What if the future of the Indo-Pacific has less to do with Beijing than with Ohio? As Washington’s domestic politics reshape its global priorities, allies may need to stop reading American strategy and start following American voters.

Across Asia’s capitals, a ritual-like task has taken hold: the anxious parsing of every word out of Washington. Interlocutors and analysts alike read U.S. strategy as if it were an oracle’s prophecy and weigh every adjective in communiqués. Let me state this letter’s conclusion up front: The effort is in vain, because nobody has the answers to the questions about the future of the US engagement in the Indo-Pacific. These questions assume a coherent actor capable of translating strategic doctrine into sustained policy. What exists are disagreeing domestic factions. Deterrence is domestic politics. My continent, Europe, needed a long time to learn this. Maybe we are still learning it. Asia, however, does not have a long time.