. could not extract itself from conflicts in the Middle East, all while China improved its navy capabilities.
Emily Feng, NPR News, Washington.
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