US faces struggle to ease nervous Asian allies’ fears of a retreat

When James Mattis speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday, the US defence secretary will face a very different landscape from the one that greeted his predecessor at last year’s event.

At the Asian defence forum in 2016, Ashton Carter chided China over its actions in the South China Sea, warning that it risked “erecting a Great Wall of self-isolation”. At the same time, then president Barack Obama was pushing Congress — ultimately unsuccessfully — to back the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal that was the economic arm of his Asia “pivot”.

Read the full piece on Financial Times.