Conflict and Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific

New Geopolitical Realities

Ash Rossiter, Brendon J. Cannon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000043433
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the most important strategic questions about the emerging Indo-Pacific region by offering an incisive analysis on the current and future patterns of competition and cooperation of key nations in the region.

Examining emerging policies of cooperation and conflict adopted by Indo-Pacific states in response to a rising China, the book offers insights into the evolving Indo-Pacific visions and strategies being developed in Japan, India, Australia and the US in reaction to shifting geopolitical realities. The book provides evidence of geopolitical advances in what some see as a spatially coherent maritime zone stretching from the eastern Pacific to the western Indian Ocean, including small island states and countries that line its littoral. It also analyzes the development and operationalization of Indo-Pacific policies and strategies of various key nations. Contributors provide both macro and micro perspectives to this critically significant topic, offering insights into the grand strategies of great powers as well as case studies ranging from the Philippines to the Maldives to Kenya. The book suggests that new rivalries, shifting alliances and economic ebbs and flows in the Indo-Pacific will generate new geopolitical realities and shape much else beyond in the twenty-first century.

A timely contribution to the rapidly expanding policy and scholarly discussions about what is likely to be the defining region for international politics for coming generations, the book will be of interest to policymakers as well as students and academics in the fields of International Relations, Foreign Policy, Security Studies, Diplomacy and International Law, East and South Asian Studies, East African Studies, Middle East Studies, and Australian Studies.

1 Conflict and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific

New geopolitical realities

Ash Rossiter and Brendon J. Cannon

New geopolitical realities in the Indo-Pacific

Despite being Cold War ideological and geostrategic foes, the United States (US) and the Soviet Union attempted to define an international system that included structures, institutions and laws, which formed the basis of the post-World War II system of global governance. This bipolar world passed when the Soviet Union and its satellite states collapsed, replaced by an era of American unipolarity which some heralded a second “American century.”¹ US unipolarity and hegemony—underpinned, according to some, by a liberal international and rules-based order—went largely unchallenged for a decade or so; the longevity of this US-led system of global governance, however, has been increasingly called into question from about the mid-2000s onwards.² The meteoric economic and political crash of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) onto the world stage has done more than anything else to signal for many the end of unipolarity and a return to a multipolar world.

There is a growing belief among scholars and policymakers, especially those from the West, that the world is entering a period of intense major power rivalry, and that the epicenter of this heightened competition will be the maritime region spanning the Indian and Pacific Oceans—i.e., the Indo-Pacific. For many of those in foreign policy circles using the term Indo-Pacific, the combination of these oceans denotes a new spatially coherent zone. An intensification of economic activity and the heightening of geopolitical competition within this vast maritime area are thought to provide the raison d’être for conceptualizing the Indo-Pacific as a distinct (albeit yet-to-be delineated) region. Under this view, the new geopolitical realities of the twenty-first century—especially the rise of India and China—are best captured by thinking of these two oceans, the islands they contain and the countries that line their littoral, in the whole.³ This interpretation, however, is far from universally accepted. Indeed, some academics make the claim that this neologism (the Indo-Pacific) is little more than a discursive construction, the roots of which lie in anxieties in some capitals about China’s growing power and influence.⁴ Rather than a natural byproduct of global power and wealth shifting from the Atlantic zone eastward, the term Indo-Pacific, they argue, has been imagined and subsequently evoked to provide a concept around which a strategic response to China’s rise can be organized.⁵

Debates around the utility or even the ontological basis of the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical concept will no doubt continue for some time; the Indo-Pacific means and will mean different things to different people. Nonetheless, policies taken by the main actors in the region—states and elite decision-makers in these states—will have a powerful constitutive effect in shaping what the Indo-Pacific comes to mean.

The dynamism of the region, specifically the aggregated rate of economic growth taking place and the concomitant share of world power that comes with this, means the Indo-Pacific is undergoing rapid transformation. The most important factor shaping and reordering the region is undoubtedly the expansion of the Chinese economic, political and, to a lesser extent—for now, at least—military involvement and the response to this activity by the established regional powers.

China’s swelling regional influence and involvement

China is an economic juggernaut that shed its Deng Xiaoping-era resolve to tread quietly for Xi Jinping’s highly public and arguably globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What was once a trickle of Chinese money has turned into a flood, and now covers capitals and worksites from Dakar, Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Duqm, Oman on the Indian Ocean’s Arabian littoral to the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. According to many observers, Chinese money and infrastructure projects—railways in East Africa, ports in the Bay of Bengal, pipelines and roads in Central Asia, to give a few examples—are the clearest manifestation of China’s ambition to extend its influence and take its place as the premier power in the Indo-Pacific, if not beyond.

To be sure, much of this Chinese-built and -funded infrastructure has filled critical needs in some places and connected China more tightly to the outside world than any time in its history. But with pipelines and ports has come skyrocketing debt to Beijing—and the prospect that China will take control of infrastructure assets as forfeited collateral when loans are defaulted, Kenya, for example, may default on its loans totalling close to $7 billion and, in the process, be pressured to hand over control of port operations in Mombasa to Beijing. Pakistan now owes China $6.56 billion for the building of pipelines, development of the port of Gwadar, and the construction of railroads and bridges. But it is Angola, a major oil producer, who owes China over three times as much: a whopping $25 billion. Concern about states succumbing to what some call “debt-trap” diplomacy now extends to the tiny island statelets in the Pacific, such as the Solomon Islands. Nevertheless, poor infrastructure is regularly identified by developing countries as their biggest obstacle. For this reason, a multitude of states, from Ethiopia to Myanmar, have warmly welcomed this influx of Chinese aid, investment and soft loans for infrastructure.

Against the background of the BRI, the dominant narrative unfolding in earnest in global affairs over the past few years is one of a rising China and a faltering United States. Thus, Chinese influence, fuelled by infrastructure projects, massive loans and legions of Chinese workers, seems omnipresent throughout much of the developing world with little to no answer from the US or key allies, such as Japan. After all, what is the US building in the Horn of Africa or the Bay of Bengal region? Nothing at all. Or, if it is, the projects are of such low visibility as to be considered nonexistent by most observers. This is not to say, however, that established powers of the Indo-Pacific have not reacted to the monumental changes taking place.

Choices and conundrums for the Indo-Pacific powers

Watching their own perceived influence and that of their great power ally slip, stalwarts of the liberal international order such as Japan and Australia are attempting to rise to the occasion, developing and energizing the notion of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) with policies and white papers aimed at rolling back Chinese influence and maintaining their own. Deep doubts have surfaced in Tokyo as well as Washington regarding the latter’s titular place in the world in the face of a rising China. Australia sees malign Chinese influence and power manifest itself in the form of real estate sales, university funding and its own overreliance on mineral exports to China. India, with a lethal set of geopolitical conundrums on both of its northern borders, perceives an increasingly worrisome challenge from China coming not just via Arunachal Pradesh, but also via China’s ally, Pakistan, in places like Jammu and Kashmir. As damningly, New Delhi now fears encirclement via the sea in the form of China’s String of Pearls, reported by some to be coherent network of Chinese military, commercial facilities and relationships along its sea lines of communication (SLOCs), which extend across the Indian Ocean from east to west. Accordingly, India’s hedging and liaising with the nascent Indo-Pacific Partnership (IPP) of Japan, the US and Australia was a decision informed by realpolitik. India fears its destiny as one of the world’s great powers is in jeopardy. The only truly rising power in any IPP, India, presents a nuanced, practical and Janus-faced approach to its Indo-Pacific partners as well as China. In this, it is mirrored by Japan and Australia, both of which have incredibly strong trade relationships with China but find themselves increasingly at odds with Beijing’s increasingly assertive and threatening actions in the maritime realms bordering each state.

An influx of Chinese infrastructure, workers and money across the region has led some to further question the post-World War II status quo. This has been bolstered by the emergence over the past two decades of a gradual but robust shift in economic power and resources from West to East with a much more modest shift towards the Global South.⁶ Does all this mean a definitive end to the post-World War II global governance system and American hegemony? Certainly the headlines, maps replete with Chinese flags across the Indo-Pacific, and analyses give this impression and seem to drive a sense that this new multipolar world—for all of its inconsistencies and unknowns—is forming into distinct constellations of power: Indo-Pacific states that support the current global governance structure versus states such as China that wish to upend or at least refashion the post-War structure with its perceived or real inequalities and inequities that favor status-quo powers over rising powers.⁷

This may be a neat typology, but it hardly addresses the complexity of what we are experiencing. This book makes many novel contributions to the field of international relations (IR) and geopolitics, but perhaps foremost among its attributes is that it explicitly questions the narrative of increasing, unstoppable Chinese ascendancy and the decline of the US and its partners. Indeed, some authors see strengths and weaknesses in the US or Chinese approaches to structural change in the international system. Their research findings also demonstrate the limited resource arrays and importance of domestic politics to all states involved—whether authoritarian China or liberal democratic Japan or Australia.

The analyses offered in the book’s chapters demonstrate not just a resurgence in US power in certain theatres but an attempt to strengthen an alliance system that is over seven decades’ old. In addition, the strengths of China’s BRI approach—ostensibly emanating from a unitary actor—are contrasted with questions about the causal connection between Beijing’s infrastructure projects and its ability to aggregate influence and power, whether this in eastern Africa or the islands of the Pacific.

One thing seems certain: the Indo-Pacific is here to stay. The Indo-Pacific is now official policy in both Japan and the US.⁸ Naval exercises, institutional renaming and military redeployments, coupled with pugnacious analyses and language, appear to demonstrate an unmistakable backlash against China. The beginnings of a new or at least post-US global order—as embodied by a rising China—has had the arguable effect of increasing the salience of the status quo and a buttressing of partnerships among those states who fear or mistrust (or both) a China-dominated region.⁹ It is under this general “threat” from China that the position of state actors has arguably begun to visibly shift from casual adherence or outright disinterest in upholding of the US-led post-War global governance structure to one of increasing support. This shift is apparent in normative statements made by leaders about “rule of law” or “sea lane safety,” and has led increasingly to a constellation of hard and soft power and thereby the beginnings of strategy that includes one great power (the United States), one economic power (Japan), one rising power (India) and one lynchpin power (Australia). These four states, spread across the globe with very different sources of, and outlooks on, power now form the nucleus of those states invested in pursuing what Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has nominated a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) vision.¹⁰

Debating the Indo-Pacific

To date, much of the burgeoning literature and political commentary on the Indo-Pacific has focused overwhelmingly on the shifting balance of power between Washington and Beijing and what this means for the region.¹¹ Indeed, this book was, in part, stimulated by the ever-increasing use of this nomenclature in opposition to China, its actions and its policies. The idea of the Indo-Pacific zone did not begin this way, and certainly Japan’s PM Abe has made it abundantly clear that Japan’s own Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision is not anti-China but pro-Japan and pro a peaceful, responsible China.

Chinese actions—most notably its infrastructure projects and the accompanying massive debt to Beijing—however, are often viewed as net negatives rather than positives. Some of our authors disagree, arguing that China is playing a positive role in places such as Ethiopia or Cambodia—regardless of the negative realities and potential implications for sovereignty of the massive debt. These states, some argue, need the critical infrastructure that Chinese companies and workers provide, as funded by Chinese banks. Yet, there seems an ineluctable shift over the past two years to something bordering on outright hostility, even paranoia gripping Tokyo, Canberra, Washington and, to a lesser extent, New Delhi. This is geopolitically ironic because India is the only Indo-Pacific Partners (IPP) country that actually shares a land border with China, yet the language of its leaders, academics and think tanks—perhaps with the exception of Brahma Chellaney and a few others—is less provocative and fear-inducing than that emanating from other IPP capitals. To read the latest analyses and op-eds, evidence of Chinese aggression and influence blanket the entire Indo-Pacific. “Australia must prepare for a Chinese military base in the Pacific” reads one recent article in a leading newspaper.¹² “China is Leasing an Entire Pacific Island,” reads another from the New York Times.¹³ The Wall Street Journal argues “Deal for Naval Outpost in Cambodia Furthers China’s Quest for Military Network.”¹⁴ As an editorial in The Hindu claims “Beijing needs the cooperation of the regional political elites to allow the People’s Liberation Army Navy [PLAN] access to critical Indian Ocean littorals to protect Chinese investments.”¹⁵

Some of the authors in this edited volume argue persuasively that certain actions by China do pose specific threats to rivals. Indeed, Chinese scholars and analysts have contradicted President Xi and others by making it clear that at least some in China do see the efficacy in running networks of overseas bases. Analysts at the Institute of Military Transportation of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Ground Forces have reportedly argued,

to protect our ever-growing overseas interests, we will progressively establish in Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Singapore, Indonesia, Kenya and other countries a logistical network (后勤保障的网络体系) based on various means, buying, renting, cooperating, to construct our overseas bases or overseas protection hubs (海外保障支掌点).¹⁶

Yet, evidence of China’s military base-building spree—Djibouti is most often cited—appears thin for the time being. China, like the IPP states, possesses core interests and limited resources, regardless of the aspirations of its military think tanks or politicians. It increasingly fie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• List of key terms
• 1 Conflict and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific: new geopolitical realities
• 2 India’s approach to the “Quad” and the salience of China
• 3 Decoding Japan’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” concept
• 4 US strategic re-positioning to the “Indo-Pacific”: a paradigm shift
• 5 Australia and the construction of the Indo-Pacific
• 6 Competing regional visions: China’s Belt and Road Initiative versus the Indo-Pacific Partnership
• 7 Japan’s Indo-Pacific: operationalizing Tokyo’s vision in eastern Africa
• 8 China and India: nautical games in the Indian Ocean
• 9 Indo-Pacific geopolitics and foreign policy: the case of the Philippines, 2010–2018
• Index