A “Pacific-First” Reality Check

A “Pacific-First” Reality Check

In geopolitics, words do matter, and sometimes a deletion says a lot more than a thousand-page defense white paper. The Pentagon’s recent move to quietly strip the word “Indo” from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, reverting to its Cold War-era title of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), was officially framed as a “nostalgic gesture” to the command’s history. But the concept of “Indo-Pacific” was never just about geographical description. It was a d…