{"id":48524,"date":"2019-06-24T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-23T20:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=48524"},"modified":"2019-06-23T18:49:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-23T08:49:21","slug":"indo-pacific-from-construct-to-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/indo-pacific-from-construct-to-contest\/","title":{"rendered":"Indo-Pacific: from construct to contest"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 has shifted from a geographic construct to an arena for mounting contest\u2014and the label for a US strategy.<\/p>\n

The journey from construct to competition has been short and sharp.<\/p>\n

At the start of this decade, \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019 was the dominant geographic descriptor. That geographic understanding stood not too uncomfortably in the vicinity of the idea of the \u2018Asian century\u2019<\/a>, the vision China\u2019s Deng Xiaoping raised with India\u2019s Rajiv Gandhi when they met in 1988. The US preferred \u2018America\u2019s Pacific century\u2019<\/a>, but it seemed more a question of perspective than dangerous difference. Australia easily embraced both the Asia\u2013Pacific and the Asian century.<\/p>\n

Any sense of comfort has fallen away as the use of \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 has zoomed up the charts over the past five years. The descriptors are no longer gently touching or rubbing along easily.<\/p>\n

The uneasy jests and questions tell some of the story about the construct competition.<\/p>\n

Jest 1: The Indo-Pacific puts two oceans together to squeeze out Asia\u2014or \u2018two oceans drowning Asia<\/a>\u2019. Not much Asia-for-Asians<\/a> joy there.<\/p>\n

Coming at the same crunch from the other side of the Pacific, the cover of the latest Foreign Affairs<\/em><\/a> shows an American bald eagle shedding feathers, with the headline, \u2018What happened to the American century?\u2019 Plenty of people are asking versions of the \u2018what happened\u2019 question.<\/p>\n

Jest 2 concerns ASEAN\u2019s edgy effort to agree on an Indo-Pacific \u2018concept\u2019, which is now arriving at the uneasy embrace of an Indo-Pacific \u2018outlook\u2019. ASEAN proclaims its centrality, yet the Indo-Pacific outlook shows it\u2019s easier just to stand out and look.<\/p>\n

The Shangri-La defence dialogue<\/a> revealed the Indo-Pacific spectrum, ranging from those who still question the construct to those who now proclaim the strategy.<\/p>\n

As I noted last week, ASEAN peers, picks and pokes at the Indo-Pacific<\/a> because the US proclamation of the \u2018free and open Indo-Pacific<\/a>\u2019 (FOIP) has electrified the idea. The IP (intellectual property) of the FOIP sparks and surges.<\/p>\n

One of the few policy footnotes of the short leadership<\/a> of acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan is that at the very moment he stood to speak at Shangri-La, the US released its Indo-Pacific strategy report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shanahan may be gone, but the FOIP is up and running. See Peter Jennings\u2019 discussion of the strategy report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The most high-profile questioning of the Indo-Pacific idea at Shangri-La was in Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong\u2019s\u00a0keynote speech<\/a>, worrying about efforts to \u2018create rival blocs, deepen fault lines or force countries to take sides\u2019.<\/p>\n

The most detailed questioning was in the annual Asia\u2013Pacific regional security assessment<\/a>, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s called the Asia\u2013Pacific assessment, but four of the 12 chapters have the term Indo-Pacific in their titles. When I asked about Indo-Pacific versus Asia\u2013Pacific tensions, Dr Tim Huxley<\/a>, executive director of IISS\u2013Asia and one of the document\u2019s editors, replied that Indo-Pacific is \u2018not a neutral term\u2019 and is \u2018value-laden and politically charged\u2019. That was a view discussed in the first chapter of the assessment: \u2018The United States\u2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The chapter calls the FOIP a work in progress that reflects US President Donald Trump\u2019s \u2018erratic and idiosyncratic style of diplomacy\u2019. The IISS judges that the FOIP strategy \u2018aims at recalibrating trade and investment relationships; competing with and in some areas confronting China; and reassuring like-minded states as best Washington can, given the circumstances\u2019.<\/p>\n

The FOIP is described as an amalgam, based on a compromise between Trump\u2019s \u2018America first\u2019 agenda and long-established policies favoured by the Washington bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

The IISS suggests that among the Quad countries (the US, Australia, Japan and India), Australia\u2019s response to the FOIP \u2018was arguably the most muted\u2019, even though Australia has been using Indo-Pacific language since the 2013 defence white paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Australia views the Indo-Pacific as a unified strategic space where it seeks a regional rules-based order. A US\u2013China trade war and a shift to US transactional bilateralism \u2018may affect both Australia\u2019s economy and that order\u2019.<\/p>\n

The IISS describes a series of challenges facing the evolution of the FOIP:<\/p>\n