US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can choose to uphold Washington’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific or let China play a more important role, says Karishma Vaswani for Bloomberg Opinion. SINGAPORE: The battle of Iwo Jima in World War II was one of the bloodiest in the history of the US Marine Corps. Nearly 7,000 American soldiers died. On the Japanese side, the scale of the casualties was exponentially higher. The epic military operation is a reminder of America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific.