{"id":39713,"date":"2018-06-05T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T23:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39713"},"modified":"2018-06-05T12:21:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T02:21:27","slug":"indo-pacific-versus-asia-pacific-as-makinder-faces-mahan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/indo-pacific-versus-asia-pacific-as-makinder-faces-mahan\/","title":{"rendered":"Indo-Pacific versus Asia\u2013Pacific as Makinder faces Mahan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Australia adopted the term \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 five years ago\u2014replacing \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019\u2014the aim was to widen Canberra\u2019s understanding of \u2018the region\u2019. \u2018Ho hum\u2019, said the region. Now, the idea of the Indo-Pacific is humming.<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s Shinz\u014d Abe likes the Indo-Pacific because it fits his ambitions for a greater Japanese role in Asia. Abe thinks big and Indo-Pacific is a big label that reaches beyond the bilateralism of the US\u00a0alliance.<\/p>\n

India embraces the Indo-Pacific because it honours India\u2019s vital role in Asia\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Indonesia cautiously puts its hand on the Indo-Pacific, not least because Indonesia sits in the middle.<\/p>\n

ASEAN pokes at and frets at a fashionable usage that\u2019s spreading quickly, worried what it might mean for ASEAN \u2018centrality\u2019. Southeast Asia might be in the centre of the geography but ASEAN feels outside the idea.<\/p>\n

All this leads to the nation that has turbocharged the Indo-Pacific discussion\u2014the United States.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration adopted the Indo-Pacific with such gusto, it starts to smell like a strategy. Fascinating says the region, \u2018What can it mean?<\/a>\u2019<\/p>\n

In a matter of months, Indo-Pacific has become the defining way that Washington describes the region. Donald Trump likes a new label that doesn\u2019t belong to Obama; in Trumpworld, that\u2019s all the reason you need.<\/p>\n

The Trump national security strategy<\/a> and companion national defence strategy<\/a> use \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019, with zero sightings of the Asia\u2013Pacific. \u2018Mesmerising\u2019, says the region.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s response to the Indo-Pacific trend is both complex and simple.<\/p>\n

The simple bit is that Beijing hates the idea. The complex side is that while it smells and sounds like a US\u00a0strategy, Indo-Pacific is so new in Washington\u2019s lexicon that policy content is slight\u2014a major idea with little mass bothers the hell out of Beijing.<\/p>\n

For now, China can sit with its simple response: hate it. And worry how this new bit of Trump kit is going to work.<\/p>\n

Compare Indo-Pacific with Asia\u2013Pacific to see different hierarchies as well as geographies.<\/p>\n

China likes Asia\u2013Pacific because it references the land mass that China thinks it naturally dominates, plus the ocean that stretches to the\u00a0US. Asia\u2013Pacific translation: Asia = China while Pacific = US.<\/p>\n

The Indo-Pacific is a maritime concept while the Asia\u2013Pacific tries to link<\/a> the maritime with the continental.<\/p>\n

Indo-Pacific skips by the Asian land mass (China) and replaces it with two oceans.<\/p>\n

The translation into nations can read Indo = India while Pacific = US. Such a reading spurs Chinese paranoia about being contained and constrained between two oceans, facing the\u00a0US on one side and India on the other. And when it comes to modern confrontations with India, China\u2019s experience is on land, not sea.<\/p>\n

Give this a theoretical tinge with two old, opposing views of geography and strategy: John Mackinder<\/a> versus Alfred Mahan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The land element of the Asia\u2013Pacific and a Chinese reading of it leans towards Makinder\u2019s 1904\u00a0theory about the Eurasian landmass that dominates the world.<\/p>\n

The two\u2011ocean expression of the Indo-Pacific would enthral the US\u00a0naval officer Alfred Mahan, whose 1890\u00a0book on sea power shaping history still inspires the salts.<\/p>\n

Mackinder would understand the import and ambition of China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative for the Eurasian heartland.<\/p>\n

Mahan would salute the symbolism and intent of last week\u2019s announcement from Pearl Harbor that the US\u00a0Pacific Command is renamed the Indo-Pacific Command<\/a>. Pacific Command\u2019s remit has always run from Hollywood to Bollywood (Malibu to Mumbai)\u2014now the name fits the range.<\/p>\n

The US Defense Secretary, James Mattis, flew from the Hawaii naming ceremony to the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, where he used the term \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 17\u00a0times in his speech, and \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019 only once (referring to APEC).<\/p>\n

To show the nomenclature shift, on the same stage last year, Mattis used \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019 nine times and \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 only once (quoting India\u2019s Narendra Modi). Back then, the commander of what\u2019s now Indo-Pacific Command was hedging by referring to the Indo-Asia-Pacific<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the keynote speaker at Shangri-La this year, Modi gave the geographic vision the full treatment: \u2018The Indo-Pacific is a natural region.\u2019<\/p>\n

India\u2019s prime minister offered ASEAN love and China reassurance:<\/p>\n

India does not see the Indo-Pacific region as a strategy or as a club of limited members. Nor as a grouping that seeks to dominate. And by no means do we consider it as directed against any country. A geographical definition, as such, cannot be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Modi offered these Indo-Pacific elements:<\/p>\n