Pivot to Asia, Air-Sea Battle and contested commons in the Asia Pacific Region

The Pivot towards the Asia Pacific has been a key component of the grand strategy of the Obama administration. Militarily, the main challenge is represented by the Chinese capacity to erode the American ‘command of the commons’. The United States have been developing a new operational concept, labelled ‘Air-Sea Battle’ (ASB) aimed at maintaining the capacity to project military power even if adversaries are able to deploy a sophisticated anti-access area denial strategy. The implementation of ASB is likely induce Beijing to respond with a further acceleration of the process ofmodernisation of its armed forces.