After disengaging from two futile and expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has shifted its strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific region. The objective of this shift has been defined under the Defence Strategic Guidance:
i  The US will equip itself for an Ocean War in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean and South Asia.
i  It will support a quasi-alliance of Japan, India and Australia to dilute China’s influence so that it faces the pressure of economic and trade hegemony. Thus, one of the most important tasks of “American statecraft, over the next decade will be to lock in a substantially increased Chinese investment-diplomatic, economic and strategic.”
i  It will forge the Trans-Pacific-Partnership to restrict China, through a deal for a free trade bloc, linking the Pacific Rim states.
i  It will rebalance its posture in the region, through a more balanced distribution of its military resources, which had long been concentrated on North East Asia.
i  There will be no direct intervention, like Iraq and Afghanistan. The coalition partners will do the needful, as in Somalia, Libya, Bahrain, Syria and elsewhere.
i  The ‘swing players’ must endeavour to balance the interests of US, while taking sides of either in order to maximise their own national interests.
The Defence Strategic Guidance is conceptualised around three premises:
First, the belief that the US will be able to restore its military and economic prowess, to play the role in the new world order, as it did during the 20th century.
Second, the US will be able to draw China into the open, to play the cold war game of the last century.
Third, that the regional powers and the “coalition of the wiling” would help to implement the strategy.
Apparently, these lofty objectives are difficult to achieve because during the last 30 years, the US ambition to play a dominant role in the new world order has remained subdued due to opposition by the Islamic Resistance rising from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The global order  has also turned multi-polar with the emergence of new regional powers.
Having said that, the strategy to contain China is not going to work because its priorities are different and Beijing is no mood to play the game on American terms. Thus, Washington’s policy to curb it “will generate dynamics that would increasingly threaten to undermine USA’s primacy goals. This strategy is also in danger of enhancing, rather than reducing bad security outcomes.”
China is a rising power and the biggest holder of hard currency with a reserve that exceeds $ 2.7 trillion; while the US with a run-down economy after the two wars owes over $ 4.0 trillion to China in debt. The economic compulsions, therefore, do not promote the strategy of Asia-Pacific pivot.
Historically, China has been a proselytising power. Over the centuries, it has been subjected to aggression, forcing it to build the Great Wall. China does not seek domination over others land; it does not impose its ideology on others; and it poses no existential threat to the US either. Its main concern is the search for oil and energy and mineral wealth to raise the living standards of its citizens.
That’s why, during the last two decades, China has entered into long-term deals, committing over a trillion US dollars with the countries, which could offer oil, gas or minerals, creating economic linkages through diplomacy and not through the use of military power. Indeed, China plays the role of a facilitator, consolidating a regional cooperative relationship regime based on the principles of peace, cooperation and engagement.
The interest of America and its allies, therefore, would be better served by developing “regional cooperative relationship regimes”, using soft power and reducing global military commitments. The new geostrategic realities that have emerged from the three decades of wars, conflicts, revolutions and upheavals, demand an entirely new approach to world affairs.
Times have changed and the US policymakers, ruefully, now have to change their outlook towards the so-called Islamic extremism. If they continue to call the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Somalia and Yemen, etc terrorists, the US has and will become the victim of such self-inflicted clichés.
Jonathan Power rightly comments: “We must look at the lessons of history. Since 9/11, there has not been one successful attack on US. Not one of the (so-called radical Islamic) countries has produced one militant with a foreign agenda. By bombing the militants in their violence, post- transition has been made most difficult. Military intervention rarely works.”
Nevertheless, as the US disengages from the region and shifts the strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific, the decision by the Pakistani government to handover Gwadar Port to China, and accelerate the work on the Pak-Iran gas pipeline, is timely and diplomatically very appropriate. Indeed, it is a befitting parting-gift for the next government in power in Pakistan.

The writer is a former chief of army staff. Email: friendsfoundation@live.co.uk