"Prepared for Future Threats? US Defence Partnerships in the Asia-Pacific Region", Chatham House, June 2012

"This report Click here by Xenia Dormandy, Senior Fellow, Chatham House, addresses two questions: are America’s defence alliances and partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region adequate to meet future challenges there, and, given today’s economic austerity, are they the most efficient way to do so?"

A more robust US military, especially naval focus on Asia including ties with allies old and new in the Asia Pacific is at the heart of a new US "Pivot to Asia" strategy. Against this background, the Chatham House report highlights the need to move beyond the fixation on "war fighting" and "boots on the ground".

It suggests the adoption of a more flexible, more diversified, "pluralateral", softer, and more "cooperative" framework, including diplomatic, legal and economic dimensions, with a host of countries including both close allies as well as China. This is to be achieved through more transparency, dialogue, and possible burden-sharing opportunities, e.g. in addressing non-traditional security threats including nuclear prolifteration, space, cyber, food, water, health, humanitarian and other regional security challenges. This would not only be able to do more with less but also build trust and mitigate China's fear of military containment.

Apart from deterence, this more nuanced strategy could provide a measure of "strategic assurance" to ease the tension as regards China as well as American's south-Asian allies, who on the one hand desire to preserve the US security umbrella and on the other wish to maintain positive relations with China, the main trading partner for most and the largest economy in the region.

The report seems to herald Zbigniew Brzezinski’s soon-to-be published book, “Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power”, outlined in his article “Balancing the East, Upgrading the West - U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Upheaval” in Foreign Affairs (January/February 2012).

Brzezinski’s ""Grand Strategy" consists of two strands -

(a) building a “Larger West” by drawing Russia and Turkey into the EU through gradual democratization and eventual conformity with Western norms; and

(b) managing a “Complex East”, where the U.S. best interest would be served by acting as “regional balancer”, “replicating the role played by the United Kingdom in intra European politics during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” -  the United States to “help Asian states avoid a struggle for regional domination by mediating conflicts and offsetting power imbalances among potential rivals”.

See an analysis of this "Grand Strategy" here

The challenge of a new Asia-Pacifc century is how US-China relation could best be fostered where the US seeks to maintain and strengthen its global and regional leadership while the Asia-Pacific holds some of the most vital core interests of territorial integrity, energy and resource security, and geopolitical and geo-economic elbow room at the very front door of a rapidly rising China.