Joe Biden is not the first president to prioritize U.S. engagement in the Indo-Pacific region over other items on his foreign policy agenda, including the transatlantic partnership. In 2009, Barack Obama declared himself “America’s first Pacific president”; two years later, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the administration’s “pivot to Asia.” The fate of that attempt at geopolitical rebalancing—as well as of the largely ineffectual efforts by the Trump administration to do the same—should serve as a warning.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
