The Pentagon plans to spend nearly $40 billion from the US budget to strengthen the US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region by expanding its military and technical base.

How to Lose Geopolitical Influence in Asia and Sell It as a US National Security Strategy

Rebecca Chan

 

Washington is again retrieving its old rifle from the attic to fire a shot at the ghost of its former glory. Under the label of a “generation shift”, Pete Hegseth is orchestrating a ritual dance of imperial imagination, where the army performs as a piece of stage scenery — not for war, but for the illusion of control. We’ve been here before: a map drew by the Pentagon is supposed to dutifully revolve once again around the American axis. Asia, meanwhile, is rendered a silent stage, convenient for new maneuvers.

This is presented as a technical upgrade. “A response to the challenges of the Indo-Pacific region”—a phrase reminiscent of instructions for replacing batteries in a worn-out gadget. Hegseth brings forward a dramatic diagnosis — a “conflict with China”—and immediately prescribes his treatment: increasing the injection of US military power. But there’s no strategy in these measures. There’s only a conditioned reflex of a metropole that cannot distinguish independence from a threat. Hegemony doesn’t know how to listen; it doesn’t want to hear — it simply deploys its army.

Military Cosmetics for $36 Billion

The new proposal by the Pentagon resembles reshuffling deck chairs on a sinking ship. Old equipment is discarded, a “new” logistics map is drawn up, a command is added with a name more appropriate for an antique atlas. The price tag for these exercises is $36 billion. But there’s no transformation behind that number. This is a budget form of hallucination. America is not reforming its army; it’s decorating its nostalgia.

Asia, weary of the West’s megaphone moralism, nods politely — and writes its own geopolitics, without a directory from Washington 

The supposed “containment of China” has become so cliché that it leaves a bitter taste. In the language of the old cartographers, the Pentagon is drawing a dragon in the East. Only now the dragon controls infrastructures, standards, satellites, and fleets that it allegedly shouldn’t possess. So the US Army prepares to “adapt”—by building outposts and repainting its armored vehicles in the color of fear. Asia sees this — and smiles condescendingly.

History Repeating Itself as Farce

Military futurologists have already tried to compose a new epic. In 2018, they launched Army Futures Command, as if ignoring the fact that the future is not subject to a general’s calendar. Then, as now, the Pentagon proclaimed modernization. This resulted in the usual archaeological finds: another headquarters, a few drone demonstrations, reports filled with careful rhetoric. Now the same scenario is replayed with a new cover — a country that previously fell flat in its operations in the Middle East is now repeating its maneuver in Asia — only more expensively and in a more abstract form.

These “restructures” do not clarify what the army plans to do with the region’s real politics. There are plenty of statements but zero accountability. This strategy looks more like a performance in the genre of “memories of empire.” Washington speaks to the Pacific as if it were a subordinate. Meanwhile, it chose long ago not to be its colony  — a process made clear by growing pressures within South Korea’s alliance with the USA.

War That Has Become a Habit

Hegseth is not formulating a strategy. He is reproducing a reflex — an imperial automation masquerading as “containment.” He is not thinking; he is rehearsing. He needs the army not for peace but for its habitual pose — the military pose. This view disregards growing resistance from many Indo-Pacific states who are strengthening their own mechanisms for diplomatic and economic independence.

He continues to construct a scenario in which China must play the role of the threat and America — the main character. But China has long since left this theatre. It is building Silk Roads, digital platforms, and autonomous standards. It is investing in a world that Washington still measures by its missile count.

The American response is a march into the void. Hegseth is trying to erect a frontline where there is trade, where decisions are made by engineers instead of generals. Asia has long crossed over into a mode of authorship. It is not reacting — it is setting the agenda. And each new military statement by the Pentagon sounds like a gramophone in the era of satellites. This army is not defending its interests; it is protecting its own oblivion. War for Hegseth is a habit; for Asia, it’s an anachronism.

The Army Confuses the Continent with a Concept

Hegseth thinks Asia is a logistical challenge. He fails to see its political density. Caravans of soldiers are not what’s needed here. The region remembers — it remembers Dien Bien Phu, it remembers Manila, it remembers how the name of freedom was used to construct airbases. Hegseth’s army, like all its predecessors, arrives without a language. It speaks with tanks. It demands submission from sovereignties. It demonstrates that the Anglo-American empire still believes in its own exceptionalism — even after losing credibility, allies, and significance.

In this “new strategy”, there’s no Asia — there’s only a reflection of America’s own anxiety. Hegseth isn’t rebuilding the army — he’s simply repainting the columns of a collapsing temple. He’s arming an illusion. He’s offering the region fear in PowerPoint format. Meanwhile, Asia, weary of the West’s megaphone moralism, nods politely — and writes its own geopolitics, without a directory from Washington.

 

Rebecca Chan, Independent political analyst focusing on the intersection of Western foreign policy and Asian sovereignty

 

https://journal-neo.su/2025/06/28/how-to-lose-geopolitical-influence-in-asia-and-sell-it-as-a-us-national-security-strategy/

 

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         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.