The first credibility issue has to do with US attention to the Indo-Pacific. Granted, though the region was clearly not going to be of greater strategic priority than the Western Hemisphere, it is not as if the Indo-Pacific entirely vanished from the US’ strategic radar either.
As the NDS put it, the Indo-Pacific is critical to prevent China from “effectively [vetoing] Americans’ access to the world’s economic centre of gravity”. Military-to-military ties are also going strong, and though the Philippines was not mentioned in the three documents, over 500 exercises have been scheduled for 2026.
However, there are valid concerns about the ability of the US to focus its resources to more than one region, which would leave precious little capacity to respond to crises elsewhere.
A second issue concerns the credibility of the US approach towards China. The NSS called for Washington to maintain a “genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship” with Beijing, while the NDS called for a “decent peace, on terms favourable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under”.
What these terms will look like in practice remains to be seen, but the risks cannot be ignored.
What countries in Southeast Asia fear is not a US-China rapprochement per se, but a G2 arrangement in which Washington and Beijing behave as the only actors with sovereignty and agency. If ASEAN is sidelined in decisions affecting the region, this would be a body blow for ASEAN centrality.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/us-asia-commitment-indo-pacific-trump-term-national-strategy-5909721
