2026-03-24 The Indo-Pacific strategy just sank in Iran
Across the Eurasian continent, the balance between maritime attack and continental defense has shifted.
Over the past decade, capitals from Australia to France, India to Japan, and Korea to the UK, have rolled out Indo-Pacific strategies with the confidence of a shared script: that maritime coalitions stabilize the system, secure sea lanes, and quietly contain a rising continental power. The documents multiplied—white papers, frameworks, “visions”—each more expansive than the last.
Strategy may be proclaimed in documents, but it’s ultimately tested in choke points. As shipping halts, missiles range farther than expected, and even the world’s most powerful navy fails to navigate waterways a day’s sailing from the home base of the US Fifth Fleet, the core promise of the Indo-Pacific idea—that maritime power can underwrite global order—has run aground.
From the beginning, the “Indo-Pacific” was less a coherent strategic framework than a conceptual stretch—a branding exercise designed to keep an aging maritime order intellectually afloat. It stitched together two oceans, multiple regions, and incompatible strategic cultures under a single label, not because they naturally formed a system, but because doing so served a particular purpose: to extend the reach of maritime power in an era when that power was beginning to face structural limits.
Whose Indo-Pacific?
At its core, the concept reflects the strategic instincts of one actor above all others: the United States. It is a way of seeing the world as a continuous expanse of sea lanes, choke points, and naval mobility—a space where power is projected, alliances are networked, and order is maintained from the water outward. The Indo-Pacific, in this sense, is simply the latest iteration of a long-standing American strategic habit: to convert geography into a navigable theater for maritime dominance.
For the United States, the Indo-Pacific made perfect sense. It extended American strategic logic across a vast maritime arc, linking allies and partners into a network that can be accessed, reinforced, and supplied from the sea. It preserved the primacy of naval power as the organizing principle of regional order. It allowed the US. to remain an offshore balancer, shaping events without becoming territorially embedded.
Over the last ten years, the US. sought to impose that same logic onto actors and regions for whom it makes far less sense.
Take India—the supposed anchor of the “Indo” in Indo-Pacific. The inclusion of India has always been presented as a strategic masterstroke, binding the Indian Ocean to the Pacific and creating a unified balancing coalition against China. But this framing fundamentally misreads India’s strategic reality.
India is not, in essence, a maritime power. It is a continental power with maritime interests. Its primary security concerns lie on land: its contested borders with China, its enduring rivalry with Pakistan, and its internal cohesion across a vast and diverse territory. Its strategic culture is shaped by these realities—by questions of territorial control, border stability, and continental depth.
The Indo-Pacific does little to address these concerns. It offers India a role in a maritime coalition, but provides no meaningful leverage in its primary theaters of competition. It encourages naval cooperation and participation in forums like the Quad, but these are peripheral to the central axis of Indian security. In effect, India is asked to participate in a system that is not designed around its needs.
An Indo-Pacific concept lost at sea?
Over the last ten years, it became increasingly clear that the Indo-Pacific concept rested on fragile foundations. It assumed that maritime dominance remained the decisive factor in shaping regional outcomes—that control of sea lanes, naval superiority, and forward deployment underpinned strategic order. With every sentence you read, this is changing.
As the United States struggles to guarantee passage through the Strait of Hormuz under sustained threat—and its carrier strike groups, once symbols of dominance, operate at increasing distance from Iranian missile range—the aura of uncontested naval supremacy is beginning to fade. The geometry has shifted: control no longer flows outward from the sea, but is contested—and often denied—from the land.
Across the Eurasian continent, the balance between maritime attack and continental defense has shifted.
Advances in missile technology, air defense systems, and long-range strike capabilities have made it increasingly costly—and risky—for maritime powers to project force close to continental landmasses. Anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems are not merely tactical developments; they represent a structural change in the geometry of power.
Where once maritime forces could approach, strike, and withdraw with relative freedom, they now face layered defensive networks that extend deep inland and outward into adjacent seas. The cost of penetration has risen. The margin for error has narrowed. The advantage tilts toward the defender.
At the same time, continental powers are reinforcing their position through infrastructure, connectivity, and economic integration. Rail networks, pipelines, and overland trade routes are reducing dependence on maritime choke points. Strategic depth—once a function of geography alone—is now being actively constructed.
The Indo-Pacific framework does not account for this shift. It remains anchored in an earlier era, when maritime mobility could decisively shape outcomes on land. It assumes that the sea remains the primary domain through which power flows. This is increasingly anachronistic.
There will be a momentous reckoning across the region, particularly in those states most taken in by the concept – Australia and Japan.