Far from Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, as the Group of Seven wealthy democracies meet in Italy to discuss a range of old, deep-seated challenges, the nature of American power is being transformed in the region that Washington sees as crucial for the coming century : the Asia-Pacific.
Here, the United States no longer presents itself as the confident guarantor of security, as a trust-us-we-have-this superpower. The terrain is too vast, the rise of China is too great a threat. So the United States has offered to be something else: an enthusiastic teammate for military modernization and technological development.
“In the past, our experts have talked about a hub-and-spokes model for security in the Indo-Pacific,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said this month at a global defense conference in Singapore. “Today we see something very different.”
