Arnaud Bertrand suggests the US is withdrawing from Asia

Boom! This confirms what I’ve been saying for months: the US is, in fact, withdrawing from Asia. The Pentagon’s latest National Defense Strategy – which draft just landed on the Defense Secretary’s desk – is de-prioritizing “deterring China” in favor of focusing on the US homeland and the Western hemisphere (https://politico.com/news/2025/09/05/pentagon-national-defense-strategy-china-homeland-western-hemisphere-00546310).

This is all the more striking given that the drafting of the National Defense Strategy was led by Eldridge Colby, who literally wrote a book on deterring China called “the strategy of denial” (and with whom long-time followers will know I had many heated exchanges here on X). Now that he is in power and has access to actual intelligence, he must have understood how futile the effort would be.

Back in June I got a lot of flak for my article “Has America in fact already withdrawn from Asia?” (https://open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbertrand/p/has-america-in-fact-already-withdrawn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4r0pw) in which, drawing from the writings of Australian military strategist Hugh White, I argued that everything pointed to the fact that beneath the hawkish “pivot to Asia” rhetoric, America was actually quietly executing a strategic retreat.

It was only a matter of time before it would be made official, which is what the Pentagon is apparently now doing In fact the focus on its homeland in the new National Defense Strategy means that the US isn’t only withdrawing from Asia but implementing a full-on strategic retreat on all fronts, which I also argued Trump was orchestrating in a July article entitled “Is Trump orchestrating a full-on strategic retreat on all fronts?”: https://arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/is-trump-orchestrating-a-full-on?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4r0pw&triedRedirect=true