The Indo-Pacific region has emerged as a focal point for international security and economic cooperation in recent decades. Nations within this region have worked together to address shared challenges, promote stability, and uphold the rules-based international order. These efforts have been marked by strong partnerships and innovative strategies aimed at fostering peace, prosperity, and mutual understanding.
One of the key drivers of Indo-Pacific security cooperation has been the collective commitment to maintaining freedom of navigation and open maritime trade routes. With nearly half of global trade passing through the waterways of the Indo-Pacific, ensuring the security of these routes is vital for the economic well-being of nations across the globe. Collaborative naval exercises, joint patrols, and intelligence-sharing initiatives have played a crucial role in safeguarding these critical arteries of commerce.
Multilateral organizations and frameworks have also been instrumental in promoting regional security. Platforms such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) have provided avenues for dialogue, trust-building, and coordinated action on issues ranging from counterterrorism to disaster response. These forums demonstrate the importance of diplomacy and multilateralism in addressing complex security challenges.
The Indo-Pacific region has also witnessed significant efforts to counter emerging threats such as cyberattacks, climate change, and transnational crime. Collaborative endeavors in cybersecurity, environmental protection, and law enforcement have underscored the interconnectedness of security and development. By addressing these non-traditional security challenges, nations are working to build resilience and ensure a sustainable future for the region.
As we celebrate decades of Indo-Pacific security cooperation, it is important to recognize the achievements made possible by collaboration and shared vision. The continued commitment to dialogue, partnership, and innovation will undoubtedly shape the region’s security landscape for years to come, fostering a future of peace and prosperity for all.
Indo-Pacific security cooperation is increasingly key for cultivating and improving defense relationships and capabilities, as strategic competition has intensified in the region in recent decades.
Since its founding in 1947, the United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) has endeavored to build enduring alliances and partnerships to enhance the strength of regional forces and sustain peace. FORUM has chronicled such security cooperation since the magazine’s launch in 1975.
The U.S. strives to ensure regional security through such relationships and by promoting economic development of nations. The forward deployment of U.S. forces, which continued after the Cold War, has deterred military confrontation in hot spots including the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, and the East China and South China seas, analysts said.
USINDOPACOM uses a full-spectrum approach to security cooperation, embracing interactions, programs and activities conducted with partner forces and their institutions, including exercises, training, armaments cooperation, information sharing and military sales.
Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations are a cornerstone of this security cooperation. Among its early reports, FORUM noted that after Typhoon Olga struck the Philippines in 1976, U.S. military personnel evacuated more than 1,900 people and delivered more than 370,000 pounds of relief supplies, including 9,340 gallons of fuel. USINDOPACOM’s HADR missions have expanded, with U.S. forces responding to more than 45 natural disasters in 17 Indo-Pacific nations over the past three decades.
USINDOPACOM also provides education and training opportunities to help partner forces’ personnel enhance their professional skills. In 2022, for example, the U.S. Army established the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) to enable the U.S. and its Allies and Partners to demonstrate combat-credible forces in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. With contributors from every U.S. military branch, the JPMRC has involved participants and observers from nations including Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and the United Kingdom.
To further training and build interoperability, USINDOPACOM and Allies and Partners conduct hundreds of large-scale recurring exercises, many of which have become increasingly multilateral in the past decade, as China’s increasingly aggressive territorial claims and activities, particularly in the East China and South China seas, have sparked new security challenges.
To counter such aggression and foster collaboration, the U.S. and its Allies and Partners created security mechanisms such as the Quadrilateral partnership, or Quad, among Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.; and the Australia, Japan and U.S. strategic dialogue. Such minilateral forums address practical challenges of strategic competition.
At the same time, the U.S. supports the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in shaping regional security relationships beyond the group’s 10 member states. Over the decades, ASEAN has built a range of platforms, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus and Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum, to promote dialogue with key regional powers and facilitate economic integration and nontraditional security cooperation.
Moving forward, USINDOPACOM seeks to continue enhancing security cooperation with Allies and Partners to sustain regional peace and achieve a shared vision of a world that is free, open, secure and prosperous.
