Defend, dominate, deny: Declassified U.S. strategy shows vision for Indo-Pacific

Publié le 17 janvier 2021Mis à jour le 17 janvier 2021

The U.S. on Tuesday declassified a national security document that reveals details of the Trump administration’s strategy for the Indo-Pacific region, including Japan’s role as well as a plan to “deny,” “defend” and “dominate” China in the western Pacific.

Observers said the document’s release, just days before Donald Trump hands over the White House keys to President-elect Joe Biden and his team, may have been intended to bind the new president to the vision it laid out for the region while reassuring allies of a continued U.S. presence.

The rare decision to release and declassify the strategy, which provided the “overarching strategic guidance” for U.S. actions in the region, “demonstrates, with transparency, America’s strategic commitments to the Indo-Pacific and to our allies and partners,” national security adviser Robert O’Brien said in a statement accompanying it.

Typically, such documents remain classified for 30 years.

The statement and document itself also appeared to highlight the outsize role Japan played in its formation and after, touting the “strategic resonance” of Tokyo’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” concept and noting that the “growing alignment of strategic approaches in the region is perhaps nowhere more noteworthy than in the growth of the U.S.-Japan alliance during the last four years.”

Experts said these words made clear that allies, including Tokyo, had played a crucial role in the strategy’s creation.

“This confirms that U.S. strategic policy in the Indo-Pacific was in substantial part informed and driven by allies and partners, especially Japan, Australia and India,” Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, wrote in an analysis for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank.

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