America is quietly abandoning its Indo-Pacific strategy

The Pentagon’s recent decision to drop “Indo” from “Indo-Pacific” may prove to be one of the most consequential bureaucratic acts of the Trump presidency.

Officially, almost nothing has changed. The newly renamed U.S. Pacific Command retains the same area of responsibility — from America’s West Coast to India’s western frontier.

But strategy is often communicated through symbols as much as it is through policy documents. In geopolitics, names are rarely cosmetic. They define priorities, shape alliances and reveal how governments see the world.

By deleting a single prefix, Washington has raised an uncomfortable question: Is America quietly abandoning the strategic vision that has guided its China policy for nearly a decade? That vision was never really about geography.

The “Indo-Pacific” was a grand strategic concept. It recognized that the center of global power had shifted, linking the Pacific and Indian Oceans into one interconnected strategic theater. The world’s busiest shipping lanes, its fastest-growing economies, its principal manufacturing hubs and its most dangerous military flashpoints had become inseparable.

The concept’s intellectual architect had been Japan’s late prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who contended that the Pacific and Indian Oceans formed the “confluence of the two seas,” requiring a coalition of maritime democracies to preserve a rules-based regional order. His vision of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” sought not to isolate China but to prevent any single power from dominating Asia.

The U.S. eventually made that vision its own.

During President Trump’s first term, a free and open Indo-Pacific became the organizing principle of American strategy toward Beijing. The long-dormant Quad — bringing together the U.S., India, Japan and Australia — was revived. China was formally identified as America’s principal strategic competitor. India assumed unprecedented importance, because its geography placed it........

© The Hill