https://www.npr.org/2025/03/22/nx-s1-5330434/asia-indo-pacific-security-trade-trump-tariffs-china
In recent years, the Biden administration bolstered these ties with the goal of containing China, launching a pair of strategic security pacts — one among the U.S., Japan and South Korea and the other, known as AUKUS, with the U.K. and Australia.
These alliances are are vital to the "First Island Chain" strategy, a war plan whose name refers to a line of islands that stretches from Japan, through Taiwan, to the Philippines — a natural barrier that could be used to circumscribe China's naval and air operations if war were to break out.
Biden even moved past decades of deliberate U.S. ambiguity concerning Taiwan, openly declaring that America would defend the island against an attack by China.
