New Delhi:
Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said one shouldn’t read too much into the US dropping reference to India from the name of its unified military command node for the Pacific Ocean region, which has gone from being called the Indo-Pacific Command to Pacific Command.
“I think we’re reading too much into that. What is important is the fact that whether it is the United States, Japan, or India… we all believe in a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Goyal said at the NDTV Indo-Japan Summit Thursday morning.
“We are all concerned that this region should continue to see stability… to be peaceful… and provide opportunity for all countries in this region,” he explained.
“And the shared values that we wish to promote in that area…. i.e., the values of democracy and freedom of trade… that is something that binds the US, Japan, and India.”
The minister said he foresaw no reason all three countries, all of which are also members of the Quad, or the strategic bloc consisting also of Australia. “We just had the foreign ministers of the group meet in the US… just a month or so ago… and they reinforced its importance,” he said.
Last month the US Department of War announced the renaming of the country’s largest and oldest military command node. The department said the move would honour the unified command’s deep historical roots, established in 1947 by then-president Harry Truman.
The development sparked concerns in India, with many pointing out it could indicate a shift in Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy and throw doubts over the role of groupings like the Quad.
But US officials said the decision was only a ‘nomenclature change’ and insisted that the command’s structure, responsibilities, and regional commitments remain intact.
Headquartered in Hawaii, the command oversees strategic zones around the Pacific, as well as much of the Indian Ocean and even up to Australia. The move to drop ‘Indo’ from the name reverses a symbolic but strategically significant change introduced in 2018, during Donald Trump’s first term, to reflect what Washington then said was the ‘growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean region, and its increasing integration with Pacific security dynamics’.
In 2018, then-defence secretary James Mattis said the name had been changed to Indo-Pacific Command in recognition of the increasing connectivity between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
