West Asia conflict diverts US, attention from Asia ahead of Trump’s summit with Xi
In 2011, President Barack Obama declared it was time for America to leave behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “pivot” to Asia to counter the rise of China. Fifteen years later, the US finds itself still at war in the Middle East and has pulled military assets from the Asia-Pacific as it aims to eliminate the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.
The demands of the Iran war also caused President Donald Trump to delay by several weeks his highly anticipated trip to China, deepening worries that the US is once again getting distracted at the cost of its strategic interests in Asia, where Beijing seeks to unseat the US as the regional leader.
Those skeptical of the US involvement in the Middle East say the war is preventing Trump from adequately preparing for his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month, when economic interests are on the line, and they warn that a failure to focus on Asia and maintain strong deterrence could lead to greater instability, if China should believe the time is ripe to seize the self-governed island of Taiwan.
“This is precisely the wrong time for the United States to turn away and be sucked into another intractable Middle East conflict,” said Danny Russel, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Rebalancing to Asia is highly relevant to America’s national interests, but it has been undercut by many bad decisions.”
Others defend the president’s approach, arguing that the forceful steps he is taking elsewhere, including in Venezuela and Iran, serve to counter China globally.
“Beijing is the chief sponsor for the adversaries that President Trump is dealing with sequentially, and it’s wise to do this sequentially,” Matt Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said in a recent podcast.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also said conflicts may not be confined to a single theatre, suggesting that China could call upon its “junior partners” elsewhere to divert US attention if it should move against Taiwan.
“Most likely it will not be limited, something in the Indo-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific,” Rutte said, speaking Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Washington. “It will be a multi-theatre issue.”
Repercussions in Asia of the Iran war Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently led a bipartisan group of senators to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, where they heard concerns about the impact of the war on energy costs and about the departure of US military assets, including missile defence systems from South Korea and a rapid-response Marine unit from Japan.
She sought to reassure them of the US commitment to deterring conflicts in Asia and shoring up regional stability. “Failure is not an option,” Shaheen told The Associated Press after returning from Asia. “We know China has already said they intend to take Taiwan by force if they need to, and they’re on an expedited time schedule. And we also know that what happened in Europe, in the war in Ukraine, in the Middle East is affecting those calculations.”
Kurt Campbell, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, said he’s worried that the military capabilities that the US had patiently accumulated in the Indo-Pacific region might not return in full even after the Iran war ends.
The longer the conflict goes on, the more it will pull resources and focus away from Asia, said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the US strategy in Asia. He added that future arms sales to the region also will be negatively affected.
“The United States has expended substantial numbers of munitions in the Middle East and will have to keep an increased force presence there, some of which has been redirected from Asia,” Cooper said.
“Meanwhile, Xi Jinping’s wisdom in preparing a wartime economy by stockpiling and adding alternate energy sources has shown itself to be beneficial.”
Shaheen said the US defence industry will struggle to meet the demand to replenish the weapons stockpile. “We’re working on a number of strategies to improve that, but at this point, timelines for weapons delivery are slipping,” she said.
The senator from New Hampshire said she’s encouraged that Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are stepping up their own defence.
Obama’s strategic rebalance to Asia reflected his understanding that the US must be a player in the Pacific to harness the region’s growth and ensure continued US leadership in the face of China’s rising influence.
“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region,” Obama said in a speech to the Australian Parliament. “So make no mistake, the tide of war is receding, and America is looking ahead to the future that we must build.”
But the strategy was set back when a proposed trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership with key US regional partners failed to get through the US Senate. After Trump first took office in 2017, he withdrew the US from the partnership and launched a tariff war with China.
His Democratic successor, Joe Biden, kept Trump’s tariffs on China and tightened export controls on advanced technology, while strengthening regional alliances to counter China.
The Middle East again grabs US attention
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By the time Trump rolled out his national security strategy in late 2025, the US strategy in Asia had been narrowed to military deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and the First Island Chain, a string of US-aligned islands off China’s coast that restrict its access to the Western Pacific.
The national security document says it’s in the economic interest of the US to secure access to advanced chips, which are sourced primarily from Taiwan and are needed to power everything from computers to missiles, and to protect shipping lanes in the South China Sea.
“Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” the document says. “We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain.”
The Middle East, it says, should be getting less attention: “As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.”
Then came the Iran War.
