The United States is scaling back its strategic focus on Asia, marking a potential end to over a decade of military and political efforts to counterbalance China’s rise in the region, Politico reports.

A draft of the Pentagon’s latest National Defence Strategy, has been delivered to the newly retitled Secretary of War and Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth.

US President Donald Trump has signed a decree renaming the Ministry of Defence to the Department of War on September 5. He added that the new name was much more appropriate given the current state of the world.

"That’s a big one," Trump said after signing the decree.

According to Hegseth, the return of the WWII-era name will allow the department he heads to fight decisively and prevent endless conflicts. A Department of War existed from 1789 to 1947, when it was renamed after the conclusion of WWII.

However, the new focus of the draft concept represents a dramatic shift in policy. Previously, Hegseth said that the US should withdraw from all its external military obligations, but “get ready for war with China.” The new draft suggests abandoning the China effort and withdrawing from engaging there as well.

“The Pentagon's latest National Defence Strategy - which draft just landed on the Defence Secretary's desk - is de-prioritizing "deterring China" in favour of focusing on the US homeland and the Western hemisphere,” political commentator Arnaud Bertrand and bne IntelliNews columnist said in a social media post.

“In fact the focus on its homeland in the new National Defence Strategy means that the US isn't only withdrawing from Asia but implementing a full-on strategic retreat on all fronts,” Bertrand added.

The new strategy is also very bad news for Ukraine as it will only reinforce Trump’s growing reluctance to supply Ukraine with either money or weapons. The EU has tasked with the burden now, but as bne IntelliNews reported, Europe can’t afford to take over the burden of supporting Ukraine, either financially or in terms of military supplies as most EU countries are either in recession or approaching a crisis.

At the coalition of the willing Paris summit on September 4 was the most recent sign of the breakdown in relations between Trump and Europe as a telephone call between the leaders ended in disaster, when the US president turned the tables on the COW leaders and demanded they buy less Russian oil and should pressure China to do the same.

US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin on September 5, called for a significant shift in emphasis away from deterring China and instead prioritises defence of the US homeland and the Western Hemisphere.

The new draft has been championed by Eldridge Colby, who has been increasingly driving US security policy. He was the one behind Hegseth's order in July to halt all weapons supplies to Ukraine arguing the US stockpile had fallen below critical levels needed to ensure US security. Trump reversed the order a week later following an international outcry.

Colby' s earlier book The Strategy of Denial advocated a muscular approach to China, but faced with the realities on ground he seems to have changed his mind. Bertrand noted the apparent contradiction, saying, “Now that he is in power and has access to actual intelligence, he must have understood how futile the effort would be.”

Earlier Bertrand drew from the work of Australian military strategist Hugh White to suggest that the US had already started stepping back from the region. He described the move as “only a matter of time before it would be made official, which is what the Pentagon is apparently now doing.”

Bertrand also linked the shift to broader American retrenchment under Trump, whom he credited with recalibrating the country’s global posture.

“Fact is, as I keep arguing, you can only deny structural realities for so long and it’s a fool’s errand to expect that you can project power indefinitely 7,000 miles from home,” Bertrand said. He added that the shift reflects an overdue recognition that the US cannot dominate regions “in the backyard of nations that increasingly surpass you in all the metrics that matter.”

While many in Washington may frame the new strategy as a necessary recalibration, Bertrand concluded, “Trump undoubtedly won’t be remembered for making ‘America great again’ but he may be remembered for making America realistic again.”

The new more timid policy comes only a few days after Chinese President Xi Jinping held a large-scale military parade in Beijing as part of the recent SCO summit where top leaders from the Global South attended. The parade was an impressive show of force and highlighted the rapid progress China has made in modernising its army in recent years.

The Beijing parade was also attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin as the guest of honour who has also modernised his army into a major force in Europe as a consequence of the Ukraine conflict. Putin also hosted Xi in Moscow at his own Victory Day parade on May 9, where Russia also put on an impressive display of force.

The war in Europe and the growing military tensions with China in the South China Sea have unsettled analysts as Moscow and Beijing draw closer together with their increasingly powerful armies. Recently a Chinese decoy drone was found on the Ukrainian battlefield for the first time and while China is not yet supplying Russia with military tech, clearly both Russia and China are working increasingly closely together and using the Ukraine war to drive more weapons innovation.

Russia, China focus on Eurasia

The growing intimacy between Moscow and Beijing started as a marriage of convenience but it is becoming increasingly ideological as they developed shared goals.

Russia also revised its foreign policy concept in March 2023, sharply changing the language, abandoning an attempt at relations with “partners” in the West and refocusing on building up ties with Eurasia.

Likewise, Chinese President Xi Jinping has pushed the Chinese concept of Tianxia (everything under heaven) in his policy planning that includes a focus on expanding ties and relations with Eurasia that is also part of the latest Five-Year Plan, a goal that overlaps with Russia’s goals.

Tianxia envisions a world order where China is the paramount "civilization power," radiating influence to ensure global peace and prosperity in a “Community with a Shared Future for Mankind”, which he first articulated in 2013. Xi’s foreign policy, often described as “major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics,” draws on these ideas to project China’s leadership globally.

This focus on Eurasia was in focus only last week at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit where all the leaders of the Central Asian countries joined Xi, Putin, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders of Emerging Markets, largely in Asia for the event. The SCO was originally founded 24 years ago to improve security in Central Asia, but since it has come of age and is now a much broader platform for China and Russia to promote their Eurasian ambitions. China has implemented these policies with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and has seen billions of dollars invested in partner countries.