T O W A R D A N I N

Strategy in East Asia    Table of Contents      Executive Summary   3      About the Authors   6      Acknowledgments   7      America’s Interests in East Asia and the Need for a New Strategy   8      Three Key Trends in East Asia and U. [...] Their feedback was invaluable in helping to refine  and inform the report’s content, though the analysis and recommendations are the responsibility  of the authors alone.                                            7 | A New U. [...] interests in East Asia are (1) a shift in the regional  balance of economic and military power, (2) associated increases in regional tensions, and (3)  the growing intensity of transnational challenges.  A Shifting Regional Balance of Power    There has been a significant shift in the distribution of economic and military power in East Asia  over the past few decades, driven above all by China’s e. [...] This shift in the military balance in Asia is partly a  consequence of the changing nature of warfare and military technology in the past few decades,  especially the development of asymmetric defensive capabilities such as precision-guided  munitions, as well as the sheer “tyranny of distance” confronting U. [...] military power, especially in the waters within the so-called first island chain extending from  the Kuril Islands in the northeast along the Japanese home islands, Taiwan, the Philippines, and  Borneo to the Strait of Malacca in the southwest. 8  These various developments have contributed to a relative decline in American military and  economic power and influence in East Asia.