"When China surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy in 2010, it signaled to the United States (US) it was time to reevaluate and revise policies in the Asia-Pacific region. The 2018 American National Defense Strategy reflects this shift. It states US goals are to maintain national security and a favorable regional power balance through expanded alliances and partnerships, openness and prosperity, deterring aggression, maintaining stability, and ensuring free access to common domains. However, traditional US strategies and policies are insufficient to meet these objectives in an interconnected age. The Asia-Pacific region has a complicated past that drives interdependence stemming from histories involving imperialism, colonialism, and great power actions after World War II (WWII), and there are often pervasive constructivist and liberal ideologies to complicate international relations. Additionally, regional stability “requires reinforcing political, economic, and military structures and processes that reduce the natural tendency of the members of a power balance to test the other side’s resolve.” These factors force the US to avoid military-only policies or consider each country in a vacuum. Unfortunately, many experts recommend extreme strategies and most only consider relations between the US and one other country at a time. Few, like Michael Swaine, suggest nuanced, regional strategies. To address these policy challenges, the US must pursue a new, hybrid approach, adopting many (but not all) of Swaine’s recommendations, and taking attributes from a variety of other strategies. Overall, the US must seek balance and peace between great powers, nuclear non-proliferation, and reduction of the scope of military engagement to when only truly necessary, a tenet of “selective engagement” strategies. The US will rely on countries in the region to check bad actors and limit active involvement to the greatest extent possible, a common emphasis of “offshore balancing” strategies. In addition, the US must accept an open world, where sovereign independence is accepted and international cooperation is encouraged, regardless of a country’s internal domestic issues. Therefore, the US must enact parallel, integrated policies for each country in the region that reflect a “whole of government” approach, leveraging tailored diplomatic, informational, military, and economic elements of power. These policies will focus on providing China a larger regional security role, denuclearizing and withdrawing US forces from Korea, securing relations with Japan, increasing allied capability, and improving trade and investment across the region."--Introduction.