1st Edition
Indo-Pacific Strategies Navigating Geopolitics at the Dawn of a New Age
This book focuses on the Indo-Pacific region’s growing prominence as the world’s major powers gravitate toward this space to expand their influence.
With dynamic shifts taking place in the globe’s most strategically volatile region, Indo-Pacific Strategies aims at clarifying the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, expounded both as a strategic concept and nascent region, thus contributing to the burgeoning policy and academic debate. The book offers indispensable insights and appropriate remedies to maintain the rules-based international order as threatened by China’s increasingly assertive and bellicose posturing. It offers up-to-date analyses of Covid-19-related geopolitical trends, the strategies of various Indo-Pacific states against the backdrop of great power competition, the increasingly confrontational stance of Indo-Pacific states against China and the 2020 US election results.
This unique book presents deep insights into the roles of Eurasia, small island states, the Middle East and Africa, in addition to Australia, India, Japan and the US, thereby providing much needed comparative studies. It also closely investigates the strategic and tactical operationalization of the Indo-Pacific, making it an essential read for scholars, policymakers, students, and strategists in the field of international politics and Area Studies.
Excerpt from the foreword by
ABE Shinzō, (former) Prime Minister of Japan
"I think this book is the timeliest attempt to bring together the wisdom of eleven people to present a multifaceted view of the FOIP [Free and Open Indo-Pacific]. As a reader, I would like to express my gratitude to the editors and contributors for their valuable intellectual contributions."
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Part I Contextualizing the Indo-Pacific
1. The Indo-Pacific as an emerging geography of strategies, Kei Hakata and Brendon J. Cannon
2. The Indo-Pacific’s evolving strategic landscape: Geopolitics as a framework for grand strategy?, Ash Rossiter
Part II Indo-Pacific lynchpins
3. Building Australia’s unified regional strategy through the Indo-Pacific concept, David Brewster
4. India’s Indo-Pacific prism: Finding strategic autonomy in the face of Chinese adventurism, Jagannath P. Panda
5. Japan and the Indo-Pacific: The formation of geostrategy, Kei Hakata
6. Indo-Pacific positioning of the United States: Evaluating dis/continuities, David Scott
Part III East Asia and the Indo-Pacific
7. China’s foreign policy transformation and its implications for the Indo-Pacific, Tien-Sze Fang
8. ASEAN in search of a common strategy in the Indo-Pacific, Renato Cruz de Castro
Part IV Frontlines of the Indo-Pacific
9. Small island states’ security in the Indo-Pacific, Mohan Malik
10. Europe’s Indo-Pacific puzzle: In search of an independent foreign policy, Eva Pejsova
11. Arab Gulf States in the Indo-Pacific: The limits of ambiguous hedging strategies, Jean-Loup Samaan
12. Influence and power in the Western Indo-Pacific: Lessons from Eastern Africa, Brendon J. Cannon
Biography
Brendon J. Cannon is Assistant Professor of International Security at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. His research is at the nexus of international relations, security studies and geopolitics. He is the co-editor of Conflict and Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific (2020), also published by Routledge.
Kei Hakata is Professor at Seikei University, Japan. He specializes in international politics and security affairs in the Indo-Pacific. Previously, he worked for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he dealt with Africa and official development assistance.
As China forcefully attempts world dominance, it disrupts the rules-based international order. Its refusal to heed the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s award voiding its nine-dash line claim and acknowledging the Philippines exclusive sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea, is only one example. In confronting challenges to maintaining a free, open and rules-based Indo-Pacific order, Indo-Pacific Strategies enlightens freedom-loving people through its analyses. The authors and editors deserve commendation.
- Justice Conchita Carpio Morales (Ret.), Supreme Court Justice (former) and Ombudsman (former), Republic of the Philippines
From major powers to the too-often ignored small island states, the topics covered in this collection reflect the latest scholarship and thinking on the vital geopolitical environment of the Indo-Pacific. Of particular interest are perspectives on how Europe, the Middle East and Africa are interacting with the region. It will be hard for policymakers and strategists to find a more up-to-date, theoretically sophisticated and useful volume than Indo-Pacific Strategies.
- Michael R. Auslin, Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford, and author of Asia’s New Geopolitics
The age of the Indo-Pacific is here. Indo-Pacific Strategies will be an essential and comprehensive resource for scholars and policymakers as they grapple with the complexities of this new era in geopolitics. A real strength of this volume is the way it brings together an array of experts whose perspectives reflect the true multipolarity of the Indo-Pacific, a region too large and diverse for hegemony. And the welcome focus on formulating national strategies means this is not purely an academic exercise.
- Professor Rory Medcalf, Australian National University, author of Indo-Pacific Empire
As the idea of the Indo-Pacific overcomes the initial skepticism that greeted it and gains political traction, Cannon and Hakata offer a valuable assessment of the prospects for this new strategic geography. In combining the perspectives from key actors across this broad theater with deep theoretical and practical insights, Indo-Pacific Strategies becomes a good pivot to scholars interested in the geopolitical churn that is unfolding in the Eastern Hemisphere.
- Professor C. Raja Mohan, Director, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
