That reality is the basis of the Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States. This strategy outlines President Biden’s vision to more firmly anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific and strengthen the region in the process. Its central focus is sustained and creative collaboration with allies, partners, and institutions, within the region and beyond it.

The United States will pursue an Indo-Pacific region that is:

FREE AND OPEN

Our vital interests and those of our closest partners require a free and open Indo-Pacific, and a free and open Indo-Pacific requires that governments can make their own choices and that shared domains are governed lawfully. Our strategy begins with strengthening resilience, both within individual countries, as we have done in the United States, and among them. We will advance a free and open region, including by:

• Investing in democratic institutions, a free press, and a vibrant civil society
• Improving fiscal transparency in the Indo-Pacific to expose corruption and drive reform
• Ensuring the region’s seas and skies are governed and used according to international law
• Advancing common approaches to critical and emerging technologies, the internet, and cyber space

CONNECTED

A free and open Indo-Pacific can only be achieved if we build collective capacity for a new age. The alliances, organizations, and rules that the United States and its partners have helped to build must be adapted. We will build collective capacity within and beyond the region, including by:

• Deepening our five regional treaty alliances with Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), the Philippines, and Thailand
• Strengthening relationships with leading regional partners, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Pacific Islands
• Contributing to an empowered and unified ASEAN
• Strengthening the Quad and delivering on its commitments
• Supporting India’s continued rise and regional leadership
• Partnering to build resilience in the Pacific Islands
• Forging connections between the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic
• Expanding U.S. diplomatic presence in the Indo-Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands

PROSPEROUS

The prosperity of everyday Americans is linked to the Indo-Pacific. That fact requires investments to encourage innovation, strengthen economic competitiveness, produce good-paying jobs, rebuild supply chains, and expand economic opportunities for middle-class families: 1.5 billion people in the Indo-Pacific will join the global middle class this decade. We will drive Indo-Pacific prosperity, including by:

• Proposing an Indo-Pacific economic framework, through which we will:
• Develop new approaches to trade that meet high labor and environmental standards
• Govern our digital economies and cross-border data flows according to open principles, including through a new digital economy framework
• Advance resilient and secure supply chains that are diverse, open, and predictable
• Make shared investments in decarbonization and clean energy
• Promoting free, fair, and open trade and investment through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), including in our 2023 host year
• Closing the region’s infrastructure gap through Build Back Better World with G7 partners

SECURE

For 75 years, the United States has maintained a strong and consistent defense presence necessary to support regional peace, security, stability, and prosperity. We are extending and modernizing that role and enhancing our capabilities to defend our interests and to deter aggression against U.S. territory and against our allies and partners. We will bolster Indo-Pacific security, drawing on all instruments of power to deter aggression and to counter coercion, including by:

Advancing integrated deterrence

Deepening cooperation and enhancing interoperability with allies and partners

Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait
Innovating to operate in rapidly evolving threat environments, including space, cyberspace, and critical- and emerging-technology areas

Strengthening extended deterrence and coordination with our ROK and Japanese allies and pursuing the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula

Continuing to deliver on AUKUS

Expanding U.S. Coast Guard presence and cooperation against other transnational threats

Working with Congress to fund the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the Maritime Security Initiative

RESILIENT

The Indo-Pacific faces major transnational challenges. Climate change is growing ever-more severe as South Asia’s glaciers melt and the Pacific Islands battle existential rises in sea levels. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to inflict a painful human and economic toll across the region. And Indo-Pacific governments grapple with natural disasters, resource scarcity, internal conflict, and governance challenges. Left unchecked, these forces threaten to destabilize the region. We will build regional resilience to 21st-century transnational threats, including by:

• Working with allies and partners to develop 2030 and 2050 targets, strategies, plans, and policies consistent with limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius
• Reducing regional vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation
• Ending the COVID-19 pandemic and bolstering global health security

The White House

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In multiple calls and statements, he and his top security officials have underscored support for allies Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, signalling Washington’s rejection of China’s disputed territorial claims in those areas.

On 27 January, Biden told Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga that his administration is committed to defending Japan, including the Senkaku Islands, which are claimed both by Japan and China, which calls them the Diaoyu Islands.

That stance was echoed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who told Japanese counterpart Nobuo Kishi on Saturday that the contested islands were covered by the US-Japan Security Treaty.

Austin affirmed that the United States “remains opposed to any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East China Sea,” according to a Pentagon statement on the call.

Meanwhile, three days into the Biden administration, State Department spokesman Ned Price warned China about menacing Taiwan after it repeatedly sent more than a dozen military fighters and bombers through the island’s air defense zone.

“We will stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity security and values in the Indo-Pacific region — and that includes deepening our ties with Democratic Taiwan,” Price said in a statement.

“Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid.”

And Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Philippine counterpart on Wednesday that a mutual defense treaty obliging the US to defend the Philippines against attack in the Pacific also applied to the disputed South China Sea – something the Obama administration did not specify.

Those comments and others sought to emphasize that the new Biden administration will not deviate from the firm security stance towards China that it inherited from ex-president Donald Trump.

‘A free and open Indo-Pacific’

Washington has long sided with allies such as South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia in rejecting disputed Chinese territorial claims in the East China Sea and South China Sea.

The Trump administration raised the tone when then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo declared last July that most of Beijing’s maritime claims in the South China Sea were “completely unlawful.”

In his first overseas contacts after taking office, Austin included not only Japan but also counterparts in Australia, South Korea and India.

Over the past three years, Washington has expanded defense cooperation with India, which sees China posing a military threat both on its northern border and in the seas to the south.

In a call with Indian defense minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday, Austin observed that the two countries’ defense partnership “is built upon shared values and a common interest in ensuring the Indo-Pacific region remains free and open,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.

A similar China-directed refrain echoed through Austin’s call with Australian defense minister Linda Reynolds on Tuesday.

Austin “emphasized the importance of maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, founded on existing international law and norms in a region free of malign behavior,” Kirby said.

To underscore the unchanged US stance in Asia, on January 24, the fourth day of the new Biden administration, the US aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a so-called “freedom of navigation” mission in the South China Sea, sailing in or close to waters that China claims to underscore Washington’s rejection of those claims.

In addition, even as his initial focus for the US Defense Department is battling the coronavirus, Austin is expected to make Asia his first destination on an international trip.

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