The quiet death of the US pivot to Asia

FOR over a decade, successive American administrations agreed on precious little – but they agreed on this: the future of US power lay in the Indo-Pacific, not the Middle East.

The pivot to Asia was more than a policy preference. It was a strategic reckoning – an acknowledgement that Washington had squandered a generation of blood and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan, while China quietly transformed itself into the only power on earth capable of contesting American primacy.

That consensus is now in ruins, and the rubble is scattered across the Persian Gulf.