The Indo-Pacific: The Gauntlet Thrown Down by US, India, Japan and Australia to China’s Asia-Pacific Order

Abstract

The idea of the Asia-Pacific region is giving way to another construct: the Indo-Pacific, a contest with strategic implications, not least the growth of China’s power and interests. This involves recognizing that the growing economic, geopolitical, and security connections between the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean regions are creating a single strategic system with the Indian Ocean replacing the Atlantic as the globe’s busiest and most strategically significant trade corridor. The Indo-Pacific frame is closely linked to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad: a coalition of powers that are either wary or ambivalent towards China: Australia, India, Japan and the United States (USA). The increased cooperation among these four democratic countries is perceived and interpreted in China as part of a USA-driven containment strategy towards Beijing: namely a reaction to the Chinese maritime territorial expansionism signalling that the South China Sea is not part of China’s integral territory (as China likes to argue). As a matter of fact, China, while getting hold of Asian, African, and also European (Piraeus of Athens) commercial ports, feels encircled by the Quad countries and, by exerting political pressure, resorts to carrot-and-stick policies towards countries in the region. In such a contest, the EU could play a pivotal role in the Indo-Pacific game and its contributions through imaginative mediation and political appeasement could be crucial and significant.

A Shift in the Security Paradigm—Global Challenges: is Europe ready to meet them? Edited by J. Martín Ramírez, and Jerzy Biziewski. © 2020 Springer International. Submitted: October 14, 2019; Accepted: December 27, 2019.