This article provides an analysis on the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) Strategy, seeking to explain its foundations, define its key terms and the rationale and implications behind its choices of terminology, and look into the guiding values and ultimate aims of the FOIP strategy. Although US action under the Trump presidency has been framed and talked about within the context of the FOIP strategy and as a reaction to a “rising” China as the US “declines” less attention has been paid to the actual strategy itself and what it envisions for the relations across the Pacific. This paper argues that the FOIP is a strategy that is aimed at competition and stronger engagement by the US, towards China, by maintaining and furthering the rules-based liberal order. I find that the US has correctly identified a threat to the “free and open” system in the Indo-Pacific region of the world and has formulated a policy of peaceful competition to counter the authoritarian challenge coming for the main Chinese competition coming from the region.