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U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy prioritizes prosperity, security for region

FORUM Staff

Fostering regional prosperity and bolstering security with allies and partners are key pillars of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, and the United States has pledged to put forward an innovative framework to help economies harness rapid transformations in technology to ensure success and promote free, fair and open trade.

“The prosperity of everyday Americans is linked to the Indo-Pacific,” according to the White House. “That fact requires investments to encourage innovation, strengthen economic competitiveness, produce good-paying jobs, rebuild supply chains and expand economic opportunities for middle-class families.”

In the coming decade, 1.5 billion people in the Indo-Pacific will join the global middle class, according to the White House. To help them prosper, the Indo-Pacific Strategy proposes an economic framework that will:

  • Develop approaches to trade that meet high labor and environmental standards.
  • Govern digital economies and cross-border data flows according to open principles, including through a new digital economy framework.
  • Advance resilient and secure supply chains that are diverse, open and predictable.
  • Make shared investments in decarbonization and clean energy.

Plans to grow prosperity also call for promoting free, fair and open trade, investment through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and closing the region’s infrastructure gap.

Direct U.S. investment in the Indo-Pacific has nearly doubled in the past decade, totaling more than U.S. $696 billion in 2020, according to the Indo-Pacific Strategy. The U.S. remains the No. 1 investment partner for Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries, investing more than Southeast Asia’s next three investment partners combined, according to the strategy: “And the United States is the primary exporter of services to the region, which, in turn, fuels regional growth.”

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy highlights that peace, stability and security are key components to sustaining regional growth and prosperity. For 75 years, the U.S. has maintained a strong and consistent defense presence to support these mechanisms. The Indo-Pacific Strategy calls for extending and modernizing that role in defending U.S. interests, deterring aggression and countering coercion against U.S. territories and its allies and partners.

“Integrated deterrence will be the cornerstone of our approach,” according to the Indo-Pacific Strategy. “We will more tightly integrate our efforts across warfighting domains and the spectrum of conflict to ensure the United States, alongside our allies and partners, can dissuade or defeat aggression in any form or domain. We will drive initiatives that reinforce deterrence and counter coercion, such as opposing efforts to alter territorial boundaries or undermine the rights of sovereign nations at sea.”

Read the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy in full at https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/U.S.-Indo-Pacific-Strategy.pdf.

 

IMAGE CREDIT: ISTOCK

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