It’s time for a US Indo-Pacific reset

As the recent struggle to pass a budget for the US government illustrates, yet again, the immutable reality of limited fiscal resources, it’s time to reconsider America’s vital national interests in the Indo-Pacific and maintain a laser-like focus on safeguarding its territories in the Pacific.

The United States is a Pacific power with significant territorial reach: the states of Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii; the inhabited territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa; as well as eight uninhabited islands. In addition, via Compacts of Free Association, the US has three protectorates: Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Federated States of Micronesia.

Accordingly, President Donald Trump should clearly delineate a geostrategically coherent Pacific Region security envelope that encompasses these territories and stretches in an arc from Alaska to Palau to Cape Horn at the southern tip of the Americas. In effect, such a Trump Doctrine framing a Pacific Region security envelope would be a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (which acknowledged the Americas as a vital national interest). 

Correspondingly, President Trump should also announce the intention of the United States to terminate, in a phased manner over the remainder of his term, the existing burdensome security arrangements with countries in the Indo-Pacific region that fall outside the recalibrated Pacific Region security envelope: Taiwan, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Australia.

These countries should adjust to the emerging multipolar world and assume the responsibility for making their own independent security arrangements to safeguard their vital national interests.

Manifestly, American security guarantees have allowed these countries to neglect their own defense needs. The United States cannot afford to bear the cost of strategic altruism to the detriment of its vital national interests.

Washington relies on debt to bridge the gap between insufficient revenues and excessive expenditures and is careening recklessly towards a fiscal meltdown. In Fiscal Year 2024 the US government had total debt outstanding of $35.46 trillion, which is far greater than the size of the country’s economy. Interest payments now exceed defense spending.

Almost 14 years ago, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Congress: “I believe our debt is the greatest threat to our national security.”  He added, “[W]e have not been forced to be fully disciplined in our choices …. We must now carefully and deliberately balance the imperatives of a constrained budget environment with the requirements we place on our military in sustaining and enhancing our security.”

Instead of heeding Admiral Mullen’s prudent advice, America’s decisionmakers continue to ignore the need to recalibrate and prioritize vital national interests to align them better with realistically available financial resources.  

Fiscal discipline and strategic discipline are inextricably linked. Just as a lack of financial discipline leads to ballooning debt, a lack of strategic discipline leads to mushrooming security burdens under the cloak of strategic ambiguity.

So, without realizing that the US approach of strategic ambiguity to address the threat posed by China is tantamount to strategic profligacy, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in his speech at the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue unwittingly described what the unintended result would be for Washington rather than Beijing: “More dilemmas, more complications, more questions, more concerns, more variables, more reasons to say, ‘It’s not worth it’.”  

While strategic ambiguity may be useful for strategic flexibility, it is not a panacea. The key to strategic discipline is strategic clarity. It is essential to identify which vital national interest of the United States is put at risk by an increasingly powerful China.

A vital national interest must be existential in nature – something for which the country is willing to go to war using all the power available, including nuclear weapons. Surely the paramount vital national interest of the United States must be safeguarding its territorial integrity. 

In the Pacific, the most vulnerable inhabited US territories are American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas.  Beijing is playing a brilliant game of Go to outflank these territories, which are integral parts of the United States. China has growing security arrangements with the Cook Islands, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

From a geostrategic perspective, American Samoa’s defensive position is precarious: the Cook Islands are about 824 miles to the southeast, Fiji is about 836 miles to the southwest, and the Solomon Islands are about 2000 miles to the northwest.

By contrast, Hawaii (the closest US state with significant military capabilities) is about 2,585 miles north of American Samoa. Safeguarding Taiwan, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Australia from China is an unnecessary security burden and does not enhance the ability of the US to safeguard any of its Pacific territories.

It’s time for an Indo-Pacific reset and refocus on US vital national interests.

Samir Tata is founder and president of International Political Risk Analytics, an advisory firm based in Reston, Virginia, USA, and author of the book Reflections on Grand Strategy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).