ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the rhetoric and tangibles of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy. Despite the use of the word “strategy”, the US government lacks cohesion in its supposedly whole-of-government effort towards the region. The strategy largely remains one of the US Pacific Navy and relies on geopolitical principles and hence shows a great deal of continuity from the Cold War period despite the dynamic transformation of the region.
Shifting of economic gravity from the Asia Pacific westward with the rise of India is anticipated based on demographic trends (India’s high birth rate, as opposed to the low birth rate in China), but India’s inward-looking economy has not fully embraced integration with the broader region and the US remains a limited player in the Indian economy unlike in China. The security-driven rationale for active US presence in the IOR in the context of the rising perceptions about the Chinese threats to regional and global security led to the resumption of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue among the US, Japan, Australia and India in 2017. However, as the strategic concept is being translated into more comprehensive policies, the prevailing overall framing has shed the simplistic anti-China cleverly sugarcoated the mercantilist and the off-shore balancing of the previous administration.
