Ever since the Obama administration announced America’s impending “pivot to Asia” in early 2012 there has been a palpable sense of anxiety among Europe’s political class that Washington was gearing up to end NATO’s free riding and demand the allies start acting responsibly when it comes to rebuilding their militaries. Since then, U.S. foreign policy elites have periodically revisited various formulas of “strategic rebalancing” away from the Atlantic to the Pacific to better position the country to face the rising Chinese threat. Today this view constitutes the dominant consensus in Washington. The Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy and its 2018 National Defense Strategy prioritized China as the principal national security threat. The Biden administration has carried on in the same strategic direction.
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