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 thatThe post The Indo-Pacific Chooses Options, Not Sides appeared first on War on the Rocks.