Why would someone with such deep roots in the very institutions that built the U.S. security order argue it just isn't sustainable anymore? That U.S. forward bases in Asia are, in her words, "vulnerabilities not assets, all risk and little reward"?
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2105863939095769200
It’s exceedingly rare when a policy paper from a Washington think tank sets off a firestorm on both sides of the Pacific, but it’s exactly what happened with 's “A Second Island Chain Strategy for Asia”, published by Defense Priorities on September 10.
Even today, some 3 weeks after publication, it's still being argued over: this week a professor of strategic deterrence at the U.S. Naval War College weighed in on "the commotion" around it (x.com/JRHunTx/status). You also had coverage from Seoul's Chosun Ilbo (chosun.com/english/world-) and Tokyo's Japan Times (japantimes.co.jp/commentary/202) to Germany's Deutsche Welle (dw.com/en/us-asia-wes), which reported that it had “alarmed U.S. allies in Asia.”
To be fair, Kavanagh has quite the resume so it's no surprise her words carry weight: before Defense Priorities, she ran the Army Strategy program at the RAND Corporation, the Pentagon's semi-official think tank, then was a senior fellow at Carnegie. She also teaches at Georgetown and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Hard to think of a more mainstream Washington CV.
And what she proposes in the report is indeed radical, especially coming from someone with such an establishment pedigree.
She proposes that every single mutual defense treaty in Asia be effectively terminated or phased out, including those with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia, and that U.S. forces should retrench to the second island chain, far away from China’s coast.
All in all, it’s no exaggeration to say that her proposal does in fact amount to undoing the entire security order the U.S. has built in the region over three quarters of a century.
So... why? Why would someone with such deep roots in the very institutions that built the U.S. security order argue it just isn't sustainable anymore? That U.S. forward bases in Asia are, in her words, "vulnerabilities not assets, all risk and little reward"?
Is Kavanagh just an outlier, or is she the canary in the coal mine, the first mainstream voice to put two and two together and say out loud what the rest of the establishment will soon have no choice but to admit?
That's what my latest article is all about: a deep look into the military reality behind her conclusions, the Asia that would come after, and why, read between the lines, her report is above all a testament to how well Beijing has played the long game.
As I put it in the conclusion: "The surest sign a strategy has worked is when your rival concludes, in its own interest, that it should do what you wanted all along."
This is the link to the article, enjoy the read: arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/top-washingt
posted by Satish Sharma at
13:40
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