Why Japan Is Now the Most Important US Ally in Asia
Jagannath Panda
The United States recently reasserted its commitment to a rules-based international order, a move its traditional allies will have welcomed. A joint statement, signed on July 12 by the United States and 13 core Asian and European partners, reaffirmed support for a landmark arbitration ruling that, a decade ago, found there is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea.
Support for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea has rarely mattered more. China’s highly controversial intercontinental ballistic missile test earlier this month—only the second Beijing has publicly acknowledged—shows how far China will go to reassert its perceived rights across the region. But the statement did more than affirm the United States’ continued commitment to a rules-based order in the Pacific. It also offered clues to a new regional diplomatic configuration that’s taking shape.
Alongside European allies, Japan, Australia and the Philippines signed the joint statement. India, which independently reaffirmed its support for the ruling, conspicuously did not do so. Nor is this the first signal that the once-formidable US-India axis is under strain. On June 16, the Department of Defense announced that US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) would be renamed US Pacific Command (USPACOM).
At first glance, the move is unremarkable. After all, the department affirmed shortly after that USPACOM’s “fundamental mission and its unwavering commitment to maintaining a free and open theatre alongside regional allies and partners are unchanged.” And the divorce of “Indo” from “Pacific” is to have no impact on geography: “USPACOM’s vast area of responsibility—spanning from the waters off the West Coast of the United States to the western border of India—remains exactly the same,” if the Pentagon is to be believed.
But Pacific watchers are not so sure. The consensus among foreign policy analysts holds that the move marks India’s demotion as America’s premier partner in the region. After all, the original decision to rebrand the Command as USINDOPACOM—announced by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis during the first Trump administration—was widely read as an acknowledgment of India’s critical role as a counterbalance to a rising China.
Set against an increasingly strained US-India relationship, the renaming looks unmistakably like a shot across India’s bow. So, if India is no longer the lynchpin of US strategy in the region, who is? And what will American presence in the Pacific look like in these terms?
