Turner, Oliver. "China, India and the US rebalance to the Asia Pacific: The geopolitics of rising identities". Geopolitics, Vol. 21, No, 4 (2016): 922-944.

Turner, Oliver. "China, India and the US rebalance to the Asia Pacific: The geopolitics of rising identities". Geopolitics, Vol. 21, No, 4 (2016): 922-944.

• The US pivot to Asia, announced in 2011, is intended to refocus US attention and resources to the Asia Pacific through enhanced political engagement, including participation in organizations like the East Asia Summit and ASEAN, new economic initiatives, like the TPP, and renewed security commitments to US allies in the region (922).
• This pivot is primarily a reaction to an increase in Chinese power since the 1970s. It is often justified in terms of realist IR theory's assumptions about the links between economic and military power (923).
• The traditional explanation of the US reaction to China's rise, including the pivot to Asia, that it is a rational reaction to an increase in Chinese economic and military might, is inadequate because it does not account for the fact that the US has not responded similarly towards other rising powers, namely India (923).
• The author notes that the traditional explanation of the US reacting to Chinese power does not match the actual US military engagement in the Asia Pacific. The original US movement into the Asia Pacific was during the 1940s and 1950s as it attempted to check Soviet military power. These forces remained after the end of the Cold War and stayed at similar force numbers despite a lack of threat from China (923-924).
• The intentions of actors and the notion of threat are not independent or objective variables, but social constructs. The content of the relationship between the US and China is thus determined by how both actors view themselves and each other (925-926, 938-940).
• The United States, as a relatively new immigrant nation, had no set national identity or common heritage or myths to draw upon. This meant that building an identity upon values, and adhering to those values, was extremely important. This was been expressed in a missionary spirit that asserts American values of freedom and democracy are universal and must be spread, by force if necessary (926-927).
• This ideas of the necessity of spreading American values manifested itself first in violent military conquest of Native American nations, during which the US cast itself as an enlightened and civilized nation expanding against barbarism. The act of war with Native Americans helped to reinforce these identities (927).
• As the nature of American identity has changed throughout time, so have the categories of analysis through which it viewed its enemies. These dichotomies have included civilized-uncivilized, white supremacist-non-white, anti-communist-communist. As these understandings of American self-identity have changed, so has America's perception of its world (928).
• The threat posed by the Soviet Union was largely because the USSR was a Communist state during a time when the US defined itself as an anti-communist state. The fear of Communism determined which countries were friends and enemies, and accordingly which states were threats to the United States -- China went from passive ally to threat after the Communist victory in 1949 despite remaining at the same low military capacity (928).
• Similarly, American involvement has to be explained by ideological factors. The US poured an immense amount of resources and lives into the war in Vietnam despite losing nothing of tangible value from Communist victory in 1975 (928-929).
• In US government policy statements even neutral factors like geography are written to support American exceptionalism and duty (933).
• China dominates strategic discussions in the American government about Asia. Even where it is not discussed in a negative light, it still dominates the conversation and it is clear that the US views China as the primary 'other' in the region (933-934).
• Although India is occasionally discussed, it is never constructed as a threat or the primary actor in Asia. Moreover, India is favorably contrasted with China as a country that shares America's democratic system and values (934).
• The US government claims that, to be accepted as a great power, China must accept and follow certain rules, the content of which is almost entirely determined by the USA. Moreover, these rules are inconsistently applied, as China is denigrated as a threat because of its poor human rights record, while a similar record doesn't hinder acceptance of India (934-935).
• In the same way that China is painted as a threat to a US-led global order, the US is portrayed in all its action as benevolent and dominant in Asia. This dichotomy is partially true, but has been portrayed as total due to American perceptions that China is an anti-democratic threat to an essentially good American system (936).