The Lost Decade: The Us Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power

Lost Decade is an essential guide for understanding the historic shift to Asia-centric geopolitics and its implications for America’s present and future.

Across the political spectrum, there is wide agreement that Asia should stand at the center of US foreign policy. But this worldview, first represented in the Obama Administration’s 2011 ＂Pivot to Asia,＂ marks a dramatic departure from the entire history of American grand strategy. More than a decade on, we now have the perspective to evaluate it in depth. In Lost Decade, Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine--two eminent figures in American foreign policy--take this long view. They conclude that while the Pivot’s strategic logic is strong, there are few successes to speak of, and that we need a far more coherent approach to the Indo-Pacific region. They examine the Pivot through various lenses: situating it historically in the context of America’s global foreign policy, revealing the inside story of how it came about, assessing the effort thus far, identifying the ramifications in other regions (namely Europe and the Middle East), and proposing a path forward.

The authors stress that the US has far less margin for foreign policy error today than a decade ago. As the international order becomes more unstable, Blackwill and Fontaine argue that it is imperative that policymakers fully understand what the Pivot to Asia aimed to achieve--and where it fell short--in order to muster the resources, alliances, and resolve to preserve an open order in Asia and the world. Crafting an effective policy for the region, they contend, is crucial for preserving American security, prosperity, and democratic values.

Robert Blackwill is the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of Harvard Kennedy School’s Applied History Project. As deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for strategic planning under President George W. Bush, Blackwill was responsible for government-wide policy planning to help develop and coordinate the mid- and long-term direction of U.S. foreign policy. He also served as presidential envoy to Iraq and was the US ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003.

Richard Fontaine is the Chief Executive Officer of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He served as President of CNAS from 2012-19 and as Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow from 2009-12. Prior to CNAS, he was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Prior to that, he served as Associate Director for Near Eastern Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) from 2003-04. He also worked on Southeast Asian issues in the NSC’s Asian Affairs directorate. At the State Department, Fontaine worked in the office of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and in the department’s South Asia bureau. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Trilateral Commission and as a member of the Defense Policy Board.