One day before it was announced he would be joining the Biden administration, Dr. Campbell published an essay with Rush Doshi on Foreign Affairs titled How America Can Shore Up Asian Order. This essay provides a window into how Dr. Campbell is likely to help shape Biden’s Asia foreign policy, particularly with China. In it, they argue that at the heart of the current Indo-Pacific order are the principles of “freedom of navigation, sovereign equality, transparency, peaceful dispute resolution, the sanctity of contracts, cross-border trade, and cooperation on transnational challenges”, and that the United States’ forward-deployed military has helped maintain this balance.

However, they also argue that two intertwined challenges threaten the balance in the region: China’s increased assertiveness through its economic and military rise combined with a U.S. ambivalence through President Trump’s undermining of bilateral relations with allies and his general absence from multilateral processes and economic negotiations. To deter China’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of territorial and economic interests, Dr. Campbell believes it necessary for the US to move away from seeking absolute primacy in the region, but rather invest in the relatively inexpensive and asymmetric capabilities of itself and regional actors across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Once in office, Dr. Campbell has presided over a shift in the U.S.-China relationship from one of ‘engagement’ to ‘competition.’ At the same time, U.S. interests have shifted eastwards towards Dr. Campbell’s area of expertise. He ascribes blame for this shift to the “harsh, or hard power” policies of China such as ‘wolf warrior’ international diplomacy, militarization of islands in the South China Sea, and economic aggression against Australia. Campbell has remained ambivalent, however, on any substantive shifts in U.S. regional policy; for instance, amid calls to explicitly commit to defending Taiwan from Chinese aggression, he argued that “There are some significant downsides to…strategic clarity” and supported the ambiguous status quo. For Dr. Campbell, the time is not right to stir the pot beyond a redefinition of the relationship in general, but he welcomes the shift of “[U.S.] strategic focus, economic interests, [and] military might more to the Indo-Pacific.”