PACOM, the deeper meaning behind a dropped prefix

Published 24 June 2026 · local

The decision by the United States military to change the name of its naval command in the region from “US INDOPACOM” to “US PACOM”

The decision by the United States military to change the name of its naval command in the region from “US INDOPACOM” to “US PACOM” — United States Indo-Pacific Command to United States Pacific Command — reverting to its original name that was changed in 2018 can be dismissed as superficial, even trivial. Many have already responded with the Shakespearean “What’s in a name?”, even as the U.S. Department of War pointed out that US PACOM’s area of responsibility, from “the waters off the West Coast of the United States to the western border of India” or what had once been described as “Hollywood to Bollywood, from polar bears to penguins”, has never changed. In 2018, U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said that the name INDOPACOM was a recognition of the “growing significance” of the Indian Ocean, the Indian subcontinent, and India itself, and the U.S. dropped the term “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific”. Current U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave the signal, on May 30, that this understanding has now changed, at his speech at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore — compared to more than 30 references to the “Indo-Pacific” in his speech in 2025, his speech this year contained not a single reference to the Indo-Pacific region or strategy. Given the centre stage that the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific policy has had in India’s strategic calculus since 2018, it is necessary, therefore, to go beyond the superficial to the subterranean or submarine, in this case. New Delhi must study how broader trends in U.S. policy are attempting to recast both the region and India’s position within it in terms of three broader geographies. U.S.-China ties and the Quad The first, is the U.S.’s outreach to China, and concurrently diminishing salience of the Quad (India, Japan, Australia, the U.S.), which Beijing has always protested as an “exclusive clique” or derisively as “ocean foam”. In the long term, the U.S. and China cannot shy away from the fierce rivalry between them, but it is clear that in the immediate term, Trump 2.0 has decided to play nice.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing in May 2026 and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit to the U.S. on September 24, indicate that the two sides do not want their differences to overcome the relationship, and the U.S. is tiptoeing around the Taiwan issue. Trump’s references to a “G-2”, including during a press availability with Mr. Modi on the sidelines of the 52nd G-7 summit in France (June 15 to 17), are an early warning of a plan to recast the world into “spheres of influence”, where China would be the predominant power in the continent, not as one pole in a multipolar Asia, as India envisions. As a result, the Quad, rebuilt in Trump 1.0 as a counter to China in the region, appears to be floundering. The U.S.’s Defense Strategy released in January 2026 does not mention the Quad even once. In terms of substance, the Quad’s combined agenda has been pared down to four areas of cooperation — maritime security, economic prosperity, critical and emerging minerals technology and disaster responses. Even within these limited objectives, there have been setbacks, such as over Artificial Intelligence cooperation. Despite Quad countries signing on to Pax Silica, and Critical Minerals Initiative Framework with the U.S., the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to end access to its latest models for all non-Americans. Another question concerns the Quad Summit, which India has unsuccessfully sought to host since January 2024. During U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Delhi in May 2026, he offered no firm commitment that Mr. Trump would visit Delhi this year, amid indications that the Quad may be relegated to a Foreign Ministers’ level grouping. The U.S. Navy’s reported actions involving Iranian ship IRIS Dena (March 2006) and recent attacks on three ships in which three Indians were killed underscore maritime security and domain awareness concerns within the Quad framework. In July, when he hosts Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and travels to Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi must discuss alternative maritime coalitions and revive the Australia-India-Japan trilateral.