US swaps ideology for ‘flexible realism’ and hard deterrence in Southeast Asia

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby has pressed Southeast Asian nations to join a “flexible realism” strategy in the Indo-Pacific, as the United States prioritises practical defence cooperation and deterrence over ideology.

Speaking at a forum in Manila on Monday, Colby said he would travel to Jakarta, Bangkok and Phnom Penh as part of his first official trip to Asia, delivering a message he called “realistic and perhaps bracing, but also reassuring”: that America’s interests were “more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific”.

“We are digging in [and] we are looking for partners, not protectorates,” the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy told hundreds of security and defence experts, foreign diplomats, active and retired military officials and business leaders at the conference organised by the Stratbase Group.

The goal, he said, was to build “a fully operational, resilient architecture of denial defence stretching along the first island chain” and across the wider Indo-Pacific.