The Asia-Pacific ‘US Pivot’, of course, has ramifications (second-third order effects) well beyond US defense strategies, budgets, and service-related in-fighting. This piece, The ‘Pivot’ in Australia-Indonesia Strategic Relations by Greta Nabbs-Keller, at the highly regarded Lowy Institute’s ‘The Interpreter’, discuses Australia's relationship with Indonesia as a “triangular relationship” with the US comprising the third angle.
This is but the tip of an iceberg of complicated issues associate with the pivot that will play out in Asia’s East, South, Southeast, Central, and Oceania as well as ‘The America’s’ Pacific countries. Europe and NATO aren’t exactly non-players either. Solid and unanswered questions abound concerning what the pivot holds for US engagement in the Middle East. Old and new alliances, both formal and informal are or will be on the table. Anyone up for a game of Dominos? (No Vietnam War pun intended).