The 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue revealed a shift in the Indo-Pacific toward flexible, multi-partner strategies, reports Vu Lam of War on the Rocks. Regional states are rejecting U.S.-China binary thinking, favoring pragmatic cooperation and strategic autonomy. The emerging order is defined by pluralism, not alignment, built on overlapping coalitions and regional agency. Lam writes:
The 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue marked a subtle but telling shift in Indo-Pacific geopolitics. While the annual security forum retained its usual stagecraft between the United States and China, this year’s exchanges revealed a deeper disconnect: The zero-sum logic driving great-power rivalry contrasts sharply with the pragmatic, interests-based approach favored by many middle powers and small states.
The old binaries of a U.S.-centered liberal order versus a Chinese-led alternative are giving way to a more dynamic regional system. What is emerging is an Indo-Pacific defined by strategic pluralism — overlapping coalitions, differentiated institutions, and shared but flexible rules, a political order that privileges agency over alignment. Rather than choosing sides, many states are shaping the region’s rules and frameworks in ways that reflect their own strategic priorities, domestic constraints, and evolving threat perceptions.
The message to the United States and other great powers is clear: Indo-Pacific countries prefer flexible foreign policies that balance security, diplomacy, and regional agency. […]
In response, key regional players are deliberately pursuing multi‑vectored security strategies that seek to avoid binary choices. This includes a form of hedging: actively cultivating diverse partnerships to reduce exposure to great-power coercion. India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia are all applying this approach, adjusting military force structure, external partnerships, and industrial policy to expand strategic options and dilute coercive leverage. […]
The future of Indo-Pacific regional security will be shaped less by declarations and more by coalitions of practice. The challenge for the United States is not to direct that process, but to join it on more equal terms.
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