The Obama Administration and the Chinese Challenge: The Pivot and the Trans-Pacific Partnership,

In the near future the People’s Republic of China is likely to become the primary economic, political and military competitor to the United States. The grand strategy of the Obama administration has been deeply influenced by the need to face the multidimensional challenge presented by the continuing ascent of China’s economic and military power. The so called Pivot to Asia, also labeled “Strategic Rebalancing”, represents the central pillar of this strategy. The aim of the Pivot is to reaffirm the American primacy in the Asia Pacific region militarily, diplomatically and economically. This chapter will be divided in four different sections. The first will describe the nature of the Chinese challenge in the long term, highlighting how Beijing’s ascendency should not be understood in military terms, but mainly in economic and political terms. The second section will describe the main features of the Pivot to Asia, promoted since 2010 by the Obama Administration, and will emphasize how it represents a multi-dimensional response aimed at facing the Chinese challenge. In the third section I will focus attention towards the economic dimension of the Pivot, embodied by the expansion and deepening of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP represents an attempt to reaffirm the American centrality into the economic and commercial field, as well an effort to restate Washington’s capacity to shape rules and norms of the economic integration in the Asia Pacific Region.