{"id":8545,"date":"2013-08-20T14:30:44","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T04:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=8545"},"modified":"2013-08-21T09:17:22","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T23:17:22","slug":"indo-pacific-listing-our-interests-not-making-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/indo-pacific-listing-our-interests-not-making-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Indo-Pacific: listing our interests not making strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com.au\/maps?t=h&amp;dg=opt&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;ll=2.108899,145.898438&amp;spn=114.617756,210.585938&amp;z=2&amp;output=embed\" height=\"400\" width=\"600\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The term \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 is gaining currency. It appeared in this year&#8217;s Defence White Paper as an alternative to \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019, and although the formulation varies slightly, it has been picked up by both sides of Australian politics (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowyinterpreter.org\/post\/2012\/08\/16\/Indo-Pacific-Whate28099s-in-a-name.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JulieBishopMP\/status\/365692552524988417\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> for example). US Vice President Joe Biden <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2013\/07\/19\/remarks-vice-president-joe-biden-asia-pacific-policy\" target=\"_blank\">used a similar idea a few weeks ago<\/a>. Although he called it the Asia\u2013Pacific, he said the region stretches &#8216;\u2026from India to the Pacific nations of the Americas&#8217;. Among Australian commentators, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowyinstitute.org\/regions\/indo-pacific\" target=\"_blank\">Rory Medcalf<\/a> is a staunch supporter, and the Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Ray Griggs used the term in a speech at an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/events\/recentEventDetail.aspx?eid=514\" target=\"_blank\">ASPI conference<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n<p>But the Indo-Pacific is more a list of our interests than a strategy. And this isn&#8217;t just semantics. We want a smaller, not larger strategic framework, because the space in which Australia frames its interests will shape our strategic objectives. And the smaller our list of core strategic objectives, the more resources we have available to pursue each of them.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.defence.gov.au\/whitepaper2013\/docs\/WP_2013_web.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">The 2013 White Paper<\/a> announced that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A new Indo-Paci\ufb01c strategic arc is beginning to emerge, connecting the Indian and Paci\ufb01c Oceans through Southeast Asia. \u2026 The 2009 Defence White Paper made clear Australia\u2019s enduring interest in the stability of what it called the wider Asia-Paci\ufb01c region. The Indo-Paci\ufb01c is a logical extension of this concept, and adjusts Australia\u2019s priority strategic focus to the arc extending from India though Southeast Asia to Northeast Asia, including the sea lines of communication on which the region depends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more-->The best argument for the idea is that it incorporates the massive trade (in particular energy) routes of the Indian Ocean, and India herself into the strategic framework through which we view Australia\u2019s strategic circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>But listing places where Australia has interests located isn\u2019t strategic analysis.\u00a0What we want from a strategic construct (and from the Defence White Paper\/new defence policy which will likely follow this election) is an analysis of where the highest concentration of both Australia\u2019s interests and risks are located, as well as where we see ourselves as able (or potentially able) to mitigate those risks.<\/p>\n<p>A mere vision of Asia\u2013Pacific (East and Southeast Asia, the US, and the islands of the Western Pacific) does the job. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dfat.gov.au\/publications\/trade\/trade-at-a-glance-2012.pdf\">Eight of our top ten trade partners<\/a>, and almost 60% of our global trade come from this region, along with almost all of our strategic risk.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not to say that India doesn&#8217;t matter to us; it\u2019s important to Australia in two ways. The first is the bilateral relationship in a broad sense, including things like trade and diplomatic links. But it\u2019s hard to see how that warrants the shift from Asia\u2013Pacific to Indo-Pacific. The second is in the role India plays in Asia\u2014which is already accounted for in the idea of the Asia\u2013Pacific.<\/p>\n<p>To test this idea, we can try to imagine what action of India\u2019s would both be important to Australia, and would affect neither the Asia\u2013Pacific nor our bilateral relationship. The possible exceptions are the (global) ramifications of some kinds of nuclear events, or a major war with Pakistan. But a potentially global impact isn\u2019t an argument for the inclusion of India into a regional system. And for all this, despite the \u2018Looking East\u2019 policy, India remains essentially strategically inert.<\/p>\n<p>The other element is the importance of energy and trade flows into Asia. To start with, that seems a thin feature of the international order on which to extend the Asia\u2013Pacific system into the Indian Ocean. And, importantly for Australian strategists, this trade route doesn\u2019t present the kind of operational challenges that Asia does.<\/p>\n<p>The Indian Ocean is a large and largely empty body of water with an important trade route strung across the top of it. That trade route is protected by the close attention and considerable resources of India, the US (via the 5th fleet), and China for a start\u2014here at least their interests converge. That doesn\u2019t leave a lot of space for meaningful and cost-effective involvement on any serious scale by the RAN.<\/p>\n<p>Compared to the fraught waters of Asia and the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean does look pacific. There isn\u2019t a sufficient concentration of risks or of contested interests for it to be a useful inclusion into our strategic construct.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, &#8216;the Indo-Pacific&#8217; amounts to a list of things that matter to us, without much prioritising. But strategy involves paring that list back as far as we can, until we arrive at those features of the international system where we can focus our efforts and scarce resources most effectively in order to secure our interests. And this isn\u2019t just abstract. The smaller our definition of our strategic environment, the fewer objectives we set ourselves. The fewer objectives we set, the more resources we can put into those that really are core interests\u2014and the more chance we have of success. The Asia\u2013Pacific is quite big enough.<\/p>\n<p><em>Harry White is an analyst at ASPI.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The term \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 is gaining currency. It appeared in this year&#8217;s Defence White Paper as an alternative to \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019, and although the formulation varies slightly, it has been picked up by both sides of Australian &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":8547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[477],"tags":[1425,56,21],"class_list":["post-8545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","tag-defence-white-paper-2013","tag-indo-pacific","tag-strategy-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Indo-Pacific: listing our interests not making strategy | 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\/indo-pacific-listing-our-interests-not-making-strategy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Indo-Pacific: listing our interests not making strategy | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The term \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 is gaining currency. 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