President Trump visited Asia in November 2017. In Vietnam, he delivered a speech declaring a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” It signified a shift in the language leaders use to describe the world’s most populous region.
Mr. Trump actually borrowed the phrase from Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving postwar leader. Abe, who was killed by an assassin Friday, died knowing that his signature geopolitical vision—and the vocabulary used to describe it—has been thoroughly embraced across much of the region and beyond.
