Interview with Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine: Lost Decade – The US Pivot and the Rise of Chinese Power

Octavian Manea

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To debate the past and the future of the US pivot to the Indo-Pacific, Ambassador Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine have agreed to discuss their new book, Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power, for this Strategy Debrief. Ambassador Blackwill, could you provide an overview of the main arguments in your new book?

Ambassador Blackwill: We would like to make four points at the outset, which we hope will summarise our book. First, that the Obama-Clinton pivot to Asia announced in the fall of 2011 was a radical change in US grand strategy. Throughout its history, the United States had been a Europe-first nation. Now Asia would be America’s first external priority with first claim on US resources and attention. Two, however, this revolution in US grand strategy never happened. Despite the astonishing rise of Chinese power and influence during the 2010s, the US did not pivot to Asia, and did not devote additional resources to meet China’s challenge. Indeed, the United States is in a much weaker position in Asia today in terms of the balance of military power, the economic domain and diplomatic influence than when the pivot was announced in 2011. That is why this was the “Lost Decade”. Three, this US failure to respond in the 2010s to the momentous growth in Chinese power and influence in Asia and beyond, we believe, represents one of the three most critical US foreign policy failures since the end of World War II, along with Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 escalation in Vietnam and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And finally, we think it is more important than ever for the US to pivot to Asia.