By Sayantan Haldar
On June 16, the US Department of War sought to undo its 2018 change by renaming the USINDOPACOM – the country’s military command for the Indo-Pacific – back to its previous nomenclature, USPACOM (US Pacific Command). Importantly, it was President Donald Trump’s first administration that introduced this change in 2018, signalling Washington’s gradual embrace of the new Indo-Pacific construct, which was increasingly gaining strategic currency at the time.
The US rapidly emerged as a key pivot of the Indo-Pacific construct, embedding itself in the region through a web of partnerships to safeguard freedom of navigation, establish and sustain a rules-based order, and deliver public goods as a developmental partner. However, since the onset of the second Trump administration, a long shadow of uncertainty has loomed large over the nature and extent of Washington’s focus on the Indo-Pacific. The renaming of the United States Indo-Pacific Command has further fuelled uncertainty about US involvement in the region. This prompts the question: how will Washington’s partners, dependent on a US-led security order, navigate the US retreat? Where does this leave the security architecture in the Indo-Pacific?
A key differentiator between the Indo-Pacific and other such regional constructs has been the lack of consensus over the geographical contours of the region. As a result, various countries — including those that are like-minded and seek synergies of cooperation in the Indo-Pacific — map the regional geography differently. For example, while the US considers the Indo-Pacific to span from the western coast of the country to the western coast of India, India’s view of the region encompasses the maritime expanse from the west coast of the US all the way to eastern Africa. This flexibility has therefore remained a characteristic feature of the Indo-Pacific construct. Furthermore, this has also resulted in a lack of regional institutional cohesion, given the absence of consensus over the political constituency of the geography.
The shift in nomenclature has understandably prompted anxieties about the purported extent of US engagement in the region. This adds further to the uncertainty over Washington’s role in the region, following a slew of developments that have unfolded to shape regional strategic dynamics in the Indo-Pacific since the onset of the Trump administration. President Trump’s arrival at the White House in January 2025 was preceded by considerable speculation over whether he would continue to see value in groups such as the Quad, which had by then evolved beyond being a mere maritime security-oriented coalition to adopt a more multifaceted agenda.
Observers, on the other hand, were optimistic about similar groups such as the Squad (US-Philippines-Australia-Japan) and AUKUS (Australia-UK-US), as these were seen as relatively more security-oriented. This optimism was pegged on the assumption that President Trump would continue to view China as an adversarial power against whom the US is locked in a structural rivalry in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. However, Washington’s measured approach towards AUKUS, the non-advancement of the Squad, and President Trump’s sudden proclamation of a possible G2 have underlined that a shift is indeed underway in Washington’s approach towards the Indo-Pacific.
How will countries dependent on a US-led security order navigate Washington’s evolving role in the Indo-Pacific? Notwithstanding this shifting approach and the uncertainties it has heralded, the renaming of USPACOM must be juxtaposed against what it actually alters in the command’s operational scope. As it stands, the geographical scope, mission, and area of responsibility of USPACOM remain unchanged and continue to encompass the previously outlined contours of the Indo-Pacific. It would therefore be remiss to suggest that the renaming has, as yet, resulted in any operational rescaling of Washington’s presence in the region. However, this prolonged uncertainty should also prompt a rethink among like-minded countries in the region — one that pushes them to diversify their security partnerships and seek new templates of cooperation to incrementally safeguard their interests.
For long, the Indo-Pacific has been viewed as a theatre of US-China competition, shaping much of the region’s geopolitical realignments. The erstwhile Asia-Pacific construct once served as the central framework of US engagement in the region; the 2018 renaming of the US armed forces’ regional command to INDOPACOM marked the institutional shift to the Indo-Pacific. Does reversing the nomenclature, then, also signal the withering of the construct itself? While the US remains a major anchor of the Indo-Pacific, other countries have increasingly placed the region — and the concept — at the heart of their foreign policy, security outlook, and trade policies.
The rise of the modern Indo-Pacific construct can be traced back to former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “Confluence of the Two Seas” speech, where he articulated the need to view the Indian and Pacific oceans as an integrated maritime theatre, given the profound influence developments in one ocean appear increasingly to have on the other. Acknowledging the growing synergies and interlinkages between these two oceans, several non-resident countries — such as Germany and the Netherlands, among others — have also shaped their own policy outlooks towards the region.
Like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific must work to reshape the region’s maritime security architecture. The slew of developments characterising American engagement with the region since President Trump’s return necessitates recalibration. Thus far, however, the renaming of USINDOPACOM does little to mitigate the uncertainties posed by Washington. While it is true that strategic vocabulary matters, a statement from the Department of War has confirmed that there are no operational implications of this renaming. As such, this development has little operational bearing on the Indo-Pacific, which continues to be seen as an integrated maritime theatre and a singular political construct.
- About the author: Sayantan Haldar is an Associate Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
- Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.
