July 9, 2026 2:26PM
Why It Makes Sense to Bring Back the Pacific Command
By Evan Sankey
US Pacific Command
The second Trump administration has indulged in the art of changing names. The Pentagon, the Kennedy Center, the tallest mountain in the US, and the body of water west of Florida and east of Mexico have all been objects of rebranding (or attempted rebranding). In a surprise announcement on June 16, the Pentagon’s largest geographic combatant command joined the list. According to the press release, the US Indo-Pacific Command, which has operational authority over US military forces from Hawaii west to India, has reverted to its original name, the US Pacific Command or “PACOM.”
This reverses the 2018 decision of the first Trump administration to tack on “Indo.” That revision was enthusiastically adopted first by the foreign policy community and then by the Biden administration as a proclamation linking US interests in the Western Pacific with its interests in the Indian Ocean. The Department of Defense says the reversion “honors the command’s deep historical roots” and “collective spirit.”
The change does not alter the geographic scope of the command, but the fact that it is a reversal suggests it has policy import. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby and his office, which almost certainly had a say in the decision, have worked to prioritize and discipline US defense policy toward the goal of sustaining a balance of power in Asia—particularly by denying a Chinese attack on the First Island Chain, which runs from Northern Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines. The 2026 National Defense Strategy defined this as America’s most important geographic objective short of preserving US dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth dropped “Indo” from his May 2026 remarks to the Shangri-La Dialogue, saying “our approach in the Pacific centers on deterrence by denial along the First Island Chain.” Its formal deletion is a further bureaucratic and diplomatic manifestation of this focus.
https://www.cato.org/blog/why-it-makes-sense-bring-back-pacific-command
