The U.S. Military Significance in the Indo-Pacific Region Introduction

The free and open Indo-Pacific strategy (FOIP) of the U.S. military has both positive and negative impacts in the Indo-Pacific region. Primarily a military instrument through which the U.S. can form alliances to assist in responding to China’s enhancement of the country’s own military presence, FOIP has been promoted by Secretary of Defense Mattis as an opportunity “to strengthen a fraying U.S.-led rules-based international order under threat from regional power shifts, revisionist powers, and rogue regimes” (Parameswaran, 2018). From China’s perspective, the U.S. is attempting to insert itself into a regional—i.e., domestic matter—that is none of its business. The U.S., on the other hand, views any attempt by China to extend its boundaries and enhance its own geostrategic position in the East as a matter of national security. Nonetheless, the U.S. paints FOIP in rather more “positive” terms while simultaneously waging economic warfare against China by way of sanctions (for engaging in arms deals with Russia) and trade war. Sen. Perdue stated, “When we’re up against ‘China, Inc.’ who thinks in terms of millennia, we cannot limit ourselves to thinking in fiscal quarters, or four- to eight-year administrations….We need a plan for the long haul to ensure that our nation maintains its leadership and strategic role in the Indo-Pacific region that covers defense, diplomacy and economics” (Rogin, 2018). Undoubtedly there are potentially positive, negative, and strategic impacts of the American military’s presence in the Indo-Pacific region. This paper will show how the U.S. uses its military instrument as a presence in the Indo-Pacific region to achieve its own strategic objectives.

Positive Impacts

The positive strategic achievements the United States military instrument receives when providing presence in the Indo-Pacific Region is the ability to develop relationships with other countries such as India and the Philippines—allies that it can use to maintain control of sea lanes in the East and a kind of NATO of the South Seas to guard against Chinese expansion, just as NATO in the West guards against Russian expansion of late. To this end, Japan, India, Australia and the U.S.—all of whom can be viewed as rivals of China—have banded together to “recharacterize the Asia-Pacific as the Indo-Pacific” (Stratfor, 2017). Thus, the main positive strategic achievement of the U.S. military...

and its new allies in the region. By referring to the Asia-Pacific as the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. adopts a more inclusive posture towards India and brings the East that much closer to the West, making America’s military presence there somewhat more acceptable.
The positive strategy allows the U.S. and its allies to united the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and view it all as one big “single security space” (Stratfor, 2017) with U.S. military overseeing the sprawling waterways and islands throughout. While China preps for its 64-nation Belt and Road Initiative and works with Russia to create a multipolar world, the U.S. military instrument in the Indo-Pacific puts pressure on the Belt and Road Initiative. The military instrument fosters “a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order” (Ayres, 2018), as the U.S. puts it. It is essentially a military containment of China and the presence of the military can help to win more alliances to the U.S.

Negative Impacts

Negative strategic impacts the United States military instrument receives when providing presence in the Indo-Pacific Region include the risk of a hot war between China and the U.S. growing. China has made no secret of the fact that it resents the U.S. military’s presumption that it has a right to interfere or condemn China’s expansion into the disputed South China Seas. The shifting away from recognizing the region as the Asian-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific can be seen by China as an attempt to marginalize the world’s most populated country.

The strategy could also induce states currently on the fence about allying with the U.S. to move away from the American military and either express independence or side with China should a fray begin. As McDonald (2018) notes, “in order to succeed, the FOIP must convince regional leaders that the United States is building a new regional order worth signing up for”—yet, the U.S. has not been able to do more than bark. Implementing the kind of order envisioned by the U.S. would inevitably lead to conflict with China and would drag into the fight numerous other states. Were the Indo-Pacific to become a theater of war, it would devastate economies throughout the region. Many leaders therefore, no doubt anticipating such a conclusion, are reluctant to bring it about by siding with…