The United States is often seen as the orchestrator of global foreign policy in large part because of its the use of international military outposts. Because of this, countries in strategically important regions can be incorporated into U.S. defense schemes as military partners and allies.

Such a strategy enables the United States to expand its geopolitical footprint on the global stage — access to more regions means influence over more developments and greater control over global politics. The United States has established military bases across various nations, including Turkey and Israel in the Middle East, and Finland and the Baltic states in Europe, typically to provide aid to allied countries or establish influence in contentious zones.

However, there is one geographical area in which this approach may prove futile in modern politics — the Pacific islands.

During the Korean War, American foreign policy statesman John Foster Dulles coined the term “island chain strategy” to propose a maritime containment plan of surrounding the Soviet Union and China with naval bases in the Pacific to assert power and restrict sea access. Thus, the “island chain strategy” exists as a military doctrine born out of a Cold War mentality aiming to surround China through a web of military alliances linking Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and other small islands dotting the Pacific Ocean.

This strategy is strictly military-oriented and does not suit the needs of 21st-century politics.

At least in military aspects, the strategy to contain China still rests on decades-old practices. The “island chain strategy” directly builds upon the understanding that the Soviet Union had to be contained in Europe through the creation of NATO, which protected nearby countries like Turkey, Germany and Norway and established forward bases along the Black Sea as part of a European defense scheme.

The same understanding prevailed in the United States regarding China. In the aftermath of the Korean War, but especially in the context of the Vietnam War, U.S. foreign policy sought a deeper military partnership with Japan and South Korea to form a line of containment over the waters of the Pacific.

The key weakness of applying this strategy to modern politics lies in its lopsided architecture. In theory, the United States is in equal partnership with the Philippines, Japan, South Korea and other regional partners like Australia and New Zealand. However, in practice, even highly developed and sophisticated industrial powers like Japan rely on the United States for their defense because these countries do not have autonomous military-industrial complexes as extensive as France or Turkey.

The defense economies of South Korea and Taiwan much more resemble those of Sweden and Germany — developed, wealthy countries with armies supported by industries built for niche, small-scale production rather than mass manufacturing.

Economic relations are the deciding factors in how international diplomacy manifests itself. Because the United States’ partners across the Pacific rely heavily on their ties to China for trade and business, containment of China is a much more complicated issue for the United States. South Korea, Taiwan and Australia cannot afford to commit themselves to a blockade of China’s economy like the European Union has committed itself to heavy sanctions against Russia. Their economies and trade relations are simply far too intertwined with China for such an all-out action to ever be conceivable.

Modern circumstances dictate that the island chain serves only to bind the countries involved in it to the political decisions of the United States. It provides no autonomy or flexibility for its members. The initiative’s goals cannot be enforced without direct escalation, and in practical terms, it is more akin to a buffer zone between the United States and China than a coalition of sovereign allies.

Without member states having the ability to develop and maintain their own armies through industries independent of foreign support and equipment, they become little more than glorified naval bases and airstrips for the U.S. military.

Not all Pacific nations have developed sophisticated military institutions, which makes it difficult to form complex alliances. The Pacific equivalent to the EU is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which lacks the economic coordination and political centralization of its European counterpart. There is also no formal alliance resembling NATO in the region, meaning that there are no legal commitments between member states, and most importantly, no formal obligation on the part of the United States to come to the aid of any country.

For these reasons, it is simply not logical to view the current U.S. Pacific strategy in any other way than as the subordination of its regional partners to serve its ambitions to overpower China. As an unsustainable and outdated doctrine, it must be shelved in favor of creating new economic and diplomatic structures based on the principles of equal commitments and sovereignty.

Deniz Gulay is a junior double-majoring in history and Russian.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial.