The United States has lost its military primacy in the Indo-Pacific, with its defense strategy in the region facing a deep crisis primarily due to a mismatch between Washington's strategic ends and available means, a fresh report from the United States Studies Centre of the University of Sydney said
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th August, 2019) The United States has lost its military primacy in the Indo-Pacific, with its defense strategy in the region facing a deep crisis primarily due to a mismatch between Washington's strategic ends and available means, a fresh report from the United States Studies Centre of the University of Sydney said.
"America's defense strategy in the Indo-Pacific is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis. It is, at its core, a crisis born of the misalignment between Washington's strategic ends and its available means. Faced with an increasingly contested regional security landscape and with limited defense resources at its disposal, the United States military is no longer assured of its ability to single-handedly uphold a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific," the report, published on Monday, read.
According to the report, the US defense strategy is better suited to fight one large-scale war rather than juggle several smaller conflicts across the world while also trying to deter China's military aspirations. This, coupled with "an outdated superpower mindset in the foreign policy establishment" will require Washington to make "strategic trade-offs" in the Indo-Pacific.
As for now, the United States has lost military domination in the region and its "capacity to uphold a favorable balance of power is increasingly uncertain," the report added.
"The combined effect of ongoing wars in the middle East, budget austerity, underinvestment in advanced military capabilities and the scale of America's liberal order-building agenda has left the US armed forces ill-prepared for great power competition in the Indo-Pacific," the report said.
Maintaining a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere is one of Washington's defense objectives set by the US 2018 National Defense Strategy.
