New Delhi, Sept. 13 -- Nomenclature was always as much a political construct as a geographic one. Such acts are rarely bureaucratic shifts but have wider implications in geopolitics. At the recent Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, hinted that a change to the US Pacific Command was imminent when he explicitly emphasized the US as a Pacific nation. Following this, on 16th June, the Trump administration decided to drop the prefix 'INDO' from US Indo Pacific Command, 'INDO-PACOM' and reverted back to its historic designation as United States Pacific Command 'USPACOM.'

The USPACOM was established in 1947 and currently operates as the oldest and largest of the 11 unified combatant commands in the US mili...