November 01, 2019
How American Progressives Think About Asian Security
Democrats running for the 2020 U.S. presidential nomination implicitly accept – or at least have not rejected – the premise that the United States’ fate is linked to that of the broader Indo-Pacific in some manner. None give any indication that they seek to revolutionize or entirely overturn the U.S. approach to Asia. Yet the candidates hold partly contrasting philosophies about foreign policy and America’s role in the world, and have said little about how they might secure U.S. interests in the region.
The foreign policy differences among the candidates, as well as their areas of consensus, matter because while Asia is unlikely to weigh heavily on the outcome of the 2020 election (barring a crisis or war), the inverse is not true. The election is likely to have significant repercussions for Asian security. The United States’ influence across the region, its myriad commitments, and ample military presence mean that dramatic regional shifts could follow from even modest changes in U.S. policy.
But what changes are conceivable, and why? That requires unpacking the diversity of philosophies about foreign policy that exist among America’s self-described political progressives.
Read the full story in The Diplomat.
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