Amid escalating U.S.-Russia tensions, U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled his long-delayed “Indo-Pacific Strategy” on Feb. 11, just as the White House warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent.

The American confrontation with Moscow, which has mounted a major military buildup against Ukraine to compel the United States to abandon its post-Cold War policy of NATO creep to Russia’s borders, risks becoming the defining crisis of Biden’s presidency.

A Russian invasion could leave an already distracted U.S. president little time for the Indo-Pacific region, which explains why the 19-page strategy document was hurriedly released on a Friday afternoon.

A double paradox, though, stands out: Biden has turned Russia’s troop buildup against Ukraine into a major international crisis, yet he has not uttered a word on a bigger military buildup — by China along the Himalayas — that threatens to unleash war on America’s strategic partner India.

And, although Biden has deserted Ukraine to its fate by ruling out coming to that beleaguered country’s direct defense, Washington has been in the lead in sounding the drumbeats of war.

It took Biden more than a year after taking office to release the broad outlines of his Indo-Pacific strategy. And it followed criticism at home that he had not clarified his approach to a region that is most critical to American interests. The world’s center of gravity is shifting to the Indo-Pacific, with the specter of power disequilibrium looming large there.

Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy, as a bare-bones paper for public consumption, offers a bird’s-eye look at the Indo-Pacific landscape. With its brief or nebulous references to key regional issues and challenges, the document does not provide adequate clarity on the thrust and direction of U.S. policy.

In fact, it reads more like a toned-down version of the “United States Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific” of former President Donald Trump’s administration. It also comes without the assumptions, objectives and actions that were distinctly defined under each topic in that once-secret strategic framework, which was declassified in the final days of the Trump presidency with just light redactions.

The plain fact is that Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy document is essentially an exercise in public diplomacy, while the Trump administration’s strategic framework was formulated to advance its policy of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” — a concept originally authored by then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and retained as a centerpiece in the Biden strategy. The strategic framework’s declassification appeared aimed at underscoring that the Biden administration was inheriting a coherent, comprehensive and realistic strategy on the Indo-Pacific.

Biden thus far has not made his long-anticipated China strategy speech to lay out his administration’s approach to a country that is a military, economic and technological challenge on a scale the U.S. has not seen before. While largely hewing to the China policy set by his predecessor, Biden’s approach appears more conciliatory.

While the Trump administration launched an ideological offensive against China as a predatory communist state without political legitimacy or the rule of law, Biden assured Xi in a virtual summit meeting last November that the U.S. will not seek to change China’s political system. Similarly, when he called Xi last September, Biden, according to a senior U.S. official, sought to explain American actions toward China “in a way that (is) not misinterpreted as ... somehow trying to sort of undermine Beijing in particular ways.”

The reassurance is embedded in the Biden Indo-Pacific strategy document, which declares that, “Our objective is not to change the PRC (People’s Republic of China) but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates ... .”

Biden, including in the virtual summit with Xi, has repeatedly stressed the importance of establishing “guardrails” to avoid conflict with China. Oddly, the stronger power appears more anxious than the weaker power to avert conflict.

The U.S. president’s Indo-Pacific strategy document, however, acknowledges that China “seeks to become the world’s most influential power” and that “our allies and partners in the region bear much of the cost of the PRC’s harmful behavior.” Yet it declares that the U.S. will seek to “manage competition with the PRC responsibly” and “work with the PRC in areas like climate change and nonproliferation.”

The strategy document, while supporting “India’s continued rise,” couched its reference to China’s military actions against India not as “aggression” (a term the Biden White House uses almost every day to describe Russia’s buildup against Ukraine) but in neutral language — as “the conflict along the Line of Actual Control with India.” And the background press briefing on the document’s release referred to “China’s behavior in the Line of Actual Control.”

The document has only fleeting references to Japan, America’s most pivotal ally in the Indo-Pacific that hosts more American soldiers than any other country in the world. But it commits to building greater U.S.-Japan-South Korea cooperation.

More significantly, the document confirms a Biden-initiated shift of "the Quad" group involving Japan, the United States, Australia and India toward geo-economic and other larger issues — from “global health security” and climate change (Biden’s pet concern) to “critical and emerging technologies, driving supply-chain cooperation, joint technology deployments and advancing common technology principles.” Such a broad agenda threatens to dilute the Quad’s strategic focus on the Indo-Pacific and also weigh it down.

Today, the central challenge confronting the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific is the relentless push by a revisionist China to expand its frontiers and sphere of influence and dominate the region. But, to China’s delight, the U.S. is again getting distracted from the Indo-Pacific.

The current U.S.-Russia geopolitical crisis, with Ukraine as the flash point, may help Biden to divert attention from his domestic problems at a time when his approval rating has hit a new low. But Russian President Vladimir Putin is also fortifying his standing at home, while reaping windfall profits for Russia from the crisis-driven jump of international oil prices to seven-year highs.

The Biden administration is the third successive U.S. government to commit to shifting America’s primary strategic focus to Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific. Yet, its current pouring of military resources into Europe highlights the risk that, like the previous two U.S. administrations, it too could fail to genuinely pivot to Asia.

Brahma Chellaney, a longtime contributor to The Japan Times, is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground” (Georgetown University Press).