One interesting thing about Indo-Pacific discourse is way that it has elevated the Indian Ocean in US strategy beyond, I think, its strategic importance to the US. It’s good for Australia, Asian powers that depend on SLOC running through IOR, but benefit to US less clear to me. https://twitter.com/jamescrabtree/status/1351732008842481669

The Indian Ocean is simply not as important to US strategy as the waterways of the first and second island chains, or even the remainder of the Pacific. US efforts in the Indian Ocean risk drawing attention away from those waterways to an area of secondary strategic importance.

There’s also the challenge of coalition-building in the Indian Ocean. We have longstanding treaty allies in the Pacific. Indian interests are different than these allies, and their participation is likely to always be more contingent than Japan, Australia, or even Singapore.