{"id":52676,"date":"2019-12-19T14:34:23","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T03:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=52676"},"modified":"2019-12-19T14:34:23","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T03:34:23","slug":"theres-no-i-in-team-but-is-there-a-us-in-indo-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/theres-no-i-in-team-but-is-there-a-us-in-indo-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no \u2018I\u2019 in \u2018team\u2019, but is there a \u2018US\u2019 in \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Over recent years, Australian governments have made a conscious decision to recast their shorthand description of the strategic region within which they live. In brief, they\u2019ve moved away from describing that region as the \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019 and towards describing it as the \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019.<\/p>\n

At first glance, the change looks innocuous enough; the new term seems more inclusive, embracing a rising India, recognising a shifting pattern of regional interdependencies and underlining our new sense of engagement with the Indian Ocean. But along the way, quite unintentionally, something\u2019s been lost\u2014in particular, our understanding of the US\u2019s place in the region.<\/p>\n

The 2013 defence white paper<\/a> was the first to focus on the Indo-Pacific. (The 2009 version didn\u2019t even mention the term.) As it observed at paragraphs 2.4\u20132.5:<\/p>\n

[A] new Indo-Pacific strategic arc is beginning to emerge, connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans through Southeast Asia. This new strategic construct\u2014explored in both the National Security Strategy<\/em> and Australia in the Asian Century White Paper<\/em>\u2014is being forged by a range of factors \u2026<\/p>\n

The 2009 Defence White Paper made clear Australia\u2019s enduring interest in the stability of what it called the wider Asia\u2013Pacific region. The Indo-Pacific is a logical extension of this concept, and adjusts Australia\u2019s priority strategic focus to the arc extending from India though [sic] Southeast Asia to Northeast Asia, including the sea lines of communication on which the region depends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The successful transplantation of the Indo-Pacific into the space formerly occupied by the Asia\u2013Pacific was completed by the 2016 defence white paper, whose 68 references to the term signalled bipartisan acceptance of the change. Other countries in the region were\u2014to varying degrees\u2014gradually drawn to the new terminology. Even the US began to speak of a \u2018free and open Indo-Pacific\u2019 and changed the title of its regional military command in Hawaii from USPACOM to USINDOPACOM<\/a> in May 2018 when Admiral Philip Davidson succeeded Admiral Harry Harris.<\/p>\n

When we thought of our region as the Asia\u2013Pacific, the second part of the term was intended to signal our commitment to the idea that the US played an important economic and strategic role in Asia. To talk of Asia at all was to talk of a region where five trans-Pacific US alliances formed the critical hard-power substructure of the regional security architecture, and where the US was the key market for Asian exports.<\/p>\n

The term \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019 was itself a perennial reminder of a key Australian interest\u2014maintaining a deep interconnection between Asia\u2019s vibrancy and America\u2019s role as a stabilising superpower. It was a term that pulled Asia eastwards. Simultaneously, it was a term we deployed in Washington to pull the US westwards.<\/p>\n

Doubtless, proponents of \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 believed that the same sense of interconnection would endure under the new moniker, since the second part remained as before. But it hasn\u2019t. When \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019 was replaced with \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019, the sense of the second word shifted, dragged by the first word towards emphasising a shared oceanic theme. If there was a geographic emphasis to the two oceans, it lay at their confluence. The old picture of Asian and American interconnection morphed into a new one, with Southeast Asia and Australia at its centre.<\/p>\n

The importance of US strategic primacy faded. After all, the five US alliances were all in East Asia. There aren\u2019t strong strategic linkages between Indian Ocean countries and the US. The best we can say about the Indo-Pacific construct is that it seems to have empowered the rebirth of the \u2018Quad\u2019\u2014but the Quad isn\u2019t an alliance. Indeed, even its own members (the US, Japan, India and Australia) sometimes struggle to say exactly what it is.<\/p>\n

Putting it baldly, policymakers started thinking about Australia\u2019s strategic priorities in the terms used by the 2013 defence white paper: as \u2018the arc extending from India th[r]ough Southeast Asia to Northeast Asia\u2019. No America in that picture, and little enough Pacific. The \u2018arc\u2019 no longer pulls Asia eastwards. Centred on Southeast Asia, it pulls northwards and westwards. Centred on China, it pulls broadly southwestwards\u2014the same general direction as the Belt and Road Initiative.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the Indo-Pacific construct artificially inflates the strategic importance of Southeast Asia and Australia. Regardless of what we call our region, the strategically important parts of the world are today what they have been for decades: the power cores to be found in Eurasia and North America, and the power balances to be found around the Eurasian rimlands. Those remain distant from Australia whatever label we choose for the region.<\/p>\n

The US has, since World War II, offered a commitment to keep those rimland balances stable. In doing so, Australia\u2019s major ally has minimised the likelihood of major-power conflict of a sort that would have rippled into, and disrupted, even Australia\u2019s continental quiescence.<\/p>\n

True, US policy has begun to oscillate more disturbingly of late. And that\u2019s certainly not all down to the relabelling of the Asia\u2013Pacific as the Indo-Pacific. America\u2019s role in the world is shifting. A multipolar world is on the rise and US engagement is becoming more selective.<\/p>\n

Still, in earlier days the Asia\u2013Pacific label would have reminded us of an old strategic verity: regardless of particular priorities within the region, we want Asia to look east and the US to look west.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over recent years, Australian governments have made a conscious decision to recast their shorthand description of the strategic region within which they live. In brief, they\u2019ve moved away from describing that region as the \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":52678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,56,21,31],"class_list":["post-52676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-asia-pacific","tag-indo-pacific","tag-strategy-2","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThere\u2019s no \u2018I\u2019 in \u2018team\u2019, but is there a \u2018US\u2019 in \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/theres-no-i-in-team-but-is-there-a-us-in-indo-pacific\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"There\u2019s no \u2018I\u2019 in \u2018team\u2019, but is there a \u2018US\u2019 in \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over recent years, Australian governments have made a conscious decision to recast their shorthand description of the strategic region within which they live. 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