Boom! This confirms what I've been saying for months: the US is, in fact, withdrawing from Asia.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1964203310313066911
Boom! This confirms what I've been saying for months: the US is, in fact, withdrawing from Asia.
The Pentagon's latest National Defense Strategy - which draft just landed on the Defense Secretary's desk - is de-prioritizing "deterring China" in favor of focusing on the US homeland and the Western hemisphere (politico.com/news/2025/09/0).
This is all the more striking given that the drafting of the National Defense Strategy was led by Eldridge Colby, who literally wrote a book on deterring China called "the strategy of denial" (and with whom long-time followers will know I had many heated exchanges here on X).
Now that he is in power and has access to actual intelligence, he must have understood how futile the effort would be.
Back in June I got a lot of flak for my article "Has America in fact already withdrawn from Asia?" (open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert) in which, drawing from the writings of Australian military strategist Hugh White, I argued that everything pointed to the fact that beneath the hawkish "pivot to Asia" rhetoric, America was actually quietly executing a strategic retreat. It was only a matter of time before it would be made official, which is what the Pentagon is apparently now doing
In fact the focus on its homeland in the new National Defense Strategy means that the US isn't only withdrawing from Asia but implementing a full-on strategic retreat on all fronts, which I also argued Trump was orchestrating in a July article entitled "Is Trump orchestrating a full-on strategic retreat on all fronts?": arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/is-trump-orc
Fact is, as I keep arguing, you can only deny structural realities for so long and it's a fool's errand to expect that you can project power indefinitely 7,000 miles from home into the backyard of nations that increasingly surpass you in all the metrics that matter.
In the eyes of history, Trump undoubtedly won't be remembered for making "America great again" but he may be remembered for making America realistic again - forcing it to accept its place as one power among many.
posted by Satish Sharma at
13:31
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home