The United States government on Tuesday announced that the US Indo-Pacific Command will revert to its original designation, the US Pacific Command.

The move restores the name under which the military command operated for over seven decades.

The decision by the Department of War reversed a change introduced in 2018, when the US government, during Donald Trump’s first term as president, had renamed the command as the Indo-Pacific Command. The government had at the time cited the growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean region and its increasing integration with the security situation in the Pacific Ocean, India Today reported.

Advertisement

On Tuesday, the Department of War said that the restoration of the name was intended to honour the command’s historical identity and legacy. It noted that the command was established by former US president Harry Truman on January 1, 1947.

“The command operated under the USPACOM banner for over 70 years, standing as the oldest and largest of the United States' unified combatant commands,” the department said.

The department said that the command’s areas of responsibility – spanning the waters of the US West Coast to India’s western border – remains the same.

Advertisement

In India, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor questioned whether the development amounts to “one more nail in the coffin” of the Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue that comprises India, the United States, Japan and Australia. The grouping was launched to collaborate on maritime surveillance in the Indo-Pacific.

In a similar vein, defence analyst Pravin Sawhney described the decision as “extremely significant”, and said it indicated that the US had “no geopolitical use” for India in the Asia-Pacific region. “Moreover, in the so-called India’s backyard [South Asia], China and Pakistan will now have geopolitical, geoeconomic & military sway,” he remarked in a social media post.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sara Varghese.