Abstract This article examines the United States' strategic reorientation toward the ‘Indo-Pacific’, arguing that it signifies a deliberate geopolitical recalibration. Anchored in neo-classical realism's structure–agency synthesis, this recalibration fuses classical geopolitical logic with adaptive state agency to counterbalance China's systemic rise and manage Eurasia's contested power dynamics. This article contends that the US Indo-Pacific strategy reflects a ‘back to the future’ approach, reinvigorating Nicholas Spykman's ‘rimland’ thesis, which underscores the importance of controlling Eurasian coastal peripheries. This historical logic is adapted for the contemporary multipolar context, underpinned by reconfigured US-led alliance networks and sophisticated technology–economic statecraft. Through a geopolitical genealogy of the Indo-Pacific concept and an analysis of US strategic practices, this article explores how Washington endeavours to reconcile its relative decline with its aspirations for continued primacy by leveraging Eurasia as a decisive theatre for strategic competition. By bridging the gap between enduring geopolitical structures and dynamic strategic agency, this article proposes neo-classical geopolitics as a hybrid analytical framework, contributing to scholarly debates on the US–China competition, spatial re-territorialization and the durability of the US-led international order.
Ding et al. (Wed,) studied this question.