La política exterior de Estados Unidos en Asia a la deriva: de Barack Obama a Donald Trump

This article analyzes the foreign policy of the United States in Asia, where a fragile status quo with the presence of the United States was established, after falling a traditional vertical and hierarchical States system in the nineteenth century and going through the vagaries of conflicts and wars in the first half of the twentieth century. The main focus will be given to the administration of Barak Obama that introduced a major change on the issue, as well as the current administration of Donald Trump with the tendency to return to the isolationism of the United States. In the twentieth century the superpower had a diplomatic-strategic policy of committing itself to the «liberal international order» based on liberal representative democracy and the free market economy, and avoiding the emergence of a hegemonic country in Western Europe and Asia. This policy was based on the bipartisan consensus among the political decision-makers of Washington, D.C. that gave greater importance to Western Europe. The Obama administration changed this diplomatic-strategic line, and gave priorityto Asia, while its optimism and idealism regarding China’s position,  along with other diplomatic-economic considerations, allowed the giant of Asia to take a series of acts that caused the change to the territorial status quo. The new diplomatic-strategic line of Obama did not take root in the United States in the end, and with Trump’s coming to power, United States’ policy in Asia has become more confused and contradictory. Although it has become clear that Trump is not interested in maintaining and promoting the «liberal international order», it is still not known exactly what direction or line the Trump administration will take in relation to the political-strategic agenda of relations with Asia. From Obama to Trump, the policy of the superpower in Asia has been going adrift.