Media

I visited Asia for the first time as a young naval officer in the late 1980s. There on the joint base in Yokosuka, Japan, I experienced a vivid sense of how the past and future were colliding across this vast region. U.S. and Japanese sailors were laboring together in the very harbor that U.S. forces had bombed decades before. Out of that adversity had grown a deep partnership.

Today, across the Indo-Pacific, there are myriad examples of the same tensions and dynamism.

Tectonic shifts in the United States’ approach to longstanding economic and security relationships are driving increased defense spending, transforming trade and commercial ties, and prompting the recalibration of complex national rivalries and partnerships across the region. Asia is where the world’s fastest-aging societies exist alongside an enormous youth population that is setting global trends and defining contemporary culture. The region is home both to some of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis and the populations most vulnerable to it – and to the innovation ecosystems that are most dramatically transforming the new energy landscape.

Asia’s extraordinary innovative energy, and its centrality to geopolitics and global markets, are not new. I founded The Asia Group in 2013 with the aim of deepening U.S.-Asia business ties because there is no region where I believe it’s more vital for the United States to be engaged.

What is new is the question of whether the United States will continue to play the vital role in the region it has assumed for many decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Today the biggest variable shaping Asia’s future is not the nature and trajectory of China’s rise, or India’s ascent to great power status, or North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. It is to what extent the United States will continue to promote peace and security, encourage free markets and democratic progress, and advance commercial and investment ties across the region.

For global businesses, the changes underway in U.S.-Asia relations will have profound first- and second-order consequences, including sharply truncated planning cycles, accelerated shifts in production and supply chains, and heightened uncertainty around long-term capital investment and market stability.

Successful organizations can no longer afford to treat geopolitical risk monitoring as a niche function or a topic reserved for periodic board discussions. Companies must invest in the capacity to anticipate and interpret the changes underway, while building resilience and agility to act upon them.

My aim through this newsletter is to inform that work in each issue by exploring how the U.S. approach to Asia is evolving, how countries in the region are likely to respond, and what it means for businesses on both sides of the Pacific. We will track closely the U.S.-China relationship in all its dimensions as well as Washington’s approach to traditional allies like Japan and Korea, India as a growing power center, and emerging economies such as Vietnam. In exploring the policy issues that define our times, from technology to energy to defense, we will highlight the trends to watch, experts to follow, and insights to know.

We will also share with you exclusive insights from TAG AI, The Asia Group’s new cutting-edge technology platform. Powered by our in-house experts, TAG AI harnesses curated data and an innovative proprietary methodology to help businesses make better, faster decisions with smarter contextual intelligence.

The lion’s share of the future of the 21st century will be written in the Indo-Pacific. In Asia, it’s already tomorrow. It’s a privilege to be in conversation as we seek to understand and respond to the changes underway in a region that will be vital to the future across so many frontiers. To make sure you receive every issue, subscribe on our website.

Kurt Campbell

TAG Chairman and Co-Founder