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The purpose of this article is to trace the evolutionary process of U.S. military strategy and its implications within a structural and macroscopic context of change in America’s grand strategy since the 2010s. The most important change that defined the U.S. global strategy during the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 was the sense of crisis of deteriorating hegemony and the rapid rise of China. East Asia was the region of utmost importance in terms of responding to such change and the U.S. searched vigorously for a new global strategy that centers around East Asia. The ‘Rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific’ strategy of the Obama administration and the global strategies of the Trump and Biden administrations, which were both focused on the Indo-Pacific, were all results of such strategic thinking. U.S. military strategy also changed in tandem with such a transition in the global strategy. Despite the budgetary restrictions during the Obama administration, the U.S. drastically reinforced equipment in the Asia-Pacific region and proposed the air-sea battle and JOAC as a new concept of operation that takes into account a potential conflict with China. The Trump administration expanded the Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific and strengthened the tendency of military reinforcement in the West Pacific. Also, JADO, a developed form of JOAC, was declared as a new concept of operation, and the strengthening of integrated conduct of operation capability and cutting-edge military power was emphasized. The Biden administration developed JADO to JWC and strengthened the third offset strategy through the concept of Integrated deterrence, which centers on cutting-edge defense sciences and technology. Such evolution of U.S. military strategy observed since the 2010s shows that the U.S. military strategy, which takes into account a strategical competition with China, maintains a flow of consistency despite various domestic and foreign changes. This also implies that the current military strategy of the U.S. will not change in a short period. Amid the intensification of a new Cold War confrontation, there lies a great risk of aggravated tension within East Asia when the Biden administration’s strategy of restoring alliance and China’s aggressive foreign strategy collide.
