Asia is a top priority for the United States

The Indo-Pacific will play a much bigger role in US foreign policy, with Asia being a top priority, according to political experts.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin are in Japan and South Korea this week to visit Washington’s two major military allies in Asia, where tens of thousands of soldiers are stationed.

Last Friday, President Joe Biden met with prime ministers in Japan, India and Australia as part of the first summit of leaders of an informal strategic alliance – the Quadrilateral or Quad Security Dialogue, as it is known.

“Asia is the priority,” Angela Mancini, a partner at Control Risk, told CNBC’s Capital Connection on Monday. She explained that, based on last week’s Quad meeting, as well as the general diplomacy going on with the current administration, the US shows very clearly that the Indo-Pacific region is important to Washington – compared to the previous administration’s transactional approach.

“In addition to strengthening alliances to counter China, there are some specific bilateral issues to be resolved,” Mancini said, adding that it includes the presence of US troops in the region.

The Biden administration builds on the Trump administration’s framework for the Indo-Pacific strategy and is developing a coalition of partners to work with, according to Akhil Bery, a South Asian political risk consultant for the Eurasia Group.

The flow of Asian diplomatic activities by US officials comes before Blinken’s meeting with Chinese officials Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi on March 18 in Alaska.

The informal Quad Alliance positions itself as engaged in a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific.

The group is set to take on a much larger role in the region and may become “a core of a larger regional security architecture” in the future, according to Harsh Pant, head of strategic research at the Observer Research Foundation in New. Delhi.

For more than a decade, the Quad has been without light even after US-China geopolitical tensions have worsened since 2017, followed by deteriorating relations between India and China, Pant said Monday. CNBC’s Street Signs Asia. The group’s profile has risen in recent months, he said.

Last year, India invited Australia to participate in the Malabar naval exercises with the United States and Japan. For years, New Delhi has resisted Canberra’s involvement, considering the extent to which it would provoke Beijing.

Pant said India appears to be re-evaluating its policy towards China after being “a guard of the fences” in the region’s highest power ratio. New Delhi “now explains its reasons for joining certain platforms,” ​​he added.

Quad’s joint statement on Friday avoided any direct reference to China and its foreign policies in the region and instead focused on areas such as efforts to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine.

The agreement is already a “significant step forward and shows that the group is capable of delivering tangible results, rather than just talking about China’s challenge,” Eurasia Group told CNBC in an email.

While it remains to be seen to what extent the Biden administration can persuade allies to address developments in the region from a multilateral perspective, Beijing is likely to push back, Mancini said of Control Risks.

“China feels that it is surrounded by the US and that the feeling is real and growing, so they will push back with their own investment in technology spending and their own focus on the domestic economy,” she said.