Tyler Bray
The United States faces a dangerous strategic contradiction in the Indo-Pacific: expanding security commitments alongside eroding capacity to fulfill them. At the heart of this contradiction lies what can best be described as a “capability-commitment gap.” While the United States has strengthened security pledges to Indo-Pacific partners, its capacity to sustain this posture has deteriorated to crisis levels.
U.S. shipbuilding capacity now represents just 0.1 percent of global market share, while China commands 46.6 percent, creating a staggering disparity in the ability to sustain naval power in any prolonged confrontation. This represents a form of hollow maritime power – outwardly impressive but internally weakened in capabilities that translate hardware into strategic effect.
This gap has not gone unnoticed by regional actors facing daily Chinese gray zone operations. Rather than simply lamenting the United States’ decline, they are constructing new security arrangements and reimagining their roles in a regional order no longer dominated by a single maritime hegemon. The result is not a simple fracturing of the U.S. hub-and-spoke alliance system but the emergence of a “latticework” of interlocking security relationships with distributed responsibilities.
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