Is the United States about to ramp up its Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China?

When US acting secretary of defence Patrick Shanahan steps up to address one of Asia’s biggest security forums this week, he is expected to reveal details of a “new” phase in the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy.

The strategy is mainly aimed at curbing Beijing’s growing clout in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and a change in the approach was signalled last month when a senior US defence official said Shanahan would explain the Indo-Pacific’s role as a “priority theatre”.

Shanahan’s speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday will be on America’s new Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy and “should provide an insight into the US administration’s current thinking about the challenges from China and North Korea, as well as other regional security problems”, according to Tim Huxley, executive director of the event’s organiser, IISS – Asia.

China will no doubt be listening, with Beijing sending its defence minister, Wei Fenghe, to the security forum for the first time since 2011.

The speech will cap a flurry of American diplomatic activity in the region, including a four-day trip to Japan by US President Donald Trump and Shanahan’s own stops in Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

The term “Indo-Pacific” first emerged as regional strategic framework in US politics in 2010 when then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton used it to signal renewed American interest in the area.