Mapping the Indo-Pacific: US institutional visions

Source: https://www.state.gov/indo-pacific-strategy/
Michael Stricof and Isabelle Vagnoux, Aix-Marseille université, LERMA, Aix-en-Provence, France.
US definitions of the Indo-Pacific are some of the narrowest among the external nations defining new policies in the region. The product of new labels designed to reflect geopolitical priorities, they are often an exercise of one of two things: adding India to preexisting East Asia policy or narrowing US focus by excluding the Americas from the question. In contrast to France, which uses Indo-Pacific to expand the region, as seen on the map illustrating its official Indo-Pacific Strategy, the US has been trying to focus on fewer key locations.
The United States long had policies towards Asia or concerns in the Pacific. In 1900, Alfred T. Mahan’s analysis of the US role in the region since the occupation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American war spoke simply of the continent, Asia, or the body of water, the Pacific. Throughout most of the 20th Century, these standard terms would apply. In World War II, the fight against Japan occurred in the “Pacific Theatre” and the permanent military commands that were set up after the war were the East Asia Command and the Pacific Command. In 1957, these merged into the Pacific Command, simply.
In the early Cold War, the Department of State grouped East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania in the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs. India was part of the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asia Affairs.

Source: https://statemag.state.gov/2022/01/0122feat01/
After the Cold War, this bureau was split in two, with South Asian Affairs gaining a central Asian component. Today, after some expansion of both bureaus, the division represents a focus on the Middle East and North Africa in one Bureau and South and Central Asia in another. India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal remain separate from East Asian affairs, at least in terms of State Department administrative organization.

Source: https://statemag.state.gov/2022/01/0122feat01/
The United States began emphasizing the “Asia-Pacific” with the creation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). This organization was founded in 1989 thanks to the efforts of Australia to link Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies to a wider economic network. Here, the United States was an opportunistic follower, adopting linguistic and geographic notions that fit its goal of expanded trade access around the Pacific Rim—a term that was particularly popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. In an era when the primary foreign policy concerns were expanding markets, the Asia-Pacific concept served to bring the United States closer to dynamic Asian economies and bring some of South America into a massive regional economic forum.
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Logo

Source: https://www.apec.org/About-Us/About-APEC/APEC-Logo-Use
As outlined in the introduction to this series[i], the Indo-Pacific as an organizing idea gained popularity thanks largely to Japan, Australia and India. Although observers like Gurpreet S. Khurana who is credited with coining the term were noticing how US security interests often followed the flows from East Asia to the Middle East via the Straits of Malacca and ocean trade routes, the United States did not adopt the concept until the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue was reconstituted in 2017. To wit, in her famous article published in Foreign Policy in October, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton firmly established the United States as a “Pacific power,” and referred to the “Asia-Pacific,” not the Indo-Pacific.[ii] Her Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell, did not use the term either when he published his acclaimed book The Pivot. The Future of American Statecraft in Asia in 2016. More generally, the term was absent from the lexicon of analysts and policy-makers,[iii] although the concept, the idea of a wide, inclusive Asian policy had existed for a long time. In 2018, the United States military renamed its Pacific Command the Indo-Pacific Command, reflecting one of the first times the US officially adopted “Indo-Pacific” as a term. Although the change in name included no direct change to the area of responsibility, it reflected changes in US mentality. China’s increasing assertiveness and status as a near-peer competitor, coupled with Russian aggression and a more limited view of American power after the forever wars in the Middle East failed to reshape the region, led the US to emphasize allies and partners held together by shared democratic values. India, as the world’s largest democracy, would be the most important new counterweight to China. Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand, long standing treaty allies, with (admittedly variable) democratic traditions, were also central to US strategy. The Indo-Pacific Command was a direct response to China’s “String of Pearls” which had come to include Chinese military installations in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and even Djibouti.
US Indo-Pacific Command Area of Responsibility

Source: https://www.pacom.mil/About-USINDOPACOM/USPACOM-Area-of-Responsibility/
The Trump Administration was consequently the first one to use the term “Indo-Pacific.” The 2018 National Defense Strategy emphasized the need to “expand Indo-Pacific alliances and partnerships” and “strengthen” them to ensure “a free and open Indo-Pacific region.” “Free and open,” a phrase initially coined by Japanese Prime Minister Abe, soon became the Trump administration’s mantra for the region.[iv] Barack Obama’s proposed Transpacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement that would have maintained many of the Asia-Pacific links but excluded China, was abandoned by Donald Trump. In 2022, the Biden administration established the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) with 13 other states—including India but excluding China. This served both to attempt to recover some of the lost economic opportunity from backing out of TPP and continuing to narrow the US’s focus on key regional partners, even if that meant excluding others, notably the other signatories in the Americas (Canada, Chile, Mexico and Peru). Although APEC continues to operate, and the US hosted the annual summit in 2023, IPEF was favored by the Biden administration precisely because it excludes China and contributes to US focus.
Indo-Pacific Economic Framework Members

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pacific_Economic_Framework
Currently, the most important illustration of how the United States conceives of the Indo-Pacific as a geographic space should be drawn from the White House’s 2022 Indo-Pacific policy paper, as this document is supposed to provide a framework for all US policy towards the region. The cover illustration shows the Indo-Pacific as being essentially the Pacific nations previously included in the Asia-Pacific concept plus India. In this, it overlaps IPEF in terms of friends, and the Indo-Pacific Command for friends and competitors.

Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/U.S.-Indo-Pacific-Strategy.pdf
The paper delineates the space as “stretching from our Pacific coastline to the Indian Ocean” and goes on to promise “We will focus on every corner of the region, from Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, to South Asia and Oceania, including the Pacific Islands.” Just like the cover image, the whole of the Pacific Rim is not included—there is no South America. The Indian Ocean is included as the point of transit around Southeast Asia as far as India, but the Western Indian Ocean, from Pakistan through the Middle East to South Africa, are not included, unlike the much broader French conception.
To some extent, “Indo-Pacific” in the United States really is just a linguistic shift, replacing “Asia-Pacific” with a slightly different word. Yet, India’s potential as a (democratic) counterweight to China, the emphasis on the movement of goods through the Straits of Malacca and contested claims in the South China Sea argued in favor of a narrower focus on the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean and the central- and southwestern parts of the Pacific Ocean. At the same time, the desire to “pivot” away from the Middle East towards Asia limits American desire to include the Persian Gulf or West Africa in their Indo-Pacific vision. The language serves to redouble efforts to attract members of ASEAN, which is fully included and more central.
The narrower US conception also increases emphasis on the security dimensions of the problem. In this sense, the South China Sea and the Strait of Taiwan are the center of the Indo-Pacific, and the region is defined by China’s neighbors who may feel threatened by Beijing’s aggressive territorial claims. This contrasts with the more economic emphasis natural to the expansive view that includes West Africa or the Middle East. The French conception places the Straits of Malacca in the center of the region and includes the Straits of Hormuz. East Asia’s reliance on natural resources from Africa and the Middle East, and the movement of these resources by maritime routes, become the center of the story.
As of March 2025, the Trump II options for the region are still question marks. One thing is certain though: the region will remain a major priority and some of the top foreign-policy makers the new president appointed are all China hawks (Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Representative Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, and Representative Elise Stefanik as Ambassador to the United Nations). While in Congress, Rubio and Waltz have consistently favored closer relations with U.S. allies in the region. Given that the first Trump administration was responsible for the initial framing of US Indo-Pacific policy, and the Biden administration’s definition of the space and its priorities was most consistent with Trump I, these early appointments and institutional inertia would suggest continuity in how the US sees this region, even as the incoming president’s specific priorities remain uncertain.
[i] https://orema.hypotheses.org/2444
[ii] Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century”, Foreign Policy, October 11, 2011, https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/11/americas-pacific-century/
[iii] Oliver Turner & Inderjeet Parmar, The United States in the Indo-Pacific: Obama’s Legacy and the Trump Transition, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2020, p. 4.
[iv] https://dod.defense.gov/portals/1/documents/pubs/2018-national-defense-strategy-summary.pdf, p. 9.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
OREMA (17 mars 2025). Mapping the Indo-Pacific: US institutional visions. OREMA. Consulté le 10 février 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13hn7
