Last month, President Donald Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for a visit that captured both the promise and the shortcomings of America’s Indo‑Pacific strategy.
In some ways, the meeting was a success: It produced a few commercial deals, reaffirmed the strength of the bilateral relationship, and — most importantly — demonstrated a visibly warm personal rapport between the two leaders (despite an awkward moment). But as has so often been the case during America’s fitful “pivot” to Asia over the past two decades, the visit was overshadowed by yet another conflict in the Middle East that is absorbing U.S. attention and resources.
As Zack Cooper persuasively argues in Foreign Affairs, this gap between America’s stated goals and priorities and its actions exposes a deeper problem in America’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Washington’s Indo‑Pacific allies are spending more on defense than at any point in recent decades, but confidence in American leadership and the credibility of its alliance commitments are at post-Cold War lows. The predictable result has been hedging behavior, as partners diversify strategic relationships to manage uncertainty about U.S. reliability and staying power.
In this strategic context, a return to the pivot’s lofty ambitions of building an enduring U.S.-led political, economic, and security order in the Indo-Pacific is not realistic in the short to medium term. But a failed pivot does not need to end in defeat and despair. As Cooper also notes, a narrower military strategy focused on maintaining deterrence in the first island chain — a 3,000-kilometer arc stretching from Japan to Indonesia — is still possible and may yet buy the United States time to get its strategic priorities straight over the long term.
A first island chain deterrence strategy relies on three major U.S. treaty allies in the region: Japan, South Korea, and Australia. While other U.S. allies and partners are also critical — not least Taiwan and the Philippines — only these three more powerful countries possess the combination of geographic position, military and economic might, and technological and industrial capacity to underwrite credible deterrence – especially as U.S. relative power wanes.
To the Trump administration’s credit, its focus on alliance burden‑sharing has led Japan and South Korea to commit to significant defense spending increases. But deterrence is not a function of defense budgets alone. It depends on whether allied forces can operate together at scale, under stress, and across domains. On that score, U.S. alliance management under the second Trump administration has prioritized leverage over implementation — pressuring allies to spend more while neglecting the bilateral and multilateral mechanisms that make spending strategically effective.
This trajectory is not irreversible. But for a first island chain strategy to succeed, the United States should prioritize the institutional and operational foundations required to translate disparate national resources into an integrated and interoperable network of alliances that can uphold credible deterrence.
Pivoting Away from Asia
When the Trump administration released its national security and defense strategies, Indo-Pacific allies were cautiously optimistic that Washington would sustain its strategic focus on Asia. While both documents elevated Western Hemisphere concerns, deterring conflict and deepening economic ties in Asia ranked a close second — well ahead of Europe and the Middle East. The National Security Strategy even declared that “the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy…are thankfully over.”
Six months later, those expectations have unraveled. Although the conflict’s long-term implications remain uncertain, it has already damaged U.S. credibility in Asia in three ways.
First, it further undermines the U.S. pivot to Asia, to the extent that the existence of a pivot can still be credibly discussed. A United States preoccupied with ending — or merely containing — a protracted Middle Eastern war cannot devote the senior-level attention or military and economic resources needed to sustain a U.S.-led rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. China appears to be exploiting this distraction, expanding its military presence in the South China Sea and intensifying economic coercion against U.S. allies, deepening doubts about American resolve. If, as Cooper argues, a comprehensive pivot was already impractical, it is now even more so.
Second, the war exposes a gap between the administration’s stated priorities and its actions. If official strategies and policies can be so quickly contradicted by Trump, allies have reason to question U.S. commitments more broadly. This inconsistency will heighten concerns about treaty assurances and sharpen anxieties over Taiwan policy, particularly ahead of Trump’s visit to Beijing next month.
Finally, the conflict has generated cascading diplomatic, economic, and military effects that disproportionately burden America’s Indo-Pacific allies. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has driven up energy prices, straining Asian economies, while the prospect of long-term Iranian control over the waterway raises serious concerns about the preservation of freedom of navigation and international law in Asia. At the same time, heavy U.S. munitions expenditures — especially of Tomahawk cruise missiles and Patriot interceptors — will erode readiness and the need to replace them will constrain U.S. defense industrial capacity, delaying deliveries to allies such as Japan.
Despite these headwinds, the administration can still get back on track. A more focused deterrence strategy along the first island chain can preserve regional peace and stability — a challenging task even before the war with Iran broke out. But the United States continues to benefit from strong and capable Asian allies that are willing and able to cooperate; they need only an American partner that can provide sustained leadership, high-level attention, and resources to implement deterrence efforts.
Re‑Centering the U.S.-Japanese Alliance
A policy course correction should start with Japan — America’s most strategically important ally in maintaining deterrence along the first island chain.
Despite stable leader‑level relations, the U.S.-Japanese alliance is experiencing strategic drift. Japanese officials increasingly question U.S. reliability and worry about the opportunity cost of neglecting or de-prioritizing alliance management and strengthening activities necessary to achieve closer strategic and operational cooperation. Although working‑level cooperation continues incrementally, senior‑level attention has focused almost exclusively on defense spending levels.
That emphasis is misplaced. Higher Japanese defense spending will only strengthen deterrence if it is aligned with shared operational concepts, interoperable capabilities, and clearly defined and operationally relevant roles and missions.
To achieve that alignment, the Trump administration should revise the U.S.-Japanese bilateral defense guidelines — the blueprints that govern how U.S. and Japanese forces operate together during peacetime and conflict. The existing document was last updated in 2015 and since then, China’s military power and geographic reach have expanded dramatically, Japan has acquired long‑range counter-strike munitions, and U.S. expectations of allied contributions to regional security have increased. The existing guidelines no longer reflect strategic or operational reality.
A revision process would include a comprehensive assessment of regional threats, the division of alliance roles and missions, required capabilities, command‑and‑control arrangements, and force posture. It would also provide a framework to evaluate and integrate ongoing initiatives — such as bilateral command-and-control upgrades and force posture enhancements — and determine how they fit into a coherent first island chain deterrence strategy.
Critically, the review ought to consider how to integrate U.S.-Japanese bilateral cooperation with other security partners, especially South Korea and Australia, as well as Taiwan. Finally, the process should be linked to expanded co‑development and co‑production efforts — especially through the nascent Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition, and Sustainment Forum — so that new capabilities are effective, interoperable, and supported by resilient supply chains and a diversified defense industrial base.
An effective revision process will require sustained focus by senior and mid-level officials — especially in the Departments of Defense and State — and the utilization of alliance management structures that have largely been neglected by the Trump administration to date. A year and a half into the second Trump administration, an alliance “2+2” ministerial meeting bringing together the defense and foreign affairs leaders of both countries still has not been held — one of the longest stretches in recent memory. The “2+2” is critical for establishing leadership vision and providing the high-level direction necessary to implement ambitious alliance initiatives — especially in the face of bureaucratic resistance and inertia on both sides.
In addition to holding a “2+2” as soon as is feasible, the administration should also prioritize and reinvigorate existing working-level fora — such as the Deputy Assistant Secretary-level roles, missions, and capabilities working group — to perform the necessary work to implement “2+2” guidance, drawing on the collective expertise of alliance security, foreign affairs, and military experts. While working-level alliance groups continue to meet under the Trump administration, their agenda is limited and less ambitious; this can only be corrected by sustained focus and initiative from senior and mid-level political officials.
Revising the guidelines will require significant work and consume alliance bandwidth for an extended period. But reinvigorating bilateral institutions to revise the defense guidelines is an essential activity to ensure that the defense partnership is optimized and fit for purpose in addressing the landscape. It will also ensure that the U.S.-Japanese alliance remains the bulwark for defending the first island chain.
Drawing South Korea Out — Without Undermining Peninsular Deterrence
U.S.-South Korean relations have proven more resilient than many anticipated. Trump and President Lee Jae‑myung have established a functional working relationship, and Seoul has earned the Trump administration’s praise as a “model ally” for its defense spending commitments.
Yet U.S. policy has sent mixed signals. The administration’s interest in updating U.S. force posture on the Korean Peninsula and accelerating the transfer of operational control so that Seoul takes the lead in defending against North Korea has complicated alliance management and slowed progress on deeper defense cooperation.
A more disciplined and holistic approach is required. Reorienting the U.S.-South Korean alliance to focus more on regional deterrence — particularly along the first island chain — need not come at the expense of peninsular security. North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs remain a direct threat to U.S. forces and allies, particularly Japan, and should remain central to alliance planning.
As with Japan, Washington should prioritize and re‑energize senior and working‑level alliance management mechanisms focused on expanding defense cooperation. This should include launching a strategic review through the existing Korea Integrated Defense Dialogue forum to perform a fundamental reassessment of the bilateral roles and missions, capabilities, and force posture necessary to maintain deterrence on the Korean Peninsula, while also increasing the alliance’s role in defending the first island chain. The review should also consider how South Korea could be more fully integrated into a networked regional security architecture — through both an expanded Quad and the U.S.-Japanese-South Korean trilateral partnership launched at Camp David in 2023.
The trilateral framework, in particular, holds immense potential for first island chain deterrence but remains underdeveloped. Although some cooperation has continued at the military level, without senior political-level support and guidance, such efforts will remain limited and lose momentum. The Trump administration should therefore prioritize fora intended to promote enhanced trilateral cooperation, including the secretary-level Trilateral Ministerial Meeting and the assistant secretary-level Defense Trilateral Talks, so that they can elevate three-way defense cooperation to the next level.
Enhanced trilateral cooperation could include joint war planning among the three partners, in essence, allowing Japan and South Korea to better understand how their respective bilateral plans with the United States would interact and support each other in a regional contingency. Over time, the United States could also explore establishing a trilateral operational command that would coordinate operations between the three partner military forces in peacetime and during contingencies.
These initiatives would be complex, and none would be quick or easy to do. But the United States established robust alliance management and trilateral channels with both South Korea and Japan to do hard things so that our security partnerships could evolve and keep pace with regional threats. It is time to re-energize these institutions in the pursuit of stronger bilateral alliances and a more integrated regional security architecture.
Repairing the U.S.-Australian Alliance
On one level, the U.S.-Australian alliance has been comparatively stable. Defense cooperation remains strong, Australia avoided targeted tariffs, and early concerns about the U.S. commitment to the AUKUS partnership were put to rest during a successful meeting between Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last October.
But relative stability at the top has belied a deeper sense of inertia and strategic drift in the U.S.-Australian alliance — a perception magnified by the sharp decline in the Australian public’s support for the United States.
The central challenge for the Trump administration is to repair and restore Australia’s faith in U.S. leadership, and by extension, the U.S.-Australian alliance. A renewed focus on buttressing the core pillars of the bilateral relationship should begin with a review of the regional security environment and the alliance’s role in upholding deterrence along the first island chain. This process will clarify where both sides should direct their focus and resources.
To perform this assessment, the Trump administration should refocus the secretary-level alliance 2+2 meeting so that it sets a clear vision and drives the strategic direction of lower-level alliance working groups. A re-energized 2+2 would prioritize efforts to strengthen bilateral defense cooperation — with AUKUS as the core — as well as multilateral security cooperation with Japan and other strategic partners. The 2+2’s first priority should be to focus the alliance on strengthening first island chain deterrence, while at the same time pursuing cooperation that is important to Australia and the broader region, such as security and development assistance in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.
At the operational level, the Trump administration should also seize the opportunity to fill an existing gap in the U.S.-Australian alliance architecture. Unlike America’s other major treaty allies like Japan and South Korea, the United States and Australia lack a robust and comprehensive alliance coordination mechanism that brings together working-level defense, foreign affairs, and military experts to discuss and integrate the full range of alliance issues, including bilateral military roles and missions and the capabilities required to address evolving security challenges.
One way to improve alliance policy coordination and implementation is to upgrade and expand the Force Posture Working Group that was established to support the rotational deployment of U.S. Marines to Australia as part of the 2011 Force Posture Initiative. Another possibility is to create a new umbrella alliance management forum that sits above the force posture group to provide oversight and integrate its efforts with other alliance initiatives focused on bilateral planning, roles and missions, capabilities development, and AUKUS implementation.
Conclusion
The Trump administration can point to real achievements in its first year, particularly on allied defense spending. But those gains mask deeper strains that threaten to erode the effectiveness of America’s Indo‑Pacific alliances. The cascading effects of the Iran war and Trump’s obsession with burden‑sharing have damaged American credibility and crowded out effective strategy and policy implementation. Key bilateral and multilateral institutional and operational structures are languishing, and public confidence among some allies is slipping.
While the restoration of a comprehensive U.S. pivot to Asia is no longer realistic, a more limited first island chain deterrence strategy centered on core U.S. alliances is still possible. After a year of turbulence, Indo‑Pacific allies are eager for sustained American leadership and attention and would welcome renewed U.S. focus on alliance management structures, strengthening activities, and regional integration. Whether and how Washington capitalizes on this moment to correct course will determine not only the durability of U.S. alliances but the future balance of power in the region.
Luke Collin is a principal at the Asia Group. He previously served as the director for Japan and Australia on the U.S. National Security Council staff from 2023 to 2025 and as director for Japan policy at the Department of Defense from 2021 to 2023.
Image: Petty Officer 2nd Class Timothy Dimal via DVIDS
