Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department released a report titled "Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision."

It highlighted the U.S. core understandings of the Indo-Pacific, which includes: 1) respect for sovereignty and independence of all nations; 2) peaceful resolution of disputes; 3) free, fair and reciprocal trade based on open investment, transparent agreements and connectivity; and 4) adherence to international law, including freedom of navigation and overflight.

For Japan and other states in the Indo-Pacific, the document clearly articulates their ongoing concern that "authoritarian revisionist powers seek to advance their parochial interests at others' expense." To be clear, in the short term this means Russia and China. In the long term, as Russia's power fades it's clear that it is China that looms most heavily in the minds of the United States and Indo-Pacific stakeholders like Japan.