Since the Obama administration's "Pivot to Asia" in 2011, US grand strategy has undergone a gradual but significant transformation. What began as a recalibration towards the Asia-Pacific — combining continued engagement with China alongside regional balancing — has evolved into a more explicit framework of strategic competition.
In the early phase, Washington still largely framed China's rise as compatible with the existing US-led international order. The 2010 National Security Strategy explicitly welcomed China's "peaceful development", even as the US strengthened alliances and expanded its presence in Asia. US policy at this stage reflected a dual-track logic: engagement with China alongside hedging against uncertainty.
By the mid-2010s, however, this approach was already under strain. Maritime disputes in the South China Sea — driven by increasingly visible US Navy operations and China's military build-up in the Spratly Islands — heightened regional tensions. A turning point came in July 2010 when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Asean Regional Forum in Hanoi, declared that the US had a national interest in freedom of navigation and respect for international law in the South China Sea. China did not take this well. Technological competition also intensified over the following years, particularly in semiconductors and 5G infrastructure, where Chinese firms such as Huawei became focal points of US security concerns. Meanwhile, China's rapid economic expansion and sustained military modernisation contributed to a growing perception in Washington that the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific was shifting.
While the Pivot to Asia had strengthened the US operational footprint near disputed waters, it was not until Trump's first term that Washington adopted an openly confrontational posture. The decisive break came in 2017, when the US formally described China as a "revisionist power" — a shift from managing China's rise within the system to framing it as a systemic competitor. This rhetorical shift was soon matched by economic action. Starting in 2018, the Trump administration imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, launching a trade war that rattled global markets and signalled Washington's willingness to use economic coercion as a strategic tool. China, in turn, began more sharply criticising what it saw as US interference in regional disputes, a maritime containment strategy aimed at undermining its security interests, and an economic nationalism that threatened to decouple the world's two largest economies.
Under the Biden administration, this posture was consolidated through alliance strengthening, technology restrictions, and expanded military coordination across what Washington now calls the "Indo-Pacific" — a rebranding that itself signals a broader strategic intent, moving away from the more neutral "Asia-Pacific" framing that had prevailed for decades. Increased US naval deployments, freedom of navigation operations, and new security frameworks such as Aukus reflect efforts to maintain a balance of power favourable to the US. While framed in terms of a "free and open Indo-Pacific", these measures have, in practice, contributed to a more militarised regional environment and heightened risks of escalation.
Beyond Asia, elements of this competitive framework increasingly intersect with US policy in other regions, though often indirectly and unevenly.
In the Middle East, US pressure on Iran — through sanctions, espionage, and diplomatic isolation — has longstanding roots in nuclear non-proliferation and continuous US efforts to dominate regional security. But it increasingly overlaps with broader geopolitical calculations involving China. Beijing has become a significant buyer of Iranian oil and has deepened its economic engagement through infrastructure investment and long-term cooperation frameworks, including the 25-year Iran–China partnership agreement signed in 2021. Efforts to constrain Iran, in this context, also have the effect of limiting China's access to energy resources and strategic connectivity routes linking the Middle East to Eurasia. When the US and Israel launched military strikes against Iran in early 2026, this dimension was very much present. Tehran's value to Beijing — as an energy supplier, a strategic partner, and a node in China's broader Eurasian connectivity — means that squeezing Iran is, among other things, a way of tightening the pressure on China's energy lifelines. Controlling the flow of Middle Eastern oil is not only a regional objective; in Washington's strategic calculus, it is increasingly part of the broader effort to limit China's room for manoeuvre.
The diplomatic fallout from that conflict has been equally revealing. Faced with the need to negotiate a ceasefire and open channels with Tehran, Washington turned to Pakistan as its mediator, hosting talks in Islamabad in April 2026. The choice was striking. Pakistan is among China's closest strategic partners, bound to Beijing through deep economic and security ties. That the US found itself depending on a Chinese ally to manage the consequences of its own military campaign points to the limits of Washington's unilateral leverage in the region. Resolving the Iran crisis, it turns out, is difficult without at least indirect recourse to China's sphere of influence.
This dynamic did not emerge suddenly. China had already signalled its growing diplomatic reach in the Middle East when it brokered the Saudi–Iran rapprochement in March 2023, bringing two longstanding rivals to the table in Beijing after years of failed mediation attempts by others. For Washington, the episode was a notable moment. A power that had long kept its distance from regional disputes was now functioning as a credible peacemaker — on terrain where the US had long assumed primacy. China's ability to command the trust of both Riyadh and Tehran, rooted in its position as a major energy customer and infrastructure partner for both, reflected a form of influence that American sanctions and military deployments could not easily replicate.
A similar dynamic is visible in Latin America. US policy towards Venezuela has long been shaped by the Monroe Doctrine and the unending US crafting of favourable regional architecture, but China's growing role as a lender, investor, and energy partner — particularly through oil-backed financing — adds a secondary strategic dimension to Washington's calculations. While not the primary driver of policy, this layer contributes to how Washington reads political and economic alignments across the Western Hemisphere.
Recent high-level diplomacy further illustrates China's centrality in contemporary global politics. Trump's state visit to Beijing in May 2026 — itself shaped in part by the need to manage the economic fallout of an escalating trade war that he had first ignited during his initial term in 2018 — followed days later by Putin's own visit, underscored the extent to which Xi Jinping has become the pivotal reference point for both Washington and Moscow. The back-to-back visits — each driven by distinct bilateral priorities — nonetheless reflect a shared recognition that Beijing sits at the centre of an increasingly multipolar international order.
These cases should not, of course, be reduced to a single explanatory logic. Regional dynamics, historical legacies, and domestic political considerations remain central to US decision-making. But the cumulative effect is clear: China now functions as a persistent background variable shaping how Washington interprets a wide range of international issues.
The result is a foreign policy that is more strategically coherent but also more structurally rigid — coherent in its recognition of China as the central long-term competitor to US influence, yet rigid in the sense that diverse regional challenges are increasingly filtered through the prism of major-power competition. As this dynamic deepens, there is a growing risk that disputes — from maritime Asia to the Middle East and Latin America — become further entangled with global rivalry. What began as a Pivot to Asia has gradually evolved into something wider — a global posture of strategic pressure that reflects the changing distribution of power in the international system, but also raises difficult questions about escalation, stability, and the limits of geopolitical framing.
Dr Muslim Imran is the director of the Asia Middle East Center for Research and Dialogue.