Regional Middle Powers and the Indo-Pacific Strategic Narrative

In this chapter we argue that, in the Indo-Pacific region since the ‘end’ of the ‘old’ Cold War, there has been a process of political and economic competition among regional great powers for influence over Indo-Pacific core middle powers. One of the essential aims of this process is to create a regional middle power coalition in opposition to either China or the US, one of the elements of the new Cold War. As a result, the foreign policies of US-co-opted states will exhibit a shift in emphasis towards support for the US pivot and an expression of a greater foreign policy interest than heretofore in the Indo-Pacific region, following the US. The result is that an Indo-Pacific self-identification and an ‘Indo-Pacific narrative’ become important components of the foreign policy rhetoric and debate of US-co-opted states.

The Role of India in the Indo-Pacific

The construct of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ as a new ‘regional’ identity is garnering recognition in both foreign and defence policy institutions in India. Although the Indo-Pacific concept is currently ‘in vogue’, the essential motivations behind India’s self-proclaimed—and alleged centrality—in the Asian strategic space, are not particularly new. In fact, in this chapter we posit that it is quite the opposite: the construction of the ‘region’ possesses enduring historical connections to British imperialism alongside Indian nationalism. The works of post-independence Indian strategic thinkers such as Caroe and Panikkar will be further drawn upon to illustrate how their traditional geopolitical rationales and arguments remain integral to contemporary Indian framings of the Indo-Pacific. Examples taken from current Indian government policies and projects, such as Project Mausam, will be utilized to contextualize these concepts and geopolitical imaginations.

The New ‘Multiplex’ Cold War in the Indo-Pacific

In this chapter we argue that one of the principal inhibitors of sustainable security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region is that the Cold War has yet to end. Strategic concepts and postures reflecting containment, ‘constrainment’, sphere of influence, expansionism, and territorial competition still inhabit the rhetoric not just of the regional security environment. Regional strategies can therefore be interpreted within the framework of Cold War ‘logic’, thus impeding regional security cooperation. The ‘old’ Cold War has thus been perpetuated, reinforced, and reinterpreted as a ‘new’ Cold War due to geopolitical competition over global and regional primacy. Even within this process of geopolitical competition, old geopolitical concepts such as ‘pivot’ and ‘Indo-Pacific’ have also been reinterpreted and reused to justify new strategies that ultimately continue to foster a new Cold War in the region. Indeed, the Indo-Pacific has returned as a central element of the new Cold War.

The Return of Traditional Geopolitical Thought

The principal aim of this chapter is to provide an overview and synthesis of the diffusion, perpetuation, and contextual transformation of traditional geopolitical thinking throughout the Indo-Pacific region and assess how these concepts and ideas might still form some input into regional geopolitical thinking, particularly among some key individual states within the Indo-Pacific. The re-emergence of these classical ideas and their deployment through different national lenses reveals the construction of vastly disparate Indo-Pacific regionalisms, in which, we argue, narrow national constructions of the region take precedence over more genuine, pan-regional aspirations. In the twenty-first century, to some degree, the Indo-Pacific concept is a useful enabling tool for regional state territorial expansionism and/or for the geographical extension of military power and control. However, this enabling Indo-Pacific concept contains within it the potential for significant regional and even global conflict. This prospect has also been predicted by Haushofer.

Maritime Regional Theories

Various countries and cultures, washed by the waters of these amorphous oceanic boundaries and sea spaces, are currently seeking to establish exclusive territorial claims over these water spaces by invoking stories and narratives taken from pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras. In this chapter we select some of these stories, often used in an attempt to legitimate ‘natural’, more essentialist relationships between certain cultures and/or nation-states with their surrounding seas. These narratives both challenge and/or support the broader international system and its rule of law; creating internal tropes, strengthening domestic support for state-building programs in the region/s. But the Indo-Pacific is more than a contestation between nation-statist imaginations and aspirations. It also invokes stories which seek to develop and celebrate a shared ‘maritime regionalism’ beyond the exclusive and usually dominant politics of nation-states. Finally, a third interpretive category is used: the construction of the Indo-Pacific as a globalized ‘non-space’.

The Rise of China and the Indo-Pacific

This chapter presents an overview and critical analysis of the nature of the rise of China and its geopolitical and geo-economic implications for the Indo-Pacific region. The chapter is in six parts—China’s inexorable rise; China’s reform agenda; China’s regional trade relationships; China’s Belt and Road Initiative; the South China Sea dispute; and the future for a risen China. It is argued that the Indo-Pacific concept has little if any relevance in the conduct of current or future Chinese foreign policy. Indeed, at an annual media conference in Beijing in 2018 the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, reportedly mocked the US–Australia preference for describing the Asia-Pacific region as the ‘Indo-Pacific’ as an example of attention grabbing. Rather, China has proposed a reform strategy for relations among great powers which emphasizes a more equal relationship with the US and the need for a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region.

The US ‘Pivot’ in the Indo-Pacific

Indo-Pacific constructions within nation-states change over time. We contend that under President Obama, the US largely imagined the Indo-Pacific as a super-region or ‘non-space’; a neo-liberal ‘mare nullius’. During this earlier period, the US promoted the free flow of trade and security arrangements across this non-space, articulating a particularly non-differentiated version of globalization, a sea beyond territorialization (at least rhetorically). Under President Trump this has changed significantly: the region has shifted beyond the exclusive realm of the free market and towards a neo-mercantilist state with its first (and perhaps only) priority being economic and national security for the US. We posit that the Indo-Pacific has been refashioned as a definitive alliance, rather than Obama’s fluid zone, or ‘non-region’. In Trump’s Indo-Pacific, lesser states have been designated as either being ‘in’ or ‘out’ of this US-centred alliance—battle and trading lines are now more clearly visible.

Introduction

We begin this book with a discussion and analysis of the contested Indo-Pacific concept in order to highlight the variation in the nature of the construction and acceptance of its varying meanings. In this chapter we argue that it is critical to establish that the Indo-Pacific is not just about the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Of course, these oceans, in biogeographical terms, remain central to most constructions of what the Indo-Pacific is—a confluence of two great, geo-oceanic systems. It can also be understood as the meeting place of these two oceans, a littoral zone between the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. In this chapter we argue that the Indo-Pacific is also about land—those countries which both directly abut the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but also those which sometimes operate within it, in terms of trade, culture, and security—but whose heartlands exist beyond these oceanic catchments.

Conclusion

In this final chapter, we contend that despite the fact that differing constructions of the Indo-Pacific occur across matrices of space, time, and selected world-view methodologies, it is important to conclude that not all constructions and geopolitical imaginations are equal. Consequently, we prioritize the ongoing relationships between the US and China: these will largely determine the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific region in the twenty-first century and beyond. Also, we end the book on a constructive note, exploring a regional institutional model which is the closest we have yet experienced in terms of being representative of Indo-Pacific nation-states, from the western Indian Ocean, to the western periphery of the Pacific. The case of the Indian Ocean Rim Association, now over twenty years since its inception, is an exemplar (however imperfect) of the maritime regional organization wrestling with the daily realities of what it is to operate in a new Indo-Pacific world.