Has Washington quietly moved beyond the Indo-Pacific? As the Trump administration sends increasingly contradictory signals on China, the Quad, and regional security, allies and strategic partners are increasingly left wondering whether America’s strategic priorities are changing or its policymaking has simply become unpredictable.

In the first Trump administration and throughout the Biden administration, it was easy to make the case that global geopolitical competition with China served as the organising principle of US foreign policy. A key corollary of that principle was the increasing importance of the Indo-Pacific region to US interests and as the primary geographic theatre of the contest with Beijing. To demonstrate Washington’s embrace of that new vision, in May 2018, US Pacific Command (PACOM) was renamed US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). Then, in June 2026, seemingly out of the blue and without warning to parts of the US government itself, INDOPACOM reverted to PACOM.