ABSTRACT
A paradigm shift has taken place in US strategic discourse in which a previous emphasis by the US on the Pacific using “Asia-Pacific” formulations has given way to an emphasis on the Pacific and Indian Oceans using “Indo-Pacific” formulations. This has fed through into policy and military dispositions pursued under the current Trump administration under the umbrella of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). Accordingly, this US repositioning is being driven to a significant extent by China’s own drive across the Indo-Pacific, and that bringing India into the US strategic networking to help constrain China is an important development in this shift from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific strategic formulations. To unpick this US repositioning, the chapter looks at US presence, official rhetoric and diplomacy with regard to the Indo-Pacific. An evaluation of overall US effectiveness in both the geopolitical and geo-economic dimensions indicates that the US has delivered less on the geo-economic front and more on the geopolitical front through a strategy of internal and external balancing.
